The race for the 2024 Republican Party presidential nomination is in full swing this week as potential challengers to frontrunner Donald Trump fan out across the country in search of allies in key states and, more importantly, start banking donor cash.
According to a report from Politico, the battle for big-money donors is playing out in Florida where Gov. Ron DeSantis is hosting a three-day retreat just minutes away from Mar-a-Lago that reportedly will be attended by a multitude of former Trump backers while Trump holds his own get-together.
As Politico's Alex Isenstadt is reporting, the donor meet-ups "...will pull back the curtain on an intensifying battle for big donors in 2024. Republicans are moving aggressively to expand their networks of major contributors and block out rivals who are competing for the same dollars. DeSantis is expected to draw around 150 top donors and other supporters to the event, many of whom formerly backed Trump."
One of those wealthy donors, who gave six-figure contributions to Trump's 2016 and 2020 presidential bids, is off the Trump train for 2024 despite landing a coveted ambassadorship from the former president for his previous support.
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"The list of defectors includes Arizona donor Don Tapia, a retired electrical company executive who served as Trump’s ambassador to Jamaica. Tapia was a six-figure contributor to Trump’s 2016 and 2020 campaigns — but said that he had decided to back DeSantis should he run in 2024," Politico is reporting.
"Tapia, who gave more than $50,000 to DeSantis’ reelection bid and hosted a pair of fundraisers for him, contended that donors had grown tired of Trump’s attacks on DeSantis and predicted that the retreat would 'overwhelmingly' be attended by former Trump supporters," Isenstadt wrote.
Explaining why he and others are jumping ship, he told Politico, "The name-calling has turned a lot of people off,” before adding, “Let me tell you, we don’t like that.”
You can read more here.
