Scott Powers
The political committee supporting Gov. Ron DeSantis is off and running, bringing in $5.1 million in March, its biggest haul since just before his 2018 election as Governor.
DeSantis has not yet opened an official campaign fund for a 2022 reelection run. Yet with Friends of Ron DeSantis recording a second-straight multimillion-dollar fundraising month in March, his election prospects already are sitting on more than $17 million.
March saw DeSantis appearing at a possible fundraising opportunity at former President Donald Trump‘s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach on March 19, though few checks were deposited on or around that date.
Friends of Ron DeSantis’ $5.1 million total haul for March was the committee’s best month yet outside the full-speed run-up to the 2018 election, when the committee reported collecting about $17 million just in October 2018.
While DeSantis might also be eying a 2024 presidential election campaign, his committee drew mainly from Florida interests in March. Roughly $4 million came from donors listing Florida addresses.
A St. Augustine medical practice chain called Island Doctors donated a quarter-million dollars to Friends of Ron DeSantis. So did Bernard Marcus of Atlanta, one of the co-founders of Home Depot. He gave an identical amount to the committee in 2018.
The committee also got two checks totaling $175,000 from the Florida Prosperity Fund of Tallahassee, $150,000 from Floridians United for Our Children’s Future, and $100,000 from Floridians for a Stronger Democracy in Tallahassee. All three of those political committees are chaired by Ryan Tyson, former Vice President of Political Operations for Associated Industries of Florida.
In addition to those, DeSantis’ committee received $100,000 checks from the Jamie B. Coulter Trust of Wichita, Kansas, First Coast Energy of Jacksonville, the auto dealership company JM Family Enterprises of Deerfield Beach, Junction City Mining Co. of Lake City, Alex Kleyner of New York, the Chris D. Peyerk Trust of Hillsboro Beach, Book Capital Enterprises of Fort Lauderdale, Ring Power Corp. of St. Augustine, the Vector Group of Miami, and Steven Witkoff of Miami Beach.
Friends of Ron DeSantis also collected an additional 28 checks of at least $50,000 apiece, and 52 more checks of at least $10,000 apiece in March.
The March haul followed $3.2 million that Friends of Ron DeSantis collected in February. That had been the committee’s biggest month, by far, since the 2018 election.
The committee ended February with just under $13 million in the bank. In March the committee only spent about $43,000 on consulting and credit card fees, according to its website. So Friends of Ron DeSantis should have entered April with about $17.7 million cash in hand.
