While the media is eager to report on the demise of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s campaign for president, reports of his impending electoral death may be greatly exaggerated.
National polls show former President Donald Trump with a commanding lead in the Republican primary but there is no national primary. Each state holds its own election and the first GOP primary election is still six months away in Iowa, a state DeSantis has spent a lot of time in.
At the same time, ABC News reported on Thursday that hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin, a key backer of the governor, was “growing impatient with waiting for DeSantis to show progress as a candidate.” Citing sources “familiar with Griffin’s thinking,” the network claimed Griffin “has in particular grown increasingly frustrated with how the Florida governor’s early campaign has played out after hoping the governor would be the best bet to take on Trump in the primary.”
A source suggested that Griffin “hit the pause button” but a spokesperson for the billionaire told the Daily Mail, “Ken is not pausing anything. He continues to assess the field.”
At the same time, the British newspaper reported that former Disney executive Ike Perlmutter “has signaled his intention to financially back Donald Trump in the GOP presidential primary, making him one of the richest donors behind the former president this time around.”
The Daily Mail described the reporting as “another blow to the presidential campaign of Ron DeSantis” because Perlmutter backed him in his 2018 run for governor of Florida and his 2022 re-election effort.
DeSantis addressed all the naysayers proclaiming doom during an appearance on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.”
“These are narratives,” he replied with a laugh when host Maria Bartiromo asked, “What’s going on with your campaign?”
“The media does not want me to be the nominee. I think that’s very, very clear. Why? Because they know I will beat Biden. But, even more importantly, they know I will actually deliver on all these things,” DeSantis said.
Bartiromo: I’m wondering what’s going on with your campaign… What happened?
DeSantis: These are narratives. The media does not want me to be the nominee. pic.twitter.com/stX7j5ns0t
— Acyn (@Acyn) July 9, 2023
“We will stop the invasion at the border,” he added. “We will take on the drug cartels. We will curtail the administrative state. We will get spending under control. We will do all the things that they don’t want to see done, and so they’re going to continue doing the type of narrative.”
There is polling that shows DeSantis faring better against President Biden than Trump, but either way the governor understands this race is only just beginning.
“We have got a long way to go,” he said on Sunday. “I’m looking forward to being able to participate in the debates, but this is not something that I ever expected to just snap fingers and, all of a sudden, you win seven months before anything happens.”
And his fundraising efforts suggest that he has plenty of support.
The DeSantis campaign announced that $20 million has been raised in the second fundraising quarter that ended June 30, this being the first six weeks after he announced his run for president.
The total surpassed Trump’s $18.8 million taken in during the first quarter of the year, with Team DeSantis saying the haul was “the largest first-quarter filing from any non-incumbent Republican candidate in more than a decade.”
DeSantis campaign manager Generra Peck acknowledged that the fight “will be long” in commenting on the fundraising.
“We are grateful for the investment so many Americans have made to get this country back on track,” she said in a statement. “The fight to save it will be long and challenging, but we have built an operation to share the governor’s message and mobilize the millions of people who support it. We are ready to win.”
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Tom Tillison grew up in Maryland before moving to Central Florida as a young teen. It is in the Sunshine State that he honed both his passion for politics and his writing skills. Tillison also contributes to BizPac Review.
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