Charlie Neibergall / AP, file
Republican presidential candidate Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks during a campaign event on May 31, 2023, in Salix, Iowa. The College Board says schools in Florida should not offer its Advanced Placement course in psychology to students, citing guidance from state officials to exclude content on sexual orientation and gender identity. The call to shelve the course marks the College Board’s latest clash with the administration of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Tuesday, Aug. 8, 2023 | 2 a.m.
Robert Bigelow, owner of Budget Suites of America and Bigelow Aerospace, listens to Nevada Governor-elect Joe Lombardo during an event with supporters at Rancho High School Monday, Nov. 14, 2022. Lombardo beat incumbent Democratic Governor Steve Sisolak.
MIAMI — The biggest financial backer of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ presidential ambitions won’t provide more money — unless the candidate moderates some of his policies and manages to convince more big financial backers that he’s viable.
Robert Bigelow, a Las Vegas billionaire, contributed $20 million on March 30 to the super PAC supporting DeSantis’ campaign for the Republican presidential nomination — two-fifths of the $48.1 million the organization raised in its first five months of existence.
In 2022, Bigelow gave $10 million to DeSantis’ previous state political action committee. Even though much of the money raised was ostensibly to support his gubernatorial reelection, donors were long aware of his presidential aspirations.
Bigelow exploded the political bombshell for DeSantis in an interview with Reuters, citing both DeSantis’ positioning and the lack of other major contributors. He said he’d conveyed his feelings to the DeSantis campaign.
“He does need to shift to get to moderates. He’ll lose if he doesn’t. … Extremism isn’t going to get you elected,” Bigelow said in the Reuters interview.
As the COVID pandemic subsided and DeSantis began looking toward a presidential candidacy and the need to try to appeal to Republican primary voters in other states, he positioned himself as the champion of conservative culture war issues, opposing so-called “woke” ideology, fighting diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, restricting certain types of lessons on race, gender and sexual orientation in schools, and advocating restrictions on abortion rights.
Bigelow told Reuters he agreed with most DeSantis policies, including his fight against “wokeism.”
But he told Reuters he was concerned with the latest restrictions on abortion DeSantis signed into law.
The April law bans almost all abortions in Florida after the sixth week of pregnancy, a point at which many women don’t yet know they are pregnant. It’s not yet enforced, pending a state Supreme Court decision on an earlier state law restricting abortion that was also signed by DeSantis.
Reuters said Bigelow said he had told DeSantis’ campaign manager the candidate needed to moderate his positions. Asked about her reaction, Bigelow laughed, Reuters said. “There was a long period of silence where I thought maybe she had passed out.”
Bigelow told Reuters that he would not donate more money “until I see that he’s able to generate more on his own. I’m already too big a percentage.”
In April, Time reported that Bigelow said he’d give more than the $20 million he’d contributed to Never Back Down. “I will give him more money and go without food,” the billionaire told Time.
Bigelow is owner of Budget Suites of America and Bigelow Aerospace. He was described by the Las Vegas Sun as having a “fascination with the paranormal” and by Bloomberg as someone “with a passion for UFOs.”
Never Back Down, formed in February, is vital to DeSantis.
Its first finance report, filed on July 31, reported the super PAC reported raising $130.6 million. Most of that money was the $82.5 million transferred from DeSantis’ previous state political action committee. (That’s the entity Bigelow had earlier given $10 million.)
Aside from the transfer, Never Back Down raised $48.1 million and spent $33.8 million. It had a $96.8 million cash balance as of June 30.
DeSantis’ official campaign committee, which can’t accept the kind of big-dollar donations that can flow into the super PAC, has been retrenching to cut costs after heavy spending in the weeks after he formally entered the presidential campaign in May.
The supposedly independent Never Back Down has been shouldering an increasing amount of campaign costs, including bus tours of Iowa, the critical first state in the Republican nominating process.
