Even though national polling has former President Donald Trump trouncing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis by an average of 32 percentage points, it is being reported that DeSantis has crushed Trump in fundraising during the recently concluded Federal Election Commission (FEC) election cycle.
According to Fox News, Team DeSantis is claiming that they have raised a whopping $150 million between the presidential campaign and the Never Back Down Super PAC.
Since announcing back in May, DeSantis has raised $20 million while Never Back Down brought in $ 130 million.
DeSantis campaign stated that the haul "bests the $18.3 million former president and quasi-incumbent Donald Trump's campaign raised during his first two fundraising quarters as a candidate ($3.8 in Q4 2022 and $14.5 in Q1 2023)."
This is an unprecedented fundraising haul, but there is a catch.
Of the $130 million the Never Back Down PAC brought in, $82 million came from DeSantis’s Empower Parents PAC, a state-level political action committee to help his 2022 gubernatorial reelection.
The transfer of the $82 million has drawn criticism of DeSantis by Republican voters and supporters, many of which donated to his reelection efforts and are upset he decided to use the money raised for his gubernatorial campaign for his presidential campaign against President Trump.
Meanwhile, President Trump announced that his campaign and political action committee brought in a combined $35 million.
Now, $35 million is a pretty big haul but it’s dwarfed by DeSantis’s millions.
If DeSantis did not transfer over the $82 million, Never Back Down would have only reported raising $48 million.
Still, raising $48 million for a presidential campaign is impressive, and DeSantis will need to spend it all to convince as many Republican voters that he is a better choice than Trump.
Again, Trump is still way up in all the national polls and appears to be surging, while DeSantis seems to be declining a bit.
Never Back Down Spokesperson Steve Cortez was recently very candid about how far behind Trump DeSantis was.
“Right now in national polling we are way behind, I’ll be the first to admit that,” Cortes said on Twitter Spaces. “I believe in being blunt and honest. It’s an uphill battle but clearly Donald Trump is the runaway frontrunner.”
Cortes called the DeSantis campaign the “clear underdog,” he added. “In the first four states which matter tremendously, polls are a lot tighter, we are still clearly down. We’re down double digits, we have work to do.”
With a $150 million war chest at his disposal, DeSantis has plenty of time to increase his name recognition with early state voters. It’s way to early to dismiss DeSantis and crown Trump the 2024 Republican presidential nominee.
