FIRST ON FOX – Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis brought in an impressive $20 million in fundraising during the first six weeks of his campaign for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, his political team told Fox News on Thursday.
Never Back Down, the super PAC supporting the Florida governor’s presidential run, in a separate announcement told Fox News that they’ve hauled in $130 million in fundraising since the committee launched in early March.
The figures from the DeSantis campaign and from Never Back Down illustrated the Florida governor’s fundraising prowess as he aims to defeat front-runner and former President Donald Trump for the GOP nomination next year.
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And they added that it “bests the $18.3 million former president and quasi-incumbent Donald Trump’s campaign raised during his first two fundraising quarters as a candidate ($3.8 in Q4 2022 and $14.5 in Q1 2023).”
The Trump campaign and its allied fundraising committees brought in $9.5 million from the former president’s mid-November launch through the end of last year and nearly $19 million during the January-March first quarter of fundraising.
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A significant portion of Never Back Down’s fundraising – roughly $82 million – was money transferred to the super PAC in June from a Florida based political committee affiliated with the governor. The funds were originally raised to support DeSantis’ 2022 gubernatorial re-election.
DeSantis is in second place in the latest 2024 GOP presidential nomination polls, trailing Trump by double digits but ahead of the rest of the large field of contenders.
Former President Donald Trump speaks to crowd during a campaign event on July 1, 2023 in Pickens, South Carolina. (Photo by Sean Rayford/Getty Images) (Getty Images)
Trump, who is making his third straight White House run, stands at 56% support in the latest Fox News national poll of likely GOP primary voters, with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at 22% and everybody else in the singe digits. Trump’s lead has steadily expanded since the late winter.
