Citadel CEO and Republican megadonor Ken Griffin is reconsidering supporting Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and is assessing the Republican presidential primary field for candidates as DeSantis has failed to make headway in the polls against former President Donald Trump.
Griffin donated $5 million to DeSantis’s gubernatorial reelection campaign and previously praised DeSantis before he officially launched his presidential campaign.
In November, Griffin told Politico he was ready to endorse DeSantis for president, saying DeSantis “has a tremendous record as governor of Florida, and our country would be well-served by him as president.”
Now, he is part of a growing group of donors who are worried about the trajectory of DeSantis’s presidential campaign, according to CNBC.
NEW: Citadel CEO and @GovRonDeSantis financier Ken Griffin is assessing the GOP primary field, his spox now says. Comes as DeSantis stalls in public polling & some other donors privately voice concerns.
Griffin once said he was prepared to back DeSantis.https://t.co/toNNYb82OB— Brian Schwartz (@schwartzbCNBC) July 12, 2023
Griffin spokesperson Zia Ahmed told the outlet the GOP megadonor “continues to assess the field,” which includes candidates like former Vice President Mike Pence, Sen. Tim Scott, Chris Christie, and Vivek Ramaswamy.
Still, Ahmed maintained that “nothing’s changed” about Griffin’s stance toward the election.
DeSantis campaign spokesperson Andrew Romero downplayed reports about Griffin’s hesitance to throw his multimillion-dollar warchest behind the Florida governor.
Romero told CNBC:
You could wallpaper the governor’s residence with the amount of premature political obituaries written about Ron DeSantis. Challenging the establishment is never easy – and this campaign to save our nation is going to be a long, hard-fought battle to defeat Joe Biden. We are building an organization that will go the distance. Ron DeSantis is putting in the work to win, and as voters across the country continue to learn about his forward-looking plans to reverse Biden’s failures, he will earn the nomination.
The CNBC report came more than two months after the New York Times revealed Griffin was hesitant to back DeSantis after the two met in the weeks leading up to DeSantis’s official announcement.
As the Times detailed:
The financier and Mr. DeSantis met in Florida in the last two weeks, according to two people with knowledge of the meeting, which came as Mr. Griffin has taken issue in private conversations with some of Mr. DeSantis’s policy moves and pronouncements. In particular, the two people said, Mr. Griffin was deeply troubled by Mr. DeSantis’s statements that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was a “territorial dispute” — a remark he later tried to clarify — and that the war was not a vital U.S. interest.
Mr. Griffin, who has made clear that he wants to move on from former President Donald J. Trump, was also disconcerted by a six-week abortion ban in Florida that Mr. DeSantis recently signed, according to the people familiar with Mr. Griffin’s thinking, who insisted on anonymity to discuss private conversations. Last year, Mr. Griffin moved his hedge fund, Citadel, to Miami from Chicago, citing crime concerns.
DeSantis’s trouble with the donor class is just the latest sign of an underwhelming start to his presidential campaign. The Florida governor has not made significant headway in the polls against former President Donald Trump, the “runaway frontrunner,” as one of DeSantis’s top allies described.
For example, a June Harvard poll found that Trump led DeSantis by a margin of 67 to 33 percent, a slight decrease for DeSantis from Harvard’s May poll taken before the Florida governor entered the race. Additionally, Trump holds double-digit leads over DeSantis in various states, including, but not limited to, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, New York, and Iowa.
On Tuesday, reports broke that Rupert Murdoch is losing confidence in DeSantis’s ability to defeat Trump.
“One Fox News insider told Rolling Stone that Rupert and his son Lachlan Murdoch ‘are transactional and can smell a loser a mile away,’” Breitbart News reported. “A senior Fox source told the outlet Murdoch’s ‘understandable worry is that we may end up being stuck with Trump anyway.’”
Jordan Dixon-Hamilton is a reporter for Breitbart News. Write to him at jdixonhamilton@breitbart.com or follow him on Twitter.
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