The News Caravan

Tag: DeSantis

  • With DeSantis running, foreign governments eye people in his orbit

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    For Qatar, Rubin’s firm helped facilitate meetings with government officials and provide PR assistance, first representing them in 2021. The firm also subcontracts out work to a progressive Florida-based communications firm, Edge Communications. The decision to renew the contract with Rubin, Turnbull and Associates gave the Middle Eastern nation continued access to one of the Republican Party’s most powerful and ascendant officials. Under the contract, which was filed with the Department of Justice, Rubin’s firm, which also counts a former DeSantis staffer among its ranks, is charged with government relations, communications, and public affairs “to advance the mutual interests of Florida and the State of Qatar.”

    Rubin, whose clients include the cruise company Carnival (Florida had sued the CDC over rules for cruises), Google, and Southwest Airlines, did not return a request for comment. He’s been an established figure of the state’s GOP politics, having been a longtime friend and adviser to Florida Sen. Rick Scott. Rubin and his wife also served as co-chairs of DeSantis’ first gubernatorial inauguration in 2019. Beyond Rubin, Heather Turnbull, the managing partner at Rubin, Turnbull and Associates, also served on the inaugural host committee.

    Foreign governments — like businesses or advocacy groups — have long turned to well-connected operatives and advisers as a way to push their interests before the government. Now, as the Florida governor emerges as the most viable GOP presidential alternative to former President Donald Trump, foreign entities are maneuvering to make sure that they had a line into his camp.

    While in Congress, DeSantis was an outspoken critic of Qatar, signing onto an inquiry regarding enforcement of Qatari-owned Al Jazeera under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. He also wrote on Twitter that he pressed the Qatari ambassador to the U.S. about the country’s “support for Iran and for the Muslim Brotherhood.”

    In a statement, Qatar’s embassy maintained that the renewal of Rubin’s contract was simply a routine administrative matter and the timing was unrelated to the DeSantis presidential announcement or “any other political considerations.”

    “The Embassy works with advisors in many parts of the United States as part of its diplomatic outreach mission,” the spokesperson, Ali Al-Ansari, said in an email. “Qatar’s principal interests in Florida involve expansion of bilateral trade and investment. Rubin, Turnbull assists the Embassy in promoting those interests.”

    A spokesperson for DeSantis did not return requests for comment.

    On April 12, the government of Japan inked a deal with the firm of Brian Ballard, a Florida lobbyist considered part of DeSantis’ inner circle. Ballard served as a co-chair of DeSantis’ inauguration earlier this year. His firm also represents Liberia, Guatemala, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (and represented Qatar years ago).

    Less than two weeks later, DeSantis and his wife Casey DeSantis visited Japan, where he met with Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi and Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. Japan’s Foreign Ministry released its own statements touting the visit.

    In an interview, Ballard maintained that his work for Japan is bipartisan and for both Florida and Washington. He noted that DeSantis’ trip was already scheduled when his firm was brought on. However, a partner at the firm, Adrian Lukis, who served as DeSantis’ chief of staff, joined DeSantis on the trade mission, Ballard said. Lukis is a registered agent of Japan.

    Ballard did not recall any government inquiring about DeSantis and said his firm recently interviewed with a “large country” that did not ask about DeSantis in the hiring process (he declined to name the country). But, Ballard conceded, there could be more business opportunities to come when a Republican nominee emerges.

    “When there’s nominees in place, it probably is a very smart thing for forward thinking governments to do,” he said of foreign administrations hiring lobbyists to help them understand candidates for office.

    Ballard has been through this cycle before. He began lobbying Washington at the beginning of Trump’s presidency, cashing in on his connections to Trump, who had few formal Washington ties or former staff who had spread out among the K Street crowd.

    Ballard was among a small number of Trump-connected lobbyists who saw a boost in business years ago at the dawn of his presidency. After President Joe Biden won office in 2020, it fueled a similar rush of hirings. In fact, theGROUP DC — the firm where Joe Biden’s former director of legislative affairs Sudafi Henry is managing partner — registered to represent the Embassy of Japan in April, just days before the president announced his reelection campaign.

    Guardrails exist to prevent foreign interference in U.S. elections, including a ban on foreign nationals giving to campaigns. The Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, compels lobbyists for foreign governments to make some of the details of their work public. Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort pleaded guilty for failing to register his work for the Ukrainian government under FARA, but he was ultimately pardoned by Trump.

    More recently, the presidential campaign of Republican entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy employed consultants of the Saudi-funded LIV Golf. The campaign terminated those consultants after they filed as foreign agents.

    The DeSantis orbit includes individuals who had previously worked on behalf of foreign entities but have, they said, since given up those clients.

    Among those on that list is David Reaboi, a conservative personality who DeSantis’ team actively tried to recruit into his corner. His team hosted Reaboi and other influencers for an excursion that stopped at the governor’s office and mansion last year.

    Reaboi has been registered as an agent of the Hungarian embassy since 2020. More recently, he has become a prolific pro-DeSantis commentator. However, he maintained to POLITICO that he has not done any work for Hungary since 2021, and even when he traveled to the country for CPAC about a year and a half ago, he had no contacts with government officials. Reaboi said he did not realize he had to file with the Department of Justice to terminate the relationship but he would do so.

    Although she no longer represents the client, last year, DeSantis’ rapid response director Christina Pushaw back-registered as an agent of a Georgian and Ukrainian politician — Mikheil Saakashvili — for work between 2018 and 2020. Pushaw did so after being contacted by the Justice Department.



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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • We Investigated the Deepest, Darkest Corners of the Internet to Understand Ron DeSantis’ Bizarre New Video

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    For the most part, this irony-laden variety of homophobia remains a relatively fringe position on the online right. But its prominence in DeSantis’ latest campaign video suggests that it could be seeping into the conservative mainstream, and that might pay dividends among a group of Republican voters. “After all, [DeSantis’s backers] are seeking out the Trump voter,” said Daniel Adleman, an assistant professor of writing and rhetoric at the University of Toronto who was written about the overlap between pop-culture and far-right ideologies. “They are trying to demonstrate that DeSantis doesn’t just talk the talk, but he walks the walk — that Trump is all full of lip service, but that DeSantis is the one who makes good on quasi-Trumpian promises.”

    To help piece it all together, here’s your definitive guide to the memes and images from DeSantis’ recent video. This might be the first time you’re encountering them, but it likely won’t be the last if you pay close attention on Twitter, Threads, or whatever social new social media platform launches next week.

    GigaChad

    This meme, depicting a chiseled bodybuilder with a massive chin and a manicured beard, is a staple of discourse in the manosphere. Often referred to as “GigaChad,” the name borrows from the popular internal slang word “chad,” which is used refer to a stereotypical alpha male. The origin of the meme is shrouded in mystery — it’s rumored to have been taken from a series of photoshopped images of bodybuilders taken by a Russian photographer — but it first made its way online in 2017, when a version of the image was posted to the popular message board 4chan. The post introducing the meme defined GigaChad as, “The perfect human specimen destined to lead us against the reptilians” — a nod to a fringe conspiracy theory that posits that the world is run by humanoid reptiles.

    Since its introduction, though, the meme has come to symbolize an ideal male form that, according to certain strains of thinking on the right, is being wiped out by the alleged feminization of American culture and media. Consider it the manosphere’s statue of David.

    Patrick Bateman

    You may recognize him from the 2000 film American Psycho — based on the 1991 novel by Bret Easton Ellis — but Christian Bale’s character has taken on a whole new life in the manosphere. In the movie, Bateman is a chauvinistic and status-obsessed Wall Street banker who — spoiler alert — may (or may not) lead a secret life as a serial killer and cannibal. (The movie leaves open the possibility that Bateman’s murderous activities are part of an elaborate, delusional fantasy.) Ironically, Bateman idolizes Donald Trump, a symbol of New York’s well-heeled nouveau riche during the 1980s.

    Online, Bateman and other erstwhile Wall Street icons such as The Wolf of Wall Street’s Jordan Belfort (who also makes a brief appearance in the DeSantis video) have come to symbolize the set of hypermasculine virtues the manosphere is propagating. “If you’re a superficial reader of Patrick Bateman, he represents an avatar of the Reagan era, self-asserting, shameless, impudent man who’s able to make the best possible use of neoliberalism as it existed in the 1980s and, by extension, as it exists now,” Adleman said. “I could see that might be appealing to the alt-right, 4chan crowd in this post-Trumpian era.”

    Yes Chad

    Giga is not the only Chad popular among this crowd. In mid-2019, an image of a cartoon figure with blonde hair, blue eyes and a thick blonde beard started making its way around Twitter and other online message boards. The illustration was captioned was a single word: “Yes.” Since then, the image has become the template for a universe of memes known as “Yes Chad,” featuring illustration of men — yes, always men — who project an air of masculine authority and steely male confidence. (Sometimes, the meme is paired with an illustration of a blonde woman in a blue dress, symbolizing the so-called “trad wife.”) The meme also carries some not-so-subtle racist undertones, as it depicts the ideal man as an Aryan archetype.

    In the video, meanwhile, a cartoon of DeSantis in the style of the “Yes Chad” flashes in between a clip of the governor giving a speech and a scene of him walking with his coterie. What, exactly, DeSantis is saying “Yes” to is left up to the viewer to decode.

    Thomas Shelby

    The fictional protagonist of the British television drama Peaky Blinders, Tommy Shelby —portrayed by Cillian Murphy — is the leader of a crime gang who evades the law and rival gangs in post-World War I England to expand his criminal empire. But online, Murphy’s character has become associated with the trope of the “sigma male,” a type of man who — in contrast to the stereotypical “alpha male,” who sits atop a social hierarchy — has transcended societal norms to play by his own set of rules. A quick Google search turns up pages of YouTube videos with titles like “12 Reasons why THOMAS SHELBY Is The Ultimate SIGMA MALE.” (In a statement released Wednesday, the team behind Peaky Blinders disowned any association with the DeSantis ad.)

    Presumably, the comparison between Shelby and DeSantis is intended to highlight the latter’s willingness to play dirty and buck conservative convention — like, for instance, fighting with Disney or sending planes of migrants to Martha’s Vineyard and California.

    Bodybuilders

    “I’m going to leave aside the strangeness of trying to prove your manhood by putting up a video that splices images of you in between oiled-up, shirtless bodybuilders,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said last weekend when asked about DeSantis’ video — apparently referring to several shots of slick-looking male bodybuilders flexing their bulging muscles. But in certain corners of the online right where the popularity of bodybuilding is on the rise, it’s not strange at all. For one possible explanation of this trend, look no further than Tucker Carlson’s much-discussed documentary The End of Men, which advanced the argument that the destruction of men’s bodies through poor nutrition and poor exercise habits is part of a broader globalist plot to take over the world. Understood in this context, rebuilding a man’s physique isn’t just good for his health — it’s also a critical first step toward overthrowing the power of the corrupt global elite.

    DeSantis has not revealed whether weightlifting is a major part of his recent weight-loss efforts, but on the campaign trail he has certainly has leaned into the anti-elite rhetoric that’s tied up with the bodybuilding fad.

    Achilles


    Is that Brad Pitt staring out from behind that bronze helmet? Yes, yes, it is. As film buffs and mythology nerds will know, Pitt portrayed the ancient Greek hero Achilles in the 2004 movie Troy, based on Homer’s epic poem the Iliad. As in the Iliad, Pitt’s Achilles emerges as the hero of the film, bursting onto the battlefield toward the end of the conflict to revenge the death of his comrade Patroclus at the hands of the Trojan hero Hector.

    As many commentators online have pointed out, there a poignant irony to the fact that a video targeting LGBTQ people included an image of Achilles, given that many scholars have interpreted Achilles’ friendship with Patroclus as a type of homosexual relationship. But the valorization of Achilles fits neatly within a broader far-right obsession with ancient Rome and Greece, which some conservatives hold up as the cradle of “Western civilization.” Ever heard of “Bronze Age Mindset”? We bet the creators of this video have.



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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Trump world to donors: A dollar to DeSantis may as well be a donation to Biden

    Trump world to donors: A dollar to DeSantis may as well be a donation to Biden

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    The memo was sent hours before a New York court delivered a verdict finding that Trump was guilty of sexual abuse of advice columnist E. Jean Carroll and awarding her $5 million in damages for that and defamation.

    Budowich’s memo is, to a degree, a classic boast of a campaign that finds itself in a leading position. He describes Trump as “thoroughly vetted on a national stage” and portrays the legal troubles surrounding the ex-president as fundamentally good for him. “GOP voters aren’t just supporting President Trump overwhelmingly despite the investigations, they are supporting him because of the investigations,” he writes. He also writes that the argument Trump is “not electable” doesn’t hold water with recent polling.

    But the memo is also notable in another respect: underscoring that Team Trump isn’t content to rest on its current lead but eager to keep attacking its main competitors. The memo bashes DeSantis’ Florida legislative session as a “bucket of cold water” for the governor.

    “On top of losing major financial backers and cratering poll numbers, the most memorable part of his legislative session is that he picked a fight with Disney and lost,” Budowich writes. “DeSantis invested tremendous political capital to pass a 6-week abortion ban — in contrast, President Trump maintains a strong pro-life record with exceptions for rape and incest.”

    The memo comes as DeSantis inches closer to making a presidential announcement and as Trump’s team is going after high dollar donors for support — some of whom have publicly wobbled on support for DeSantis or have put their donations on ice until they have a more clear picture of the field. The latest sign that the Florida governor plans to announce soon: DeSantis recently severed ties with his state-level PAC, which has a whopping $86 million, opening the door for that money to be transferred to a pro-DeSantis super PAC supporting his presidential ambitions.

    Last month, Never Back Down, the pro-DeSantis PAC, said it had raised $30 million. The PAC also plans to have staff in the first 18 states on the Republican nominating calendar, according to the AP.

    “While Governor DeSantis tallied up an impressive number of wins for the people of Florida this legislative session, Donald Trump offers the same old, pathetic attacks right out of Nancy Pelosi’s playbook to attempt to diminish the Governor’s conservative success story,” said Erin Perrine, the communications director for Never Back Down in a statement. “Donald Trump blamed the pro-life movement for his endorsed candidates’ losses in the 2022 midterm elections, and states like Trump’s real home, New York, have legalized infanticide up until birth. In Florida, Governor DeSantis has enacted historic measures to defend the dignity of human life and transform Florida into a pro-family state,” she added.

    At the end of 2022, MAGA Inc. reported $54.1 million on hand, and the PAC has spent millions on national cable ads taking direct aim at DeSantis’ record on Medicare and Social Security. The PAC also paid for an eyebrow raising ad that accused DeSantis of “sticking his fingers where they don’t belong” into entitlements. The ad was also a reference to a story about DeSantis using his fingers to eat chocolate pudding on an airplane.

    The MAGA Inc. memo, according to a PAC official, was being circulated on an individual basis Tuesday “to current, past, and targeted donors to MAGA Inc. and like-minded committees” as it “makes a strong push for unity as it looks towards the end for the quarter.”

    After a disappointing midterm election for Republicans, where some important primary races were split over Trump’s endorsement and involvement, the memo calls on donors to rally around one singular Republican candidate to best help 2024 down ballot candidates.

    “The 2024 cycle presents a promising opportunity for Republicans to realize massive gains in the U.S. Senate, House of Representatives, and down ballot races across the nation. Unifying early and focusing our collective resources towards maximizing our gains can be the difference maker,” Budowich writes.

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • DeSantis takes major step ahead of expected presidential bid

    DeSantis takes major step ahead of expected presidential bid

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    The website for the committee was changed on Tuesday morning to say that its mission is “committed to advancing the Freedom Agenda and keeping Florida free.” But more importantly, the website was changed to say that the committee is associated with state Sen. Blaise Ingoglia and not DeSantis. The committee on Tuesday also filed paperwork that said Ingoglia replaced a Tampa accountant as the official chair of the organization.

    Ingoglia is a Republican ally of DeSantis who sponsored several of the governor’s key legislative priorities during the recently concluded legislative session, including a crackdown on illegal immigration that includes $12 million for the governor’s controversial migrant relocation program.

    A spokesperson with DeSantis’ political operation did not comment on the shift and Ingoglia did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    DeSantis first set up his committee back in 2018 and he used it to raise a record amount of money for his re-election campaign last year as he pulled in donations from many major Republican donors. Current campaign finance records show that the committee has nearly $86 million in the bank.

    But DeSantis cannot use money raised for Friends of Ron DeSantis in a federal race because state law does not limit how much someone can give to the political committee or the source of the donations. But that money could be shifted to a super PAC that backs DeSantis if the governor is no longer connected to the political committee. While some have questioned the legality of such a move, the Federal Elections Commission deadlocked over a similar strategy that was used by Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.).

    Ingoglia did not respond to a question about whether or not the political committee will shift money to a super PAC helping the governor’s bid for the White House.

    This step comes as DeSantis ratchets up plans to start stumping for his White House bid.

    After concluding a frenzied legislative session last week, the governor flew to the battleground state of Wisconsin — which former President Donald Trump won in 2016 and lost four years later — to make an appeal to the Marathon County GOP. On Saturday, he plans to hit the early voting state of Iowa to attend Rep. Randy Feenstra’s annual picnic. And next month he will head to Nevada, another early voting state, to headline an annual Basque fry event.

    In the meantime, he has been hosting dinners with financial supporters at his official residence in Tallahassee, and trying to assure them he could win critical states like Georgia and Arizona, according to someone with knowledge who was granted anonymity to share details of the private discussions. And he recently dined with Evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats, who runs the conservative Family Leader in Iowa.

    He has also been fine-tuning his stump speech as he goes on the road — seeking to bolster his arguments against President Joe Biden while figuring out a way to differentiate himself from Trump without alienating the ex-president’s loyal base.

    “Joe Biden has done more to damage this country in two and a half years than any president in our lifetime,” he said during his speech in Wisconsin.

    But DeSantis avoided any mention of Trump — instead highlighting his own electoral success in Florida in an attempt to underscore the weak performance by candidates tied to the ex-president, a frustration for many Republicans. He previewed a few other potential attack lines against his chief primary rival, calling out Trump’s former top Covid-19 advisor, Anthony Fauci, whose early pandemic guidance DeSantis proudly bucked.

    But in a recent Newsmax interview, DeSantis directly responded to Trump’s attacks on the governor’s past support of cuts to Medicare.

    “Those are Democrat attacks. I don’t think anyone really buys that,” DeSantis said about ads Trump’s PAC is running. “Donald Trump himself wrote a book where he was talking about the need to increase the age of eligibility for Social Security to 70 and said people shouldn’t be worried about retiring, just keep working.”

    Polling consistently shows DeSantis trailing Trump in the primary but competing well in a head-to-head contest with Biden.



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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • The Trendlines DeSantis Doesn’t Want to See

    The Trendlines DeSantis Doesn’t Want to See

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    But a lot has happened since then. Trump sharpened his attacks against DeSantis, who has largely declined to respond before formally jumping into the race. Perhaps most important, the former president was indicted by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg over his hush money payment to a porn star. The response to the indictment from rank-and-file GOP voters, according to recent polls, was a substantial improvement in Trump’s standing, with many Republicans rallying around Trump after the indictment.

    Would grassroots leaders active within the party move in the same way as other GOP voters, or were they more inured to the news cycle and take a different view of Trump’s legal challenges? The short answer: They moved, with DeSantis support softening and Trump a beneficiary.

    My survey of GOP county chairs is part of an effort to track the “invisible primary” for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination — the action that takes place before the first ballots are cast and which will do much to determine the eventual winner. County chairs are figures who will play a key role in shaping the race. They are highly attentive to the party’s internal dynamics and are influential in local GOP circles; they offer the kind of endorsements that candidates are eager to collect.

    As director of the Center on American Politics at the University of Denver, I sent this survey to roughly 3,000 GOP chairs, for every county in the country. This survey was collected in the first few weeks of April, with 127 Republican chairs responding (a smaller number than the 187 who previously responded).

    The first question I asked was simply whether the chairs had committed to supporting a candidate, and if so, whom that might be.

    The proportion of undecided remained at about half of the sample. However, Trump’s position has improved considerably, going from 16 to 24 percent among chairs who chose a candidate, while DeSantis has dropped from 18 to 13 percent. Support for other candidates has also declined, from 14 to 10 percent.

    One Trump backer surveyed underscored Trump’s lingering hold on the party. “He not only kept his promises, he exceeded them,” said Patrick Berry, chair of the Cleveland County Republican Party in Arkansas. “He obviously loves this country and was the best president in my lifetime, rivaling even Ronald Reagan.”

    I then asked another question to gauge potential candidate support: Which candidates are county chairs considering for the presidency? Here, DeSantis still showed some considerable strengths, with 67 percent of chairs saying they’re open to a DeSantis nomination. However, that does signal a slight softening in support; DeSantis was at 73 percent in the last survey. Moreover, Trump is now at 51 percent, up from 43 percent.

    DeSantis still has more county chairs interested in him than in Trump, but his advantage has narrowed considerably. Nikki Haley’s numbers have also dropped slightly, as have Mike Pompeo’s (who dropped out recently). Some candidates and potential contenders who were not included in the previous survey (entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem) have modest levels of support.

    Finally, I asked the chairs whom they do not want to see as their presidential nominee. As in the last survey, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie led the pack, with former Vice President Mike Pence close behind. Both of their negative numbers have grown slightly; interestingly, Christie in particular has begun to step up his criticism of Trump as he’s tested the waters.

    Now in third place for this dubious honor is former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who recently announced his candidacy and positioned himself as the one candidate who wants Trump to drop out of the race due to his legal travails. Some of the newer candidacies, specifically Ramaswamy and Sununu, start off with around a third of party chairs hostile to them. Only Trump has seen the share of county chairs opposed to him drop significantly, going from 39 to 29.5 percent.

    It must be noted that the sample of chairs who answered this survey are not precisely the same ones who answered the February one. In total, 63 chairs answered both surveys. That’s not a huge number, but their patterns of candidate support are telling. Some chairs maintained their commitments while others shifted to other presidential candidates.

    DeSantis’ support, notably, has broken apart, as this figure makes clear. Only four of the eleven chairs who were backing him in February were still with him in April; three went to Trump and other candidates, and the rest became undecided. Trump, meanwhile, lost no backers and actually gained some from other candidates.

    Overall, this survey suggests a group of party insiders that hasn’t made up its mind, but is growing more inclined to back Trump. We’ll learn more in the next wave of surveys whether this trend continues.

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • ‘Really weak option’: Wall Street sours on DeSantis as Trump challenger

    ‘Really weak option’: Wall Street sours on DeSantis as Trump challenger

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    “People will change horses,” said Dave Carney, a veteran Republican strategist for both former Bush presidents. “You may get really excited about somebody and then all of a sudden realize, ‘Eh, not really my cup of tea.’”

    Where Wall Street puts its money matters because financial industry executives are among the biggest donors in presidential elections. And while bankers and asset managers generally favor lower taxes and lighter-touch regulation, they also value stability and experience — and they spread their money around to candidates of both parties, meaning they’re very much in play in each cycle.

    On paper, that should give DeSantis an advantage. People close to Wall Street donors said his national profile and powerhouse fundraising operation that has included support from hedge fund titans like Ken Griffin and Jeff Yass had positioned him as most able to survive a primary with former President Donald Trump.

    DeSantis’ gubernatorial reelection campaign is still loaded with cash, giving him big advantages over possible competitors. But many now say he no longer seems so formidable — at least on Wall Street.

    His escalation of a feud with the Walt Disney Co. over its opposition to what critics called the “don’t say gay” law has made for a rocky rollout to an expected presidential campaign announcement in the coming weeks. On April 26, the company announced it was suing DeSantis, saying he violated its First Amendment rights — which will force him to do battle with one of his state’s largest employers in federal court.

    It was “‘wait and see,’ and this is why,” said an adviser to one top GOP donor in New York, who like others interviewed for this story was granted anonymity to avoid alienating candidates. “We’re not the only ones who are happy with our decision to wait and see.”

    With Trump surging in the polls following his indictment on criminal charges stemming from alleged hush money payments, one executive at a New York bank said confidence in DeSantis’s ability to win is flagging.

    “DeSantis is certainly a better option than Trump at this point,” the executive said. “But he’s a really weak option.”

    The executive said many are growing resigned to the possibility of a general election rematch between Trump and President Joe Biden.

    “What we probably wind up with is a choice between a guy who is very old and wants to raise our taxes and reregulate everything, and a guy who could be running from prison,” the executive said.

    In the meantime, any hesitation about DeSantis’s viability could be good news for Republicans who have tried to carve out space as business-friendly alternatives to Trump. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and Sen. Tim Scott — another South Carolina Republican who has launched an exploratory committee — have started lining their war chests with checks from major investors, according to campaign filings released in April.

    During the first quarter, Haley raised about $8.3 million across her campaign, joint fundraising committee and leadership PAC. Scott, the ranking member on the Senate Banking Committee, raised $1.6 million and had $21.9 million on hand through his Senate committee, according to POLITICO’s analysis of his FEC filings. Those funds can easily be transferred to a presidential committee should he formally announce.

    Scott is a fixture in New York, turning up for meetings at various big banks, and is beginning to draw backers at firms like Goldman Sachs. Bankers say they appreciate both his personal narrative — rising from humble beginnings — and his positive message about the power of American capitalism.

    Still, Scott and Haley’s fundraising totals remain modest compared to those of DeSantis-aligned groups — one state-level committee, Friends of Ron DeSantis, has more than $85 million on hand.

    For many Republicans on Wall Street, “there’s a lot of concern about whether Trump will consolidate support in the polls,” said Ken Spain, a partner at Narrative Strategies who advises investment firms. “Then the concern becomes: Does that freeze money in the investor class? Do people sit on the sidelines if they think the chance of defeating Trump in a primary is diminishing?”

    Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), who leads the House Financial Services Committee, said in an interview at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills this week that the Trump campaign’s tactics over the next two months will be “well-organized, calculated, surgical.”

    “This reminds me a lot of ’16 where everybody’s trying to figure out alternatives to Trump,” he said.

    Those dynamics won’t make things any easier for DeSantis, who’s been catching flak over everything from the Disney fracas — a “self-inflicted wound,” one financial industry power broker said — to his arms-length relationship with key donors and GOP allies in Florida.

    “I call my donors. I call my supporters. And that’s been an issue that people have complained about with him,” said Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, a Republican who has flirted with a 2024 bid.

    But Scott, Haley, former Vice President Mike Pence and other potential GOP nominees face their own challenges. While DeSantis has shown he can win big in a swing state, other nominees have won in Republican strongholds. Many also lack national name recognition that would put them within striking distance of Trump or DeSantis.

    “Scott is pretty fantastic, and if he can perform the way I think he can he has a real chance,” said one senior banker who is trying to organize support for him. “But it’s obviously a big hill to climb.”

    DeSantis allies are taking comfort in the difficulties other candidates could have in breaking through. While there’s “some hesitancy from the Wall Street Journal class,” the Florida governor’s resources should be enough to sustain any surge from non-Trump competitors, said Jason Thomas, a Republican strategist who runs a pro-DeSantis Super PAC.

    Even though DeSantis has shown a willingness to wage public battles against big businesses — hardly typical of what Thomas labeled a Country Club Republican platform — Thomas said he expects financial services donors to “eventually come home when DeSantis recaptures his first-place position in the nomination process or is the nominee.”

    The first executive at the large New York bank said Wall Street would love a candidate like former House Speaker Paul Ryan “or a younger Mitt Romney.”

    But they acknowledged that Trump would likely obliterate any candidate from the increasingly small centrist segment of the GOP.

    “We all saw what happened to Jeb Bush, who everybody up here loved,” the executive said of Wall Street donors who flocked to the former Florida governor’s 2016 campaign. “He got crushed and crushed quickly, and that would just happen again.”

    DeSantis could face another problem even if he does win substantial financial industry backing: Executives say they worry that raising money or donating to his campaign would give Trump the chance to brandish him as a Wall Street lackey.

    “We know everyone hates us and that nobody running for president wants to be seen as the ‘Wall Street candidate,’” the first executive said. “So you’ll probably see a lot of people just sitting this one out.”

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    #weak #option #Wall #Street #sours #DeSantis #Trump #challenger
    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • ‘The DeSantis people are rookies’: Even Trump critics say he’s running circles around DeSantis

    ‘The DeSantis people are rookies’: Even Trump critics say he’s running circles around DeSantis

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    By comparison, he said, “the DeSantis people are rookies.”

    Trump’s onslaught has been disorienting for the nascent DeSantis operation. The Florida governor, who’s expected to announce his candidacy in the coming weeks, plans to make the case that he will counter Trump’s circus with a sense of normalcy that positions him to do what many Republicans fear Trump cannot: Defeat President Joe Biden. But that argument is running head first into the tidy — and muscular — organization the former president is putting together.

    In recent weeks, Trump’s team has worked to bank wins before DeSantis officially enters the race. They have rolled out policy videos focused on a second Trump term and made hires in early voting states. They have developed relationships with state party leaders, met with lawmakers at Mar-a-lago and worked the phones to steal endorsements from DeSantis in his home state. Trump is even doing a town hall event with CNN, a former cable news foe of the ex-president, in an effort to reach more mainstream audiences. Now DeSantis — a politician who places a high premium on control – will be forced to catch up.

    “This is a campaign run by adults who have excelled at the ‘crib kill’ strategy,” said Michael Caputo, a friend and longtime adviser to Trump, on how the campaign is targeting DeSantis by nailing down endorsements before DeSantis gets into the race. “Trump hasn’t done it before. He absolutely eschewed the congressional endorsements in 2016 and his campaign turned their nose up at it. It’s a completely different world.”

    The change in that dynamic, people close to the campaign say, is due in part to Trump’s own knowledge of how the presidential campaign process works. This is, after all, his third time running. But it is also the product of a team of advisers who have had worked with Trump or on Trump-adjacent operations for years, including Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, as well as Brian Jack, who served as Trump’s political director in the White House.

    Those advisers and others on his team have kept a low profile as they have worked behind the scenes to build out support in Congress, plan state visits and political events, put county-level operations in place, and tend to state party leaders who go on to become influential delegates. State-level GOP officials from places like Nevada and Louisiana have made visits to Mar-a-lago for fundraisers and other events, where Trump has made time to talk to them and follow through with any personal requests they have, like signing hats to auction off at home.

    The dueling politicians’ strategies were described in interviews with over a dozen Republicans working for Trump, DeSantis, or in 2024 presidential politics.

    Their focus on early blocking and tackling paid off when a majority of the Florida congressional delegation announced Trump endorsements just as DeSantis was visiting Washington, D.C. last month. Lawmakers said Trump had personally called and reached out. Some had only heard from a pollster for DeSantis, or revealed they had no relationship with their own state governor at all.

    “The challenge that DeSantis and others face is that Donald Trump has a several years head start on this, they’ve continued to foster a significant organization across states that will make it difficult for later entrants who haven’t built that same infrastructure,” said a Republican strategist who has been in contact with almost every Republican presidential campaign. DeSantis, he said, “has a ton of money and not much organization.”

    But, he added, it’s too soon for DeSantis supporters to panic. While some donors are beginning to worry that the Florida governor can’t beat Trump, those in his tightly-controlled orbit are expressing a mix of confidence in his standing as the lead alternative to Trump and hope that the ex-president’s legal troubles and recent election losses puncture his early dominance.

    “Coming off of an historical re-election victory, DeSantis has the most robust political apparatus with national reach that no one is aware of,” said one person with close ties to the Florida governor, who was granted anonymity to speak freely before the campaign launches. “If he decides to run, there is no ramp up. The machine is built, full of rocket fuel and ready to launch.”

    That machine begins with a deep budget, huge fundraising potential and a team of loyalists hiring staff in critical nominating states.

    Never Back Down, a super PAC formed by ex-Trump staffer Ken Cuccinelli, has raised $33 million so far to support DeSantis’ pending campaign, according to a representative for the group, who was granted anonymity to speak about the fundraising ahead of an official filing in July. In addition, the $85 million war chest DeSantis built up during his gubernatorial campaign can likely be transferred into a PAC supporting his presidential bid — giving him an enormous financial advantage heading into the election.

    “The energy our team is seeing for Ron DeSantis from Iowa to South Carolina day in and day out continues to build, and we are leveraging all the tools at our disposal to expand this momentum and, ultimately, get Ron DeSantis elected to the White House,” PAC spokesperson Erin Perrine said in a prepared statement.

    After Trump announced a slate of congressional endorsements from DeSantis’ home state of Florida, Never Back Down rolled out the backing of 19 state lawmakers from Michigan.

    “This is spring ball right now. The campaign will kick off shortly and then people will start putting points on the board,” said one Florida-based political operative who supports DeSantis but would only speak on the condition of anonymity since he is not yet an announced candidate.

    The PAC, which has reportedly received $20 million from real estate mogul Robert Bigelow, has been running ads in four early voting states touting DeSantis’ blue-collar roots and conservative record.

    The entity has hired operatives in Iowa, South Carolina, New Hampshire and Nevada and is staffing up its Atlanta-based senior team, including former Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt. It also recently launched “Students for DeSantis,” which mobilizes college students to phonebank and canvas for the campaign.

    Election law prohibits coordination between PACs and campaigns, but Never Back Down has thus far been serving as the vehicle to promote DeSantis ahead of his launch.

    “They’re going to use the super PAC as the ground game operation,” said someone else close to the DeSantis team, who was granted anonymity to speak openly about strategy. “The campaign is going to be basically in charge of TV messaging, the candidate’s scheduling and time. Paid media is going to be the campaign and grassroots operation is going to be the Super PAC.”

    Meanwhile the governor — who returned this week from an overseas trip intended to bolster his foreign policy chops — is planning to host a dinner at his official residence in Tallahassee next week with fundraisers, according to two people familiar with the event.

    Nevertheless, one political strategist working on Trump’s re-election effort said they have an inherent advantage in not having to spend millions simply introducing the public to the ex-president.

    “Donald Trump is Donald Trump. We don’t have to spend a single dollar telling people why you should vote for him,” said the strategist, who was granted anonymity to discuss this stage of the race freely. “All we need to do is beat the shit out of DeSantis. So their money has to do a whole lot of different things: their super PAC has to build a ground game, tell who he is, and tell people why they shouldn’t vote for Trump.”

    The pro-Trump Make America Great Again super PAC has spent millions over the past five weeks on advertising that targets DeSantis’ record on Social Security and Medicare.

    Meanwhile the Trump campaign has worked on staffing in early primary states like New Hampshire. Trump’s campaign was the first to announce any hires in New Hampshire in late January when it brought on the former New Hampshire GOP chair Stephen Stepanek as a senior adviser focused on the state. In late March Trump brought on Trevor Naglieri, an alum of Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz’s presidential campaigns, as state director.

    Last week in Iowa, Trump announced the endorsements of 13 state legislators and former elected officials from eastern Iowa. A Trump adviser credited some of those endorsements to the work of Trump’s hires in the state, which includes Bobby Kaufmann, the son of the Iowa GOP chairman Jeff Kaufmann, Alex Latcham, who worked in the Trump White House, and state director Marshall Moreau.

    Trump’s campaign is also working on identifying potential donors or volunteers in states based on data they’ve compiled from events or from the previous two campaigns in the state. According to another Trump adviser, they have already identified 192,000 people in New Hampshire who have donated or signed up online to say they want to do something with the campaign, or attended rallies over the last six years.

    That’s not to say Trump won’t inject chaos into everything again. He has been discussing the possibility of not participating in upcoming Republican primary debates. But the overall operation’s discipline is now playing out in the polls. A CBS News/YouGov Poll released on Monday showed Trump with 58 percent of support from Republican primary voters, compared to DeSantis with 22 percent.

    “Definitely in the last couple of weeks there’s been a growing resignation to the likelihood that Trump may yet end up as the nominee again,” Cullen said.

    Lisa Kashinsky contributed to this report.



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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Florida Legislature: We delivered for DeSantis this session

    Florida Legislature: We delivered for DeSantis this session

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    britain us florida desantis 66303

    The fate of a “digital bill of rights” that was aimed at Big Tech companies is up in the air with just days left. And while the Senate and House have passed rival versions of a controversial bill to ban gender-affirming care to minors — another top priority that DeSantis highlighted in his state of the state speech — Republicans are at odds over some of the provisions in the bill, including a proposal to outlaw private insurance companies from covering treatments.

    The DeSantis administration did not respond to a request for comment on Sunday.

    DeSantis’ expected presidential bid has loomed over much of the legislative session, and Republicans for the most part fulfilled DeSantis’ agenda. The governor has already touted some of those policy wins both here and abroad, such as last week when, while on a visit to Israel, he signed into law a measure that cracks down on hate crimes.

    But Republican rivals and Democrats are already attacking some of these legislative achievements which are aimed at the conservative base but could turn off moderate Republicans. South Carolina GOP Rep. Nancy Mace, for example, publicly criticized DeSantis for signing a ban on abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, and billionaire GOP donor Thomas Peterffy told the Financial Times he was uncomfortable with the governor’s support for the abortion ban and wanted to wait before donating to him.

    But Florida Republicans still trumpeted the support they provided the governor.

    “Listen, I think we’ve delivered major, major victories on so many different fronts and the governor can rightly claim credit for having one of the biggest sessions certainly in Florida history,” Florida House Speaker Paul Renner said last week.

    Their support provides DeSantis a long-list of legislative victories to tout to GOP primary voters across the country as springboard into a likely presidential campaign in a few weeks.

    The list includes:

    — Making it easier to execute criminals in Florida

    — Banning abortion after six weeks of pregnancy

    — Imposing new rules on public sector unions aligned with Democrats, including banning the automatic deduction of union dues

    — Ending permit requirements to carry concealed weapons

    — Block children from attending adult-themed drag shows

    DeSantis has also highlighted, during recent out-of-state stops, Florida’s dramatic expansion of private school vouchers that lawmakers also approved this year. And on Friday, legislators sent a sweeping elections bill to him that would clear up Florida law to make sure he would not have to resign as governor if he becomes GOP nominee for president.

    Democrats, vastly outnumbered by the supermajority Republicans enjoy in the Legislature, have spent the entire session calling on Republicans to stand up to DeSantis instead of assisting his presumed bid for president.

    “This session was about the governor’s wish list,” said Rep. Fentrice Driskell, the House Democratic leader. “Effectively anything he wished for or dreamed for … the Legislature hustled to make it happen.”

    But Driskell contended that she’s not sure that the legislative wins will give DeSantis the “national boost’ he was aiming for. She said while some of the bills passed this year were “red meat” for the conservative base they have alienated some GOP donors and would be unpopular with general election voters in 2024.

    “We’re starting to see it backfire on him,” said Driskell.

    DeSantis’ success with the Legislature is also drawing the ire of former President Donald Trump, who is also vying for the GOP presidential nomination. Trump on Sunday sharply criticized the newly passed elections bill as a “total mess.”

    “I couldn’t care less if Ron DeSanctus runs, but the problem is the Bill he is about to sign, which allows him to run without resigning from being Governor, totally weakens Election Integrity in Florida,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform. “Instead of getting tough, and doing what the people want (same day voting, Voter ID, proof of Citizenship, paper ballots, hand count, etc.) this Bill guts everything … ”

    Yet DeSantis hasn’t just fared well in getting bills passed, but in a year when Florida has a hefty budget surplus, he also been highly successful in getting most of his budget recommendations pushed through including tens of millions for environmental projects, teacher pay, and the expansion of the fledgling Florida State Guard.

    Legislators have also crafted a big tax cut package modeled largely on what DeSantis wanted, although a push by the governor to give Floridians a year-long tax break on certain household goods was not picked up.

    “I think the governor has done very well, I think the Senate has done very well, I think the House has done very well,” maintained Rep. Tom Leek (R-Ormond Beach) and House budget chief when asked about the governor’s budget priorities.

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    #Florida #Legislature #delivered #DeSantis #session
    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Vivek Ramaswamy swipes at Ron DeSantis on Disney

    Vivek Ramaswamy swipes at Ron DeSantis on Disney

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    That exemption “undermines the credibility of his crusade,” Ramaswamy said.

    DeSantis’ battle with Disney began after the Florida Republicans’ passed a bill to limit discussion of sexual orientation and gender in schools, known colloquially as the “Don’t Say Gay” law.

    The Republican governor has ramped up his attacks on the company in the recent weeks, moving once again to strip Disney of its self-governing status (after earlier being outfoxed by Disney’s lawyers) and suggesting, apparently jokingly, that the state build a prison near the Florida theme park. Disney has sued, saying it is being discriminated against over political speech.

    Ramaswamy joins a growing list of Republicans who have criticized DeSantis’s crusade, including GOP front-runner Donald Trump, who said he Florida governor “is being absolutely destroyed by Disney.”

    On Saturday, President Joe Biden chimed in with his own dig at DeSantis’s Disney battle: “I had a lot of Ron DeSantis jokes ready, but Mickey Mouse beat the hell out of me and got to them first,” Biden quipped during his speech at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

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    #Vivek #Ramaswamy #swipes #Ron #DeSantis #Disney
    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • DeSantis allies go to war with an unlikely foe: Nikki Haley

    DeSantis allies go to war with an unlikely foe: Nikki Haley

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    election 2024 haley 07597

    The move suggested a shifting dynamic in the contest: With DeSantis falling further behind Trump in national and early-state surveys, his allied super PAC is trying to ensure that the primary remains a two-way race and that other candidates vying to be the Trump alternative do not gain traction.

    “This is the DeSantis team acknowledging that he is closer to the field than he is to President Trump,” said Justin Clark, a Republican strategist who was Trump’s 2020 deputy campaign manager but who isn’t involved in a 2024 presidential campaign.

    The pro-DeSantis PAC’s anti-Haley offensive came after the former South Carolina governor took a shot at DeSantis during an interview on Fox News for his heavy-handed approach toward Disney and suggested the theme park relocate several hours north to her home state. Shortly after, Never Back Down began running a digital ad featuring clips of Disney employees touting the company’s promotion of pro-LGBTQ themes, and concluding with a silhouette image of Haley holding hands with Mickey Mouse.

    It wasn’t a one-off, but part of a coordinated offensive. The group announced the spot would be included in a “six-figure” digital ad buy in South Carolina, a key early primary state. And it put out several tweets attacking Haley, including one saying she is “embracing woke corporations” and another with a poll asking if she should be nicknamed “Mickey Haley” or “Nikki Mouse.”

    “It’s a bad strategy to defend Woke Disney when they decided to defend the sexualization of children,” Erin Perrine, a spokesperson for Never Back Down, said in a statement, when asked about the group’s recent attacks on Haley. ”It’s mind-boggling [that] any Republican would side with a massive corporation that has an unprecedented level of self-governance over protecting children and families, but I guess 2023 is a strange time.”

    DeSantis’ allies may have no other choice than to go on the attack. While Trump has been the consistent polling leader, it’s DeSantis who has been taking fire from a number of would-be rivals, including former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, businessperson Vivek Ramaswamy and Haley.

    A pro-Haley super PAC, SFA Fund Inc., (an abbreviation for “Stand For America”) regularly sends out news roundups to reporters highlighting unflattering coverage about DeSantis, something the group doesn’t do for Trump or Haley’s other primary rivals.

    “Ron DeSantis’ No Good, Very Bad Week,” read the subject of one such email. “DeSantis’ Disastrous Journey to the Swamp,” read another.

    This week, the group created a video mocking DeSantis’ suggestion that he might open a state prison next to Disney World. And after her Fox interview about DeSantis, Haley joked that South Carolina conservatives are “not sanctimonious” about their values — a nod to Trump’s “DeSanctimonious” nickname for the Florida governor.

    DeSantis is comfortably in second place in most surveys, trailing Trump but well ahead of the other Republicans in the field. But in recent weeks, he has lost ground, with Trump picking up endorsements from several Republican Congress members in Florida and with some major donors expressing reservations about the Florida governor. Two recent polls of South Carolina GOP voters showed Trump far ahead of the pack and Haley only narrowly behind DeSantis. A survey conducted earlier this month by National Public Affairs, a Republican firm co-founded by Clark, found DeSantis at 21 percent, with Haley at 19 percent. A Winthrop University poll taken several weeks earlier showed similar results, with DeSantis at 20 percent and Haley at 18 percent.

    “The fact that Ron DeSantis is attacking her is not surprising,” said Mark Harris, a Republican consultant who is running the pro-Haley super PAC. “It’s a clear indication that he’s losing ground.”

    Nachama Soloveichik, a spokesperson for Haley, also took a swipe at DeSantis, contending that as governor Haley would have “avoided wasting taxpayer dollars on tit for tat battles.”

    The presence of Haley and others in the race presents a challenge for DeSantis, who must take steps to consolidate the support of voters who are looking for someone other than Trump. Any traction that rival candidates gain could detract from DeSantis’ effort to overtake the former president.

    The dynamic bears some similarities to the 2016 primary, when Trump prevailed over a splintered field of Republican rivals. The non-Trump candidates spent months relentlessly attacking one another while largely leaving Trump untouched. It ultimately paved the way for Trump to win the nomination.

    Because DeSantis is not yet an announced candidate, it has fallen on Never Back Down to take the lead in promoting him and attacking his prospective rivals. The organization — which has also aired ads attacking Trump — is expected to be among the most well-funded entities in the primary. It has announced that it has already raised $30 million, about two-thirds of which came from Nevada hotel executive Robert Bigelow.

    Some Republicans, however, have privately questioned the decision to go after Haley, arguing that in taking on a lower-polling rival, DeSantis appeared weak.

    “Attacking candidates with no votes does not have the upside of gaining votes,” said Curt Anderson, a veteran Republican strategist who is not involved in the primary.



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    #DeSantis #allies #war #foe #Nikki #Haley
    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )