DESANTIS GETS $15M CASH INFUSION, MOVES STAFF TO IOWA
Fla. governor seeks to take on Trump in leadoff voting state
Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is relocating a significant portion of his presidential campaign staff from Tallahassee, Fla., to Des Moines, Iowa, according to his top deputies, redeploying his team to the leadoff state after a $15 million fundraising haul that advisers said had helped stabilize his campaign.
The push into Iowa highlights the state’s make-orbreak status for DeSantis’ effort to defeat former President Donald Trump. DeSantis hopes a surprise victory in Iowa’s caucuses, the first voting state of the Republican nominating contest, will make enough voters see that Trump is beatable — motivating them to quickly rally around DeSantis as the only candidate able to stop him.
About a third of DeSantis’ campaign staff, including senior political and communications advisers, were informed Wednesday morning that they would be expected to move into short-term housing in Iowa and work from offices in the state. His campaign now employs 56 people, including four Iowa staff members — a number that will soon grow to nearly two dozen, making Iowa a de facto second headquarters.
The relocation completes a monthslong retooling of DeSantis’ campaign, which was in dire financial straits this summer — with delayed bills and unpaid invoices piling up — and had to do two rounds of mass firings in order to remain solvent.
Top campaign officials said they had stabilized the situation, thanks to the $15 million infusion from donors that came in the third quarter, from July through September. That money was raised across the three committees associated with DeSantis: his main presidential campaign account, a political action committee and a fundraising committee that feeds into those two other accounts. His campaign entered October with $13.5 million in available cash, according to top aides.
James Uthmeier, DeSantis’ campaign manager, said in a statement that the thirdquarter haul “shuts down the doubters who counted out Ron DeSantis for far too long.”
Aides acknowledged that only $5 million of the $13.5 million was eligible to spend in the primary season, meaning that money remains tight for a campaign that has yet to air any television ads. The strapped campaign has left advertising, and most other campaign operations, to a well-funded outside group.
DeSantis has a mountainous task ahead. Even in his chosen state of Iowa, he remains some 30 points behind Trump in polling. The $15 million sum is less than the $20 million DeSantis brought in during the previous quarter, and some of this quarter’s haul is earmarked for his new PAC.
Still, the DeSantis team believes it is planting the seeds of a comeback and that by moving his campaign’s center of gravity to Iowa it can better compete in the increasingly do-or-die state.
“We are redeploying many of our assets so we can further take the fight directly to Donald Trump in Iowa,” said David Polyansky, DeSantis’ deputy campaign manager.