DeSantis pushes finance envelope
There once was a Florida fundraising committee called Friends of Ron DeSantis, which was overflowing with the $142 million it had raised. DeSantis used it personally for his campaign to be reelected governor of Florida in 2022, but that was far more than he needed for that race, and when he was done he still had $86 million left over.
But one day that committee disappeared. In fact, it was May 15, just nine days before DeSantis announced that he was running for president. In paperwork filed that day, the committee changed its name to Empower Parents PAC and the governor’s name appears nowhere on the website’s homepage. And just as that filing was made, the super PAC that is supporting DeSantis’ presidential ambitions said that it would be getting more than $80 million in leftover money transferred from Empower Parents. That transfer represents a new frontier in the long-running battle to undermine presidential campaign finance laws. And it is only one example of the many ways in which DeSantis, in particular, has tried to make a mockery of those laws. If you want a preview of how DeSantis views the government’s limits on power and plutocracy — as feeble as they are already — there’s no better place to look than his campaign. There’s a reason that state political committees can’t just transfer their money into presidential super PACs. The Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, which led to the creation of super PACs, said plainly that those committees had to be independent of a candidate’s campaign in order to receive unlimited contributions. The transfer is only one of the ways DeSantis is pushing the limits of the campaign finance system. The super PAC supporting his presidential run, bearing the schoolboy name of “Never Back Down,” has made it clear that it has a dangerously broad view of what its role should be.
Up to now, the main role of super PACs in elections has been to run TV ads in favor of a candidate or against an opponent, with an unconvincing disclaimer in small print at the end that the ad sponsor is not associated with any campaign or candidate. Super PACs can take in contributions of unlimited size, so they’ve been a great vehicle for wealthy donors, unions and corporations to demonstrate loyalty to a candidate without bumping up against the $3,300 individual donation limit per election for giving directly to a campaign. Those ads are bad enough, but Never Back Down is going much further by essentially taking over many of the main functions of the DeSantis campaign itself. As The Washington Post recently reported, the super PAC is opening office space in each of the early primary states, organizing a corps of door-knockers and volunteers, and launching a “Students for DeSantis” effort on university campuses, among other grassroots organizing work. “This is going to be expansive and a completely different kind of super PAC,” Kristin Davison, the chief operating officer of Never Back Down, told the Post.
Before the governor’s official announcement last month, Never Back Down raised $500,000 in hard money for a “draft committee,” all of which was to be transferred directly to the campaign once it became official, CBS News reported. For the draft committee, the super PAC limited contributions to the $3,300 limit, but by doing the work of fundraising, and using its list of donors, the super PAC was in essence making a huge but unreported contribution to the campaign. One campaign finance expert described this effort by the super PAC as “unprecedented.” And the closeness between Never Back Down and the campaign continues to this moment. If you go to Never Back Down’s website, and click on the big red “donate” button at the top, it takes you to a page that collects donations for the campaign, not the super PAC.
“This is effectively a huge in-kind gift to DeSantis’ campaign and will subsidize his fundraising costs considerably, which is exactly the sort of role a super PAC should not be allowed to play,” said Saurav Ghosh, director of federal campaign finance reform at the Campaign Legal Center. On top of all that, the governor’s chief of staff, James Uthmeier, was used as one of the presidential campaign’s biggest fundraisers, as NBC News reported Thursday. Breaching any ethical barrier between public service and politics, Uthmeier had administration officials around Florida pressure lobbyists to contribute to DeSantis’ campaign.
DeSantis is hardly the only politician in the race who has demonstrated contempt for basic ethics and campaign finance laws. Donald Trump has funneled money from his leadership PAC to his super PAC, a different kind of abuse that has also drawn a complaint before the FEC. But DeSantis’ actions are pathbreaking in an unusually wanton and disdainful way. If that path should lead to the White House, it’s clear that big money will have a welcome place in American politics under his administration.