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As a 44-year-old member of Generation X, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida might be an unlikely candidate to wrest his party’s older voters away from Donald J. Trump, a 76-year-old baby boomer.

But he is trying anyway.

As Mr. DeSantis closes in on the official rollout of a 2024 campaign for president, he is seeking to make early inroads with this large, politically influential group of voters, and doing so by appealing to their pocketbook concerns.

He has focused especially on his efforts to lower prescription drug costs in Florida, including pushing the federal government for permission to import cheaper drugs from Canada. This month, he signed a bill that he says will bring down costs by regulating drug industry middlemen.

“We think that health care is too expensive,” Mr. DeSantis said as he signed the bill in Palm Beach County. “Prescription drugs are too expensive.”

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is expanding his political travel as his poll numbers slip ahead of an expected presidential campaign, visiting rural north-central Wisconsin on Saturday in a sign of his intent to compete for voters beyond early nominating states like Iowa.

Declared candidates, including former President Donald J. Trump, have largely focused on making appearances in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, three of the first states on the Republican nominating calendar next year.

But Mr. DeSantis’s visit to a convention center outside the small city of Wausau, an area roughly 90 minutes west of Green Bay that voted heavilyfor Mr. Trump in the last two elections, suggests that the governor is preparing to challenge the former president more directly in a crucial battleground state.

“It’s a smart move by DeSantis,” said Brandon Scholz, a lobbyist and former executive director of the Wisconsin Republican Party. “You don’t go to Wausau, Wisconsin, to get cheese curds. You go to get the grass roots talking. You go to get on local TV. It shows that DeSantis is thinking about his strategy beyond the early states, and that he’s picking his spots well.”

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — A federal jury acquitted Andrew Gillum, the Democrat who lost the 2018 Florida governor’s race to Ron DeSantis, of lying to the F.B.I. on Thursday. But jurors failed to reach a verdict on charges related to whether Mr. Gillum and a close associate diverted campaign funds when Mr. Gillum was running for governor.

After more than four days of deliberation, the 12-member jury said it had reached agreement only on the charge that Mr. Gillum made false statements when the F.B.I. interviewed him in 2017. Judge Allen C. Winsor of the Federal District Court in Tallahassee declared a mistrial on one conspiracy charge and 17 fraud charges against Mr. Gillum and Sharon Lettman-Hicks.

Mr. Gillum, 43, and Ms. Lettman-Hicks, 54, a friend and mentor since he was in college, were indicted last June over how they had raised and used political funds when he was the mayor of Tallahassee and a candidate for governor. Two of the initial 21 charges were dropped just before the trial began last month.

Ms. Lettman-Hicks, who was tried jointly with Mr. Gillum, had been indicted only on the conspiracy and fraud charges on which the jury failed to reach a verdict.