Ron DeSantis Threatens Trump's Greatest Campaign Strength

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a Republican, reportedly has more than $110 million in accounts available to him should he decide to run for president in 2024.

On Friday, Politico reported DeSantis may be able to tap into $110 million in total funds for a campaign, citing public filings and "people who represent the entities." Including in the sum is more than $80 million in his state reelection account, Friends of Ron DeSantis, that he's raised since he won a second term this past November.

While DeSantis has not yet announced a campaign for the White House, former President Donald Trump is the current frontrunner for the GOP nomination in 2024. Trump also remains a prodigious fundraiser, though he falls short of DeSantis, according to numbers cited by Politico.

At the end of last year, MAGA Inc.—the super PAC aligned with Trump—reported it had raised $55 million. Since officially launching his 2024 campaign in November, the former president has also added $18.8 million on his own through his campaign. Much of that latter figure came after Trump was indicated by a Manhattan grand jury on March 30, which his campaign said brought in a donation surge of $15.4 million in two weeks.

Meanwhile, the campaign for Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and former United Nations ambassador, announced earlier this month that she had raised more than $11 million in the first six weeks of her presidential campaign.

For their parts, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina converted $21.9 million for his Senate campaign to his presidential exploratory committee, and Republican businessman Vivek Ramaswamy put $10.5 million of his own money into his presidential campaign.

Jay Townshend, a non-partisan political consultant, told Newsweek on Friday that the report on DeSantis' funds reminded him of when Republican Jeb Bush's Super PAC "dropped $100 million on his behalf, and he didn't win a single primary in 2016," as well as the $1 billion Michael Bloomberg spent on his failed 2020 run for the Democratic nomination.

"Money doesn't buy you love in politics, and there is a political graveyard filled with candidates who blew a wad and won nothing," Townshend said.

He also noted that the $80 million from DeSantis' state account is mostly unspent money from his gubernatorial campaign.

"And absent jumping through some legal loopholes, he cannot transfer that to a federal account over which he has total control," Townshend said. "Maybe he'll raise all that he needs. But it is way too early to predict that he'll have all he needs, or that he'll be able to outdo Trump."

GOP strategist John Feehery told Newsweek on Friday that campaign fundraising may now be "Trump's Achilles heel."

"Big donors are shopping for somebody new, and many of them like DeSantis as an alternative," he said. "For Trump, he needs to rev up the small donors, and that means he needs to prime the pump with buying lists and sending out texts, all of which costs money."

However, Feehery said that for Trump, "it's not really about raising money," and the former president currently has at least one advantage over the undeclared DeSantis.

Trump's "style is more to dominate the conversation by dominating earned media," Feehery said. "Right now, most of Trump's earned media is not positive for him, because it is mostly about his legal troubles. But he has been pointed in attacking DeSantis, so he is scoring some points there."

Newsweek reached out to representatives for DeSantis and Trump via email for comment.