High rollers pay big bucks for golf date with DeSantis

How much does it cost to pal around the links with Gov. Ron DeSantis?

If you have to ask, you can’t afford him. (You can’t afford the golf; much less the governor.)

DeSantis, as memos penned by his political operatives last winter revealed, does not come cheap. Want to join a foursome with the governor? That’ll be $25,000. Something more exclusive? Say … a round with the governor and just little ol’ you? Write a check for $100,000.

The duffer-in-chief ’s price list was uncovered last month by the Tampa Bay Times in a cache of emails posted last January by Susan Wiles, who at the time was the governor’s chief political strategist. The money would go to his campaign committee, Friends of Ron DeSantis. Friends, apparently, are an expensive commodity in the DeSantis regime.

Wiles has since lost her job as DeSantis’ main political strategist. And the governor’s office now claims the fundraising scheme she described was never put into effect. In fact, DeSantis told reporters that he had never seen the memo. Calm down, you skeptics. That could — possibly — be true. He’s a busy man. The Tampa Bay Times did notice, however, that DeSantis’ actual fund-raising pursuits have seemed to track the phantom memo.

A few weeks after it was written, Duke Energy lobbyists — ersatz Friends of Ron — doled out $75,000 for a round of golf with DeSantis. A couple weeks later, he was back on the same course with some hightoned insurance executives.

Apparently, the governor and his grandee golf buddies prefer courses unadulterated by the masses. The Duke lobbyists and the insurance execs wallowed in private access to the Florida chief executive at the Indian Creek Country Club, perhaps South Florida’s most exclusive golf joint, located on a manmade island north of Miami Beach amid the uber-rich environs of Indian Creek Village. (Just 35 homes, all fronting Biscayne Bay, worth from $10 million to a 10-bedroom place that sold earlier this year for $49.9 million. But again … if you have to ask.)

You ordinaries, of course, can’t get past the guardhouse. And the community’s round-the-clock police marine patrol keeps the boating bourgeois at bay.

The Miami Herald reported that the country club membership fee was $150,000, with annual dues at $16,000. But that was five years ago; so, allow for inflation. Also, you might consider that the club was once infamous for barring Jews and blacks from its membership rolls. (Women made the cut in 1984.)

The bay views are spectacular. The course is considered one of the finest in Florida. All this just to give you an idea about what it takes to procure a bit of facetime with the new governor of Florida. It’s brilliant really. DeSantis has turned the drudgery of influence peddling into a wildly luxurious fun-time outing.

Of course, DeSantis can also be had for non-golfing activities. The memo suggested that a short face-to-face meeting should require a $25,000 donation. Dinner with the governor: $150,000 (not including tip). The Tampa Bay Times reported that something called an “intimate and high dollar” would require $250,000.

This gives us an insight into how money lubricates the gears of the DeSantis administration. I’m guessing that the biggest mistake made by Scott Israel — the Broward sheriff suspended by the governor in January — was his failure to buy himself a round of golf with DeSantis.

Of course, Ron’s not the first governor to be lavished with extraordinary corporate largess in ultra-exclusive locales. When Rick Scott was governor, U.S. Sugar whisked Scott, former Agricultural Commissioner Adam Putnam and other Florida Republican bigwigs, off to the very exclusive hunting preserve the company leases in Texas on the grounds of the legendary King Ranch. (Inspiration for “Giant,” Edna Ferber’s novel and the 1956 movie starring Elizabeth Taylor, James Dean and Rock Hudson. Which is exactly why, when someone mentions Rick Scott, I think of James Dean.) The preserve has been described as “one of the premier game areas in North America. Many people consider it the best white-tailed deer and bobwhite quail hunting, period.”

Rick and Adam and the Florida pols were able to blast away at Bambi while U.S. Sugar picked up the bill. The company reported an expenditure of $95,000 for 20 weekend junkets as a donation to the state Republic Party.

The hunting excursions helped explain the Scott administration’s considerable deference to U.S. Sugar, particularly when deciding who should pay for the environmental damage caused by sugar cane farm pollution.

Makes you wonder what Duke Energy’s honchos bought themselves along with that dandy round of golf at Indian Creek Country Club.