NBC News reported this weekend that Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) had to fire some staff after realizing he hired too many people before securing the fundraising. The report detailed some critical missteps in the DeSantis money machine that predicts a difficult path forward.
Candidates have donors that give them the maximum amount per election, meaning both the primary and general elections. They can't spend the money in the general election. So, of DeSantis' $12 million cash on hand, he can only spend $9 million of it.
To add to his problems, "about $14 million of his second-quarter haul came from donors who gave the maximum legal amount," NBC News explained. "In other words, roughly two-thirds of his early donors will not be able to give directly to his campaign for the duration of the race."
It means DeSantis has already burned through the big donors closest to him, and he's got to figure out how to find more or ramp up a heavy fundraising effort for tons of low-dollar donors. The problem with the latter strategy is that Donald Trump spent the past eight years building an extensive GOP donor list. They hammer the donors through emails and text messages until they stop giving money or unsubscribe.
So, DeSantis would have to find donors that aren't Trump's. Those people are generally more moderate, the so-called "NeverTrumpers" or "RINOs" (Republicans In Name Only). But DeSantis has run to the right of Trump, so he's not going to appeal to those two groups.
NBC explained DeSantis' campaign finance reports reveal he's burning through money, hired too many people, and mismanaged his campaign cash. It isn't a good look for someone purporting to be a fiscal conservative. In an act of desperation, DeSantis met with his finance committee on Sunday in Tallahassee.
Meanwhile, DeSantis is facing more and more problems back home in Florida. One of the state's biggest problems is that there have been so many disasters that insurance companies can't afford to operate in the state anymore. Farmers Insurance, one of the nation's largest companies, left Florida entirely. It means about 100,000 Floridians are looking for insurance as hurricane season ramps up.
As President Joe Biden celebrated the drop in the national inflation rate, Florida is among those states that still have inflation problems. A large part of that is housing.
A 2021 report found "more than half of all renters pay at least 30 percent of their income on rent," the Tampa Bay Times reported in March.
"There are three main contributors keeping inflation high in Florida: The number of people moving to the state. A spike in interest rates. An insurance crisis that has limited Floridians' accessibility to affordable home and flood insurance," explained The Palm Beach Post.
DeSantis hasn't been able to get his poll numbers up, despite traveling around early president caucus and primary states like Iowa and New Hampshire. After Trump's first federal indictment, Republican supporters buckled down to help their former president. The wagon circling hasn't worked out well for DeSantis, and for now, he's suffering the consequences.
