A host of billionaires and other wealthy businessmen have continued to boost Ron DeSantis, as the Florida governor is expected to unveil a 2024 White House bid and compete with former President Donald Trump on the national stage, according to disclosures reviewed by the Washington Examiner.
DeSantis has traveled to primary battleground states such as New Hampshire, Nevada, and Iowa and could be gearing up to announce his presidential run at the conclusion of Florida’s legislative session in May, according to multiple reports. Tension has recently brewed among donors to the governor following his signing of a six-week abortion ban, with some high-profile figures purportedly wanting DeSantis to distance himself from more conservative cultural policies championed by Trump and his followers.
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“It takes a certain amount of money to be competitive, but I don’t believe donors and money will be determinative in this race,” Scott Jennings, a Republican strategist and CNN commentator, told the Washington Examiner. “What will be determinative is whether DeSantis can consolidate the non-Trump wing of the party behind him, and if more than half the party wants to do something different.”
“It’s a two-step process,” Jennings, who worked on former President George W. Bush’s presidential campaigns and in his administration under senior adviser Karl Rove, added. “It does require money, but it’s not the only thing it requires.”
DeSantis is being fueled by deep-pocketed donors who have long asserted themselves as staples of the conservative giving machine, including real estate mogul Robert Bigelow. The owner of the private hotel chain Budget Suites of America and founder of the aeronautics company Bigelow Aerospace, claims to have donated $20 million to Never Back Down, a super PAC trying to will the governor to the presidency, Time reported.
Bigelow also gave $10 million to the governor’s state political action committee in July 2022, which was deemed to be the single largest campaign check in the history of Florida politics, according to campaign finance disclosures. He notably steered over $9 million to the Republican Governors Association in 2021, while a limited liability corporation registered to the donor called Magnet gave the group $3 million, according to corporate records and multiple reports.
“I will give him more money and go without food,” Bigelow, who reportedly is only just beginning to financially support DeSantis, told Time.
Trump has so far appeared to be the favorite to earn the Republican presidential primary in 2024, with DeSantis polling in second, far ahead of former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, former Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R-AR), entrepreneur and author Vivek Ramaswamy, and former Vice President Mike Pence, according to a RealClearPolitics average. Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) unveiled a 2024 presidential exploratory committee in mid-April and has polled at an average of 1.6%.
DeSantis holds at 23.4%, while Trump sits at the top with 52.4%, according to RealClearPolitics. On April 4, Trump’s campaign sent a memo to DeSantis donors that cited a poll finding that the former president led President Joe Biden in a general election matchup. It alleged that Trump is “building majority support” and touted him as the most likely “to defeat Joe Biden.”
Ken Griffin, the billionaire CEO of the multinational hedge fund Citadel, is another top DeSantis donor. He steered $5 million to the governor’s state committee in April 2021, following the $5.75 million combined that he gave in 2018, campaign finance disclosures show. Griffin will continue to support DeSantis, despite a handful of wealthy donors yanking their support for him, according to multiple reports.
During the 2022 midterm elections, Griffin contributed over $100 million to Republicans on the state and federal levels. The CEO said in March that he “would love to see” the governor “run” for president, adding that he disagrees with DeSantis when it comes to his retaliation against Disney for taking issue with his Parental Rights in Education Act, which aims to curb gender-based curricula in schools and has been dubbed by Democrats as the “Don’t Say Gay bill.”
Another DeSantis donor over the years, the Hungarian-born billionaire Thomas Peterffy, appears to have made his mind up against further supporting the governor.
Peterffy, who has showered the governor’s campaign with $570,000 since 2018, said in April that he and “his friends” will not back DeSantis moving forward due to his “stance on abortion and book banning.” His reference was seemingly in connection to the governor signing the Parental Rights in Education Act and Stop Woke Act, an education bill aiming to restrict gender- and sex-based curricula in schools, as well as the six-week abortion ban.
“Republican voters concerned about President Trump‘s consistent losing streak can take heart in the fact that Gov. DeSantis is raising competitive money and earning accolades based on a record of substance success, not just grievance over legal troubles related to paying off porn stars like President Trump,” a senior Republican strategist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to employer conflicts of interest, told the Washington Examiner.
The strategist added, “Unless President Trump plans on getting indicted once a month, it’s hard to see him competing financially with DeSantis or any Democrat going into 2024.”
Other wealthy individuals who have donated to the governor’s campaign include Jude and Christopher Reyes, co-chairmen of the food and beer distributor Reyes Holdings, Home Depot co-founder Bernard Marcus, billionaire shipping goods magnate Richard Uihlein and his wife Elizabeth Uihlein, hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones II, ex-San Francisco 49ers owner Edward J. DeBartolo Jr., and businessman James Pallotta, disclosures show.
Questions remain over whether some of these donors, who have supported Trump in the past, will make a full-on pivot to DeSantis in 2024. The Reyeses, for instance, both boosted Trump through donations in the past, as has Marcus. So have the Uihleins, who are not set on who they will support in the election and are watching the polls to see how things shape up, according to a source close to the pair.
Meanwhile, pro-DeSantis super PACs are spending large sums of money and recruiting top Republican operatives who come from Trumpworld.
Never Back Down is being led by ex-Trump Department of Homeland Security official Ken Cuccinelli. It also counts communications veterans Erin Perrine and Matt Wolking, who worked on Trump’s 2020 campaign. A recent hire of Never Back Down was Jeff Roe, who has been a top adviser for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA), among other influential voices on the Right.
“Fresh off of losing in 2020 and 2022, Donald Trump is begging undefeated conservative leader Ron DeSantis not to run for president because he knows Gov. DeSantis is the future and will beat him,” Perrine told the Washington Examiner. “Trump empowered [Dr. Anthony] Fauci when he should have fired him, and criticized open states like Florida when he should have supported them. As president, DeSantis won’t empower the swamp, but he will protect Social Security and Second Amendment rights and finish building the border wall.”
Never Back Down has hauled in $30 million since launching on March 9, according to reports from early April. Its disclosures won’t be public until July, and the super PAC did not provide the Washington Examiner with updated fundraising numbers.
On Thursday, Never Back Down sent out hundreds of thousands of mailers to voters in Iowa, South Carolina, Nevada, and New Hampshire. The super PAC also announced the release of its first TV ad, which will hit on the former president for criticizing DeSantis instead of Democrats.
A second group, dubbed Ready for Ron, launched a $3.3 million ad campaign in January in support of DeSantis. Shaun McCutcheon, a businessman and electrical engineer who ran as a Libertarian candidate in the 2020 presidential election, loaned the super PAC $100,000 in June 2022, records show. The super PAC’s disclosures also won’t be public until July.
Ready for Ron’s lawyer is Dan Backer, who has also donated to the super PAC but did not tell the Washington Examiner how much. Backer is a longtime Republican campaign finance lawyer and also happens to represent the pro-Trump Great America super PAC.
“At the end of the day, me and Shaun are the two biggest donors at this point,” Backer said in an interview, noting that there is a third well-known GOP donor whose name he declined to reveal. “I’ve always believed in the power of grassroots as a movement. The average gift size is under $100.”
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“I personally like Donald Trump,” Backer said. “If he’s the nominee, I’ll vote for him. But there is no way he wins the general election. It’s not possible. And that’s the only thing that matters. If you can’t win, I can’t support you.”
The DeSantis and Trump campaigns did not reply to requests for comment.
