Florida governor Ron DeSantis is burning Florida taxpayer money on his campaign,
and he's also passing laws to prevent the public from even finding out about it.
That became clear after he was involved in a multicar accident last
week in Tennessee.
Now, the fender bender occurred as he traveled in a motorcade to a campaign stop
for his 2024 presidential bid.
According to police, the chain re action crash happened on interstate 75
in Chattanooga, causing four cars in that motorcade to hit one another.
Now, all the cars involved in the crash were government vehicles taking DeSantis
and his team to a scheduled fundraiser.
DeSantis wasn't physically injured, but some floridians might feel some mental
anguish after a freedom of information request has revealed how excessive his
campaign is and how he's using state taxpayer money while being excessive.
South Florida sentinel's Steve Boquette gave more detail in a new op ed,
writing that seven agents from the Florida department of law enforcement FDLE.
Traveling in four different SUVs apparently rented by the state at our
expense, squired DeSantis to a small campaign event in Tennessee on Tuesday.
Now, the only reason why we know these details is because of that freedom of
information request and
because of the fact that that accident took place in Tennessee.
A freedom of information request in Florida wouldn't have worked.
More on that in just a moment.
Now, this was a small campaign event, and
this type of security was unnecessary, to say the least.
But apparently this is the norm for DeSantis, who has reshaped
the Florida department of law enforcement into his own personal police force.
FDLE is required by state law to protect the governor around the clock,
regardless of whether he's conducting official personal or political business.
But Florida has never had a governor so
obsessed with security who spends this much time in Iowa, New Hampshire,
Tennessee, Utah and other places, so those costs will become astronomical.
So in addition to the seven cops who accompanied the governor,
as many as six other officers had already been placed at that campaign event site.
This spending on car rentals and police escorts would have been kept secret
if the accident occurred in Florida rather than Tennessee,
because some of sneaky laws that the governor passed in order to hide how much
he leans on Florida's taxpayers for his own presidential aspirations.
Citing safety precautions earlier this year, the GOP led legislature
passed a bill to shield DeSantis's travel records from the public.
The new law's text reads as follows.
The legislature finds that the safety and
security of persons authorized protection outweigh
any public benefit that may be derived from the disclosure of such records.
Therefore, it is a public necessity that records held by a law
enforcement agency relating to security or
transportation services under be exempt from public records requirements.
So to cover Desantis' travel schedule and satisfy his security concerns,
the Florida Department of Law Enforcement is hiring even more
agents whose job will exclusively entail safeguarding DeSantis,
his family, or the grounds of the governor's mansion.
On the FDLE Facebook page, the agency had apparently been seeking applicants
to be protective operations special agents to ensure the safety and
security of the governor and the first family.
Now, the post was later removed.
I wonder why.
Months ago, DeSantis was even asked point blank about his efforts to
keep Florida taxpayers in the dark about his travel records and costs.
>> Speaker 2: The bill to shield the governor's travel records.
Explain to Floridians why that is important to you.
>> Speaker 2: Well, it's not necessarily something that I came up with.
I think the issue is, with a security situation,
how you do patterns of movements.
If you're somebody that is targeted, which unfortunately I am, and
I get a lot of threats, that could be something that could be helpful for
people that may not wanna do good things.
>> Speaker 1: If you're doing campaign events, most of the public know about it.
Usually these are public events that are posted and paying for
security might make sense if the security wasn't excessive.
Now, having Florida taxpayers fund excessive security while concealing
the costs they're paying for does not make sense to me.
But this is the same guy who changed Florida's state laws to allow him to run
for president without even having to give up the governorship,
which essentially robs the state of Florida from having a dedicated and
committed governor who's looking out for them.
Look, this is not good news,
considering how irresponsible DeSantis has been with his campaign finances.
He recently fired dozens of staffers after burning through millions of dollars.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis tapped out top donors and
burned through $7.9 million in the first six weeks as a presidential candidate,
according to an NBC News analysis of his new campaign finance disclosure.
And making matters worse for DeSantis,
more than two-thirds of his campaign cash, nearly $14 million,
came from donors who gave the legal maximum and cannot donate again.
DeSantis finished June with more than 12.2 million in the bank, but his filing
indicates that 3 million of that can only be used in the general election.
Now, compare that to Trump.
Trump's campaign ended the quarter with 22.5 million on hand.
I mean, Trump's got his illegal fees.
That's definitely exorbitant.
So comparing the two is kind of like comparing apples and oranges, but
nonetheless at the same time DeSantis spent about 40% of what he raised,
in part by paying salaries to 92 people before the staff firings.
That gave him by far the biggest staff footprint of the GOP presidential
candidates, but also left him with the question of how he can sustain his
payroll or anything close to it without finding new sources of revenue.
However, the super pac supporting DeSantis has much more money and cash on hand.
DeSantis's team has raised a stunning $150,000,000 for
his presidential ambition so far, but the vast majority, 130,000,000, has gone
to a super Pac run by allies who cannot legally coordinate with the campaign.
Now, add that money spent assigning dozens of FDL agents to provide security for
DeSantis, as well as engage in the governor's political stunts.
Including, by the way, rounding up undocumented immigrants in the Keys,
Texas, and elsewhere just to fly them to other parts of the country
that he has determined to be sanctuary states or cities.
He's just burning through Florida taxpayer money, abandoning his voters and
constituents in Florida, and getting away with it by passing
laws to cover up all the money that he's spending while doing so.
Just something to keep in mind while his campaign continues to flail.
Do Florida taxpayers feel good about funding a failure of a campaign
while they're being abandoned by their very governor?
Just a question I wanna ask them.
Maybe they're cool with it, maybe they're not.
I guess we'll see as we move ahead with this election.