Ron DeSantis and Gavin Newsom debate tonight: Florida and California governors go head-to-head on Fox News at 9pm

After months of waiting and public spats, Ron DeSantis and Gavin Newsom will finally get a chance to square off in their highly-anticipated debate on Thursday night at 9pm.

The governors will each make their cases for Florida and California in the ultimate battle between the red and blue states.

It's a showdown that could preview a future presidential race - and will give viewers their chance to see alternatives to Donald Trump and Joe Biden in action.

DeSantis is currently running in the 2024 Republican presidential primary – and consistently is polling in a far second or third to frontrunner Trump.

He has already participated in four Republican presidential primary debates against his GOP competitors without Trump – and will take part in a fourth debate next week in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

'The next debate will be the biggest one yet,' DeSantis campaign manager James Uthmeier said in a statement provided to DailyMail.com regarding the one-on-one with Newsom.

Meanwhile, Newsom spokesman Nathan Click claimed that the debate is already rigged for DeSantis.

'We are under no illusions – this is a 2 on 1 match with the refs in the tank for the home team,' Click told Dailymail.com. 'But Gov. Newsom has long believed that Democrats have to go on offense in enemy territory, and that's exactly what he intends to do.'

Here, DailyMail.com breaks down the upcoming debate and what to know ahead of the matchup.

DETAILS OF THE DEBATE

Florida Gov. DeSantis doesn't have to go far for the debate, which is in Alpharetta, Georgia, about 300 miles away from the Florida capital of Tallahassee.

Meanwhile, California Gov. Newsom has a much longer trip of approximately 2,500 miles to make it to the debate location.

Fox News is hosting and airing the 90-minute debate live on Thursday night at 9:00 p.m.

Longtime Fox host Sean Hannity will serve as the lone moderator.

The event came to fruition after Hannity brokered the conditions between the two governors when they both publicly expressed openness to going head-to-head.

'As Democrats ramp up their efforts to replace the historically unpopular and failed Joe Biden as their nominee, Ron DeSantis' showdown with Gavin Newsom is even more timely,' Uthmeier said in a statement.

'A Newsom presidency would accelerate America's decline, and November 30th will be the first chance to expose to a national audience just how dangerous his radical ideology would be for the country.'

'Ron DeSantis will take this responsibility seriously and looks forward to sharing the stark contrast between his vision to revive our nation and Newsom's blueprint for failure.'

Newsom insists he does not have ambitions to run for president this year, but DeSantis falls among those speculating that he might mount a 2024 bid if Biden, 81, for some reason is no longer in the race.

Click told DailyMail.com that viewers should '[e]xpect him to defend the President and use the opportunity to contrast the President's record of delivering for the middle class with Desantis' (sic) and the rest of the GOP field's enthusiasm for taking away Americans' freedoms.' 

'Look, [Newsom] is running a shadow campaign, even people in his own party are saying that,' DeSantis said in an interview this month. 'A lot of Democrats want to move Biden out.'

He added: 'But I think it's important that Republican voters get the sense that we may not be running against Biden.'

Sean Hannity, the longest-serving primetime anchor on Fox News Channel, will referee their match-up. He has interviewed DeSantis frequently as he bids to topple Trump, and his few chats with Newsom have been well-watched and led to a good relationship between the two.

Hannity told DailyMail.com in an exclusive interview on Tuesday how he personally brokered the terms of the upcoming debate, and managed to get them in a room together.

The Fox News host said he stepped-in to navigate the back-and-forth between the governors and revealed that those chats included at least one of the men requesting no in-studio audience.

'I personally negotiated or navigated – I don't know what you want to call it,' Hannity said. 'I took on the crazy position of personally handling this myself. I thought it was too important.'

THE RISING FEUD BETWEEN NEWSOM AND DESANTIS

Over the last year, DeSantis and Newsom have publicly expressed their displeasure with each others' policies – intensifying the debate over whether Florida or California is the 'better' state.

DeSantis often touts the exodus of California residents who moved to Florida since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody will highlight this phenomenon with a press conference in the afternoon to hear from California 'refugees' who fled the Golden State for the Sunshine State.

Between July 2019 and July 2022, there were 1,044,494 Californians that left for other states. Meanwhile, 737,433 people moved to Florida from other states.

The wealth level of those living in the states have also faltered due to the in and out migration.

California lost $55.7 billion in adjusted gross income between 2019 and 2021 from population migration, according to the latest IRS data, while Florida gained $80.6 billion.

Newsom has slammed DeSantis' highly conservative policies, especially as it relates to illegal immigration, education and LGBTQ issues.

Fox News has titled the head-to-head between the governors 'The Great Red vs. Blue State Debate' – and it comes as Newsom and DeSantis have been at each other's throats over their state's policies.

Specifically, the two will square-off on their diametrically oppositional approaches to issues like COVID-19 lockdowns, crime, immigration, taxes, climate and school choice.

Both men have lofty ambitions that reach all the way to the White House.

Newsom initially challenged DeSantis to a debate in September 2022. At the time, DeSantis was not yet running in the 2024 Republican presidential primary.

In an interview with Hannity in June, Newsom, a liberal, again said he would debate DeSantis, a conservative, with the Fox host moderating. DeSantis officially agreed in August, telling Hannity: 'I'm game. Let's get it done. Just tell me when and where.'

'We were shocked when he accepted,' Click said to DailyMail.com

'Newsom had been challenging Desantis (sic) for months to debate, and the fact that he finally accepted as his campaign was circling the drain shows just how bad Desantis (sic) needs to distract from his disaster of candidacy,' he added.

The debate will not have any audience and even if the two men have their respective staff in the room during the televised event, they won't be able to talk to them even during commercial breaks, Hannity said.

Besides Fox, no other media outlets are permitted access to the room where the two men will go head-to-head.

'I know both of them. So I just felt it was up to me to kind of pull this together in a way that would work for both governors,' Hannity told DailyMail.com.

'Maybe a heavier lift than I thought in the beginning.'

He added: 'But I did promise everybody I would keep the behind the scenes negotiations private and I'm gonna keep my word on that.'

FLORIDA V. CALIFORNIA EDUCATION POLICIES

While California has grown increasingly liberal since Newsome became governor in 2019 – Florida has skewed the other way after DeSantis rose to power at the same time.

The governors have very different styles of leadership, and have nearly always taken opposing sides on issues ranging from economy to personal freedoms.

While California spends significantly more on their K-12 education – about 45 percent more – their test scores are much lower than that of Florida.

Only 30 percent of California fourth graders tested proficient in math in 2022, compared to 41 percent in Florida.

Many point to prolonged COVID-19 shutdowns as the cause for learning loss in California.

DeSantis is also known for his 'anti-woke' policies in schools and for pushing to get more parental approval for their childrens' education.

His Parental Rights in Education law was dubbed by liberal and progressive critics as the 'don't say gay' bill because it prevented in-classroom education of sexual orientation and gender identity.

Newsom and other Democrats say DeSantis' policies are anti-LGBTQ.

FLORIDA V. CALIFORNIA EMPLOYMENT AND HOMELESSNESS

Florida, notably, was one of the leaders in reopening schools and getting children back in the classroom in the wake of the pandemic.

Additionally, employment has only increased in Florida while declining in California.

Since January 2019, 1.031,030 more people are employed in Florida, while in California the employment has declined by 85,438.

This change was also likely driven by long-term lockdowns in California and shorter-term shutdowns in Florida.

Newsom kept the state closed so long that businesses moved their operations and workers moved their families to places where they could not only continue operating, but with lower tax burden and cost of living.

Florida, the third largest state in terms have population, has 22.2 million people living in the state and rising, while California, the largest state by population, is 39 million and declining.

California has, however, seen a massive rise in homelessness over the last few years with 171,521 living on the streets compared to just 25,959 in Florida.

Newsom backed Prop. 47 in California, which has decriminalized drug use and makes it harder to get addicts who are living on the streets into treatment.

Shocking and graphic images have emerged of homeless people taking drugs on the streets of some of California's largest cities, like San Francisco and Los Angeles.