‘Busy day for lawyers’: Susie Wiles talks Ron DeSantis’ recount

Susie Wiles, campaign manager and transition team leader for Ron DeSantis, spoke to Florida Politics Saturday.

She and the candidate are both in Jacksonville, not in Tallahassee at the recount headquarters, a seeming measure of the confidence the DeSantis campaign has about the recount going their way.

In the gubernatorial race, DeSantis still leads Democrat Andrew Gillum by 33,684 votes. That’s a 0.41-percent margin, over ten thousand votes above the manual recount threshold.

“It’s a busy day for lawyers,” Wiles quipped. “There are people everywhere, observers and attorneys across the state.”

At this writing, two other races are headed to a recount.

In the U.S. Senate race, Republican Rick Scott holds a 12,562-vote lead over Democrat Bill Nelson, a 0.15 percent margin.

In the Agriculture Commissioner race, Democrat Nikki Fried has a lead of 5,326 votes over Republican Matt Caldwell, a 0.06-percent difference.

Each campaign, Republican and Democratic, is watching the recount closely.

“Most counties will be done by Wednesday,” Wiles noted about the machine recount. Results are due by 3 p.m. Thursday.

Wiles has won close elections before, managing statewide efforts for Rick Scott and Donald Trump that were something less than landslides. If the DeSantis victory holds, this is yet another come-from-behind win that mystified a pundit class that bought into the Blue Wave theory.

The campaign is confident that a manual recount won’t be triggered by those results.

The DeSantis campaign has been more muted than those of fellow Republicans Scott and Caldwell in decrying ongoing vote count.

DeSantis is confident that Tuesday’s results will hold.

“I was honored Tuesday night to be elected 46th Governor of the State of Florida.  The results of the election were clear.  I am now focused on the transition effort and will allow the legal efforts regarding the election to proceed, as is necessary, as the process unfolds,” he told us Thursday afternoon.