Welcome back to The Best & The Brightest, your new favorite political digest featuring what D.C. insiders are really whispering about. In tonight’s dispatch, I go deep on the simmering tensions within DeSantis-world between the Tallahassee gang, who want to stick to their script, and the Jeff Roe-led mega-connected newbies who are trying to correct course and develop a real national media strategy, beyond trolling on Twitter.

But first…

• Newsom’s DiFi Pickle: Gavin Newsom, the perpetually preened California governor with national ambitions, is in a tough spot as the person empowered to temporarily fill Dianne Feinstein’s seat if the 89-year-old senator, who is currently fighting a bout of shingles, succumbs to mounting pressure to retire. First, there is the problem of Senate procedure: Feinstein’s absence has been holding up critical judicial appointments. She has asked Chuck Schumer to replace her while she’s unable to travel, but that would require the unanimous consent of the Senate to avoid procedural issues—a quixotic fantasy in this day and age.

  Second, and more troublesome for Newsom, is the intra-state political tensions that Feinstein’s resignation would unleash. Newsom, after all, would have to choose between three crucial voting blocks while simultaneously weighing their impact on his own political future. He has already promised to appoint a Black woman to the post if Feinstein were to resign early, which would presumably tip the scales for Rep. Barbara Lee. But Lee has already announced her intentions to compete in the primary for Feinstein’s seat; simply giving her the appointment would be an obvious advantage that would deeply anger Rep. Adam Schiff, who announced his own Senate campaign back in January, and who shares a number of donors, consultants and supporters with Newsom. Nevertheless, the Congressional Black Caucus is bearing down on Newsom to follow through on his promise, and they represent an influential bloc that he would need if—or when—he runs for president. (Rep. Katie Porter is surely the least likely to get the shoulder tap from Newsom, even if passing her over pisses off her progressive fan base; Feinstein’s people are still livid that she dared to announce her candidacy without consulting her first, and Feinstein wants a say in her successor. Plus, Feinstein and Nancy Pelosi privately prefer Schiff.)

  So what can Newsom do? I’m told from a source close to the governor that he’s considering placing a caretaker in the role—someone who would promise not to run in the primary, like Secretary of State Shirley Weber. But Newsom tried this caretaker tactic once before, with former San Francisco mayor Ed Lee, who of course ended up not wanting to relinquish the appointment and ran in the primary anyway.

  Then, of course, there’s the true wild card, Dick Cheney option—what if Newsom appoints himself? Well, I’m told that his team has already looked into the matter, and they have seen no historical precedent for a governor appointing himself and then winning again. And anyway, the Senate would probably be a demotion for Newsom, after governing the world’s sixth-largest economy, and a distraction from his White House goals. Newsom didn’t make that Spring Break trip to Florida for the beaches.

• Elias Shrugged: My colleague Eriq Gardner, who pens the incredibly insightful, scoop-filled weekly newsletter The Rainmaker, elaborated on Punchbowl’s detail-barren shocker on Wednesday that the Democratic National Committee has cut ties with election-law superstar Marc Elias, who represented the organization for nearly 15 years.

  Eriq writes: “This is akin to the Washington Nationals trading away their best slugger during a pennant chase. What I’ve heard is that while there will be plenty of business fighting over voting rights and defending the integrity of the count—Trump always generates lots of billable hours—a disagreement erupted between Elias and the D.N.C. over both the scope of work and strategic priorities during the next presidential cycle. Given its unrivaled success handling challenging litigation for the past 15 years for the D.N.C., Elias’s firm felt a semblance of ownership over the Democracy Docket. The D.N.C., though, was a bit disappointed by redistricting failures in New York and a bit uncomfortable with his increasing profile in the media. The two sides engaged in negotiations but couldn’t come to an agreement about where to take the relationship. Ultimately, the D.N.C. decided to rely on a wider range of firms, although that multi-million dollar decision won’t preclude Elias from doing work for governors and the D.C.C.C.”

In short, donors and supporters are more concerned that DeSantis isn’t being defended on TV enough. Cable news and Sunday show appearances may seem saccharine and retro in some quarters, but they matter in campaign season, especially on the right. One Trump aide recently provided me with an estimate based on proprietary data suggesting that more than a third of G.O.P. primary voters watch Fox at least three to five times per week.

The longer DeSantis sits on the sidelines, declining opportunities to hit back, the further he falls behind. And if the candidate-in-waiting really wants to hold out his announcement until July 4th, then he’ll need a flotilla of made-for-TV surrogates flooding the green rooms now—especially since the ground has shifted in the wake of the Trump indictment. “DeSantis is so obsessed with Twitter. That doesn’t matter,” said a former Trump aide. “They don’t have a comms operation, they don’t have a genuine surrogate operation.”

Since Jeff Roe & Co. linked up with DeSantis last month, DeSantis has started meeting with influential surrogates who can defend him on TV on topics like groomergate, his Covid record, and Trump’s Truth Social attacks that get picked up by the cable networks without a peep from DeSantis world. Sure, DeSantis’s super PAC senior advisor, Ken Cuccinelli, has defended him on Fox News. But one can’t help but notice that much of the ad that Cuccinelli’s Never Back Down PAC just released mostly features Cuccinelli, himself. “Jeff is smart enough to know they are crushed and defined nationally and they’ve got to fight back somewhere,” a former DeSantis aide told me. “Tallahassee is saying no, because they know what makes the old man tick, and that’s his posture and his wife’s posture for that matter. They believe the fantasy that none of this matters.”

It’s important to recall that it wasn’t always this way. At one point, in the bygone days of the soft Trump ban on Fox News, the entire network ecosystem was flooded with DeSantis surrogates. Back then, the governor enjoyed frequent gab sessions on the Fox & Friends couch as Rudy Giuliani, Mike Lindell, Jenna Ellis, etcetera were deemed too looney or legally risky (or both) for the airwaves.

But with the latest indictment, Trump has been enjoying sit-downs with Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson and the chorus of other voices seem to be getting in line. Kellyanne Conway has returned to form. Even Jason Miller is back on the airwaves. Former congressional candidate and White House aide Karoline Leavitt, who just joined MAGA Inc, has been a regular on Newsmax. Almost nobody has seemed to have DeSantis’s back precisely when he has needed it the most.

The problem is that there may not be enough of them. Maybe DeSantis could attract the former Tea Party star Katrina Pierson, who has given up on Trump post-January 6, but that’s not quite a needle-mover. I’ve heard that Kayleigh McEnany, Trump’s former White House spokesperson, has also told people that she’s on team DeSantis, but she’s unlikely to give up her cushy sinecure at Fox News to make a public pitch for the guy. Anyone willing to advocate for the governor this early, before DeSantis’s own announcement and amid the vibe shift of Trump’s inevitability as the primary candidate, would be taking a real political risk. “We’re deathly afraid to go up against Trump,” said one potential surrogate who was approached. “These people are vicious.”

It doesn’t help that, for a long time, the DeSantis inner circle took the Fox News apparatus for granted and ignored the other networks. I’ve spoken to multiple producers and bookers at other networks who say they are still being blown off and don’t even have a contact person in Tallahassee to allow them to respond to a Trump Truth bomb. “There’s always an invitation for Ron Desantis to come on the show. Meet the Press, Face the Nation and ABC have all asked for DeSantis. No one goes on,” said a network producer. “It’s hurting DeSantis. All we know is that he got screwed over by Disney and Trump and everyone else is having a field day with it. There will come a point where Tallahassee will have to see that his numbers are bad. He can’t let Trump define him.”

Of course, Roe has changed the dynamic because he has long-standing relationships with the press and understands that you can’t run a national campaign based on courting donors and blue-check social media evangelists. And there are some signs of progress. After DeSantis ally Byron Donalds’ shocking defection to Trump, NBC’s Matt Dixon reports that DeSantis is actually courting his own Florida delegation. Politico’s Alex Isenstadt reports that he’s going even further and taking a rare trip to D.C. next week to try to get his former colleagues in Congress to consider endorsing him.

In the meantime, DeSantis managed to poach Trump’s former state finance director in South Carolina, Bill Stern, who will join the Never Back Down super PAC. Trump rewarded Stern for his endorsement in 2016 by appointing him to the board of the prestigious Holocaust Memorial Council. But, still, I can’t see Stern as the new face of DeSantisland. So who else is there?