ORLANDO, Fla. — Gov. Ron DeSantis and his team are sitting on more than $60 million in campaign contributions after vanquishing Democratic challenger Charlie Crist and cruising to victory.
DeSantis, a possible presidential contender, now faces a question: What is he going to do with all that money?
DeSantis could use it to boost his national profile, or expand his power and leave a lasting political legacy in the Sunshine State. He could draw on the funds to travel to out-of-state fundraisers, back like-minded candidates or stage political events that generate national media attention.
“It is the wild, wild West,” said Ben Wilcox, research director for the government watchdog group Integrity Florida. “Pretty much anything goes. We have the illusion that there are limits on donations. We do have limits on what people can donate directly to a campaign, but that same candidate can set up a political committee and accept unlimited donations.”
DeSantis hasn’t said if he is running for president in 2024, but he’s emerged as a conservative leader on the national stage. He is releasing a book next year titled “The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival,” sparking even more speculation he is gearing up for a bid for the White House.
DeSantis had $62 million in Friends of Ron DeSantis, his state political committee, at the end of November, campaign finance records show.
On paper, campaign finance law bars politicians from using money raised through a state political committee to pay for a bid for federal office, experts say. But a recent case involving Florida U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds is calling that into question.
Donalds, too, had a political committee when he was serving in state office. A state representative in the Florida House, he resigned as chair of the committee in January 2020 and announced three days later he was running for Congress.
During the summer of 2020, Friends of Byron Donalds transferred about $107,000 to Trusted Conservatives, a federal super PAC that supported Donalds’ bid for Congress. Super PACs can raise unlimited money and spend it freely on political causes but are barred from coordinating directly with candidates or their campaigns.
Donalds went on to eke out a win in the primary election by 777 votes and defeated the Democrat in the general election.
The Campaign Legal Center filed a complaint against Donalds. The Federal Election Commission dismissed the complaint in May, writing that the evidence was “scant and speculative” that Donalds controlled the state political committee after he resigned. CNN first reported on how the Donalds’ case could play into DeSantis’ presidential ambitions.
Saurav Ghosh, director of federal campaign finance reform at Campaign Legal Center, said he doesn’t think anything would stop DeSantis’ allies from making a similar move. The FEC hasn’t shown a willingness to aggressively enforce campaign finance law, he said.
“It’s very hard to imagine a scenario where they robustly enforce the law in connection with a complaint against someone like Ron DeSantis running for president and breaking the law to take advantage of a $62 million pot of money that’s just waiting for him,” said Ghosh, who served seven years in the Federal Election Commission’s Office of General Counsel.
The FEC is split on partisan lines with three Democratic and three Republican members. Deadlocks are common, and the commission has opted not to pursue some notable cases in the past. For instance, the FEC dropped an inquiry into whether former President Donald Trump violated campaign finance law when his personal lawyer paid an adult-film actress $130,000 during the 2016 campaign.
If DeSantis’ team wanted to avoid a dispute over the money, one potential work around could be to refund donations and encourage donors to support DeSantis’ bid for president, Ghosh said.
Donors continue to give to Friends of Ron DeSantis, which pulled in $2.4 million in November. DeSantis has been a prolific fundraiser, raising more than $211 million since Friends of Ron DeSantis was launched in 2018 and shattering campaign finance records.
He’s picked up high-dollar donations from some of Trump’s billionaire backers, such as Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus, WeatherTech founder David MacNeil, and shipping supply magnates Dick and Liz Uihlein. His national presence also has generated small-dollar donations from supporters across the country.
The organizational documents for Friends of Ron DeSantis stipulate that if the political committee is dissolved residual funds would be used to contribute to “candidates, political parties, political committees or other activities not prohibited by the law.”
A DeSantis campaign spokesman did not respond to a message asking what will happen with the money. Political committees routinely dole out money to candidates or even their political parties. Friends of Ron DeSantis sent more than $84 million this year to the Republican Party of Florida, which blitzed the airwaves with ads supporting the governor.
Earlier this year, DeSantis’ political committee cut $1,000 checks to about 30 school board candidates the governor backed as part of his push to reform education in Florida.
A super PAC encouraging DeSantis to run for president already has formed. It’s called Ron to the Rescue.
John Thomas, a Republican strategist based in Texas, said he created the super PAC because he thinks DeSantis is more likely to win than Trump. A supporter of Trump in 2016 and 2020, Thomas said he was impressed by DeSantis’ dominant performance in Florida in a year when Republican gains didn’t materialize elsewhere in the country.
Campaign finance data isn’t available yet for Ron to the Rescue, but Thomas said it’ll run ads and jump-start efforts to help DeSantis in early primary states.
“This is his moment,” Thomas said. “If he doesn’t run, he’ll be missing his moment. I think America needs his leadership.”
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Top 5 DeSantis donors
Here are the top five all-time donors to Friends of Ron DeSantis, according to an Orlando Sentinel analysis of campaign finance data.
1. Kenneth Griffin, $10.8 million, founder and CEO of the investment firm Citadel LLC.
2. Robert Bigelow, $10 million, owner of the Budget Suites of America hotel chain and founder of Bigelow Aerospace
3. Laura and Ike Perlmutter, $2.6 million, chairman of Marvel Entertainment, and his wife, Laura
4. Liz and Dick Uihlein, $1.9 million, Chicago-area couple that founded Uline, a shipping and packaging supply company
5. John W. Childs, $1.3 million, a private-equity billionaire
