A new political action committee run by a former Trump campaign associate has thrown its support behind Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' potential presidential bid in 2024, according to Fox News.
The PAC, called "Ready for Ron," is reportedly led by Ed Rollins, the former chairman for Ronald Reagan's 1984 campaign, and Lilian Rodríguez-Baz, a conservative attorney.
"We think DeSantis is a very strong candidate. He would carry on a lot of the efforts of President Trump's agenda," Rollins told Fox News Digital.
The committee, which is already registered with the Federal Election Commission (FEC), has reportedly taken out an ad buy to direct attention to a petition created by Rollins and Rodríguez-Baz encouraging DeSantis to cast his presidential bid.
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Rollins told Fox News that the presidential primary is "frozen" until Trump officially announces his bid, even though the former president has strongly signaled that he will be gunning for a second term.
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https://twitter.com/Ready4Ron/status/1528880907054088193
"As of today [Trump's not a candidate," Rollins said. "He has done nothing relative to the Federal Election Commission. He has not declared himself a candidate. … What I'm arguing, just as we did four years ago for him with the Great America PAC, is that there are elements to a presidential campaign, organizing grassroots, those kinds of things, that need to be done."
"I don't think they will run against each other," he also said of Trump and DeSantis.
Rodríguez-Baz said that she's thrown her support behind the Florida governor because "he doesn't capitulate to the pressures of the woke mob."
"That quality of Ron DeSantis is that he is consistently unphased by his detractors," she argued. "He's not easily manipulated. He consistently pushes back, irrespective of the consequences because his mantra is to fight for freedom and to do what is right, I think that's what qualifies him first and foremost. That's why we believe this is going to be so successful."
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Ready for Ron is not yet formally associated with DeSantis. However, the committee has asked the FEC for permission to share its list of supporters with DeSantis' possible presidential campaign, as Fox News noted.
"There are going to be hundreds of thousands, if not millions of signatures. That's our hope here," Rodríguez-Baz explained. "We'd like to share that list of signatories with Ron DeSantis."
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