DeSantis ally warns against donating to ‘Ready for Ron’ as PAC plans to spend $3.3M on ads

Ready for Ron, who are a PAC (political action committee), announced on Thursday that they intend to spend over $3 million in the coming months to boost Gov. Ron DeSantis’ national profile and start a grassroots campaign should DeSantis announce his intentions to run for President in 2024.

Ready for Ron formed in May and its chief strategist is Republican consultant Ed Rollins.

DeSantis, who defeated Charlie Crist to be re-elected as Governor of Florida, said that he is focused on Florida’s legislative session and is in no way affiliated with this PAC. DeSantis’s team have also cited a memo from last summer which said contributions to the non-affiliated PAC “do not benefit Governor DeSantis or his re-election.”

A source close to DeSantis told Fox News “this doesn’t help Ron DeSantis. It’s a grift — plain and simple.”

The memo from DeSantis’ team highlighted shows that this PAC “is apparently engaging in an aggressive media campaign to promote itself, running political ads and actively soliciting contributions from supporters of Governor DeSantis.”

“In reality, the PAC is actively taking financial resources away from Governor DeSantis and his re-election efforts. While possibly well-intentioned, these types of organizations tend to cannibalize support that would normally be offered to the candidate directly,” DeSantis 2022 re-election campaign legal counsel Benjamin Gibson wrote in the memo.

DeSantis routinely avoided answering questions about a potential White House race as he focused on the Florida gubernatorial race. 

“I don’t think he’s going to pay attention to federal politics until after the legislative session is over. But other potential candidates are organizing now. There’s a window of time here where things have to get done,” Dan Backer, a lawyer and counsel to Ready for Ron, told Fox News.

“We’re putting out our messaging that [President} Biden is the problem and Ron is the best solution out there,” Backer said. He added that his group is “building a large grassroots infrastructure to help nominate and elect him. We’re putting out the message and building the grassroots that he’ll need when we are successful at convincing him to run.”

Backer went onto say that the “didn’t spend a single penny trying to re-elect him as governor because we weren’t interested in doing that and he didn’t need the help. The polls were clear. Everything we’re doing is focused on building this infrastructure for him to run for president.”