Trump, DeSantis allies drive a 2024 election spending spree

By Jason Lange and Nathan Layne

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two groups allied with former President Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis have pumped more than $30 million into the 2024 Republican presidential race, more than five times the spending by all outside groups at the same point in the 2020 campaign, according to a Reuters analysis, in a sign of the intense competition between the two frontrunners.

The group backing Trump, known as MAGA Inc, has spent more than $23 million this year, almost entirely on ads attacking DeSantis, the Reuters analysis of preliminary financial disclosures to the Federal Election Commission found.

Never Back Down, the outside group supporting DeSantis, reported spending more than $7 million but that does not include all of its spending from before the official launch of his campaign in May. Figures compiled by ad tracking firm AdImpact point to Never Back Down has spent more than $15 million.

Between them, MAGA Inc and Never Back Down have dominated the over $40 million in spending on the presidential race so far reported by the outside groups, known as Super PACs, the Reuters analysis found. The groups are due to submit fuller disclosures next month.

Super PACs are a special kind of U.S. fundraising group that typically takes big money from the wealthiest Americans as a way to sidestep contribution limits meant to guard against corruption. The exemption is allowed so long as Super PACs stay independent of the campaign they are supporting.

This year's record spending by outside groups has been fueled in part by massive transfers by political groups tied to the candidates.

Trump's Save America group, which he set up before launching his 2024 campaign, transferred $60 million left over from the 2022 midterms to MAGA Inc, Save America's disclosures show.

A group related to DeSantis' re-election effort in the 2022 Florida gubernatorial campaign transferred more than $80 million to Never Back Down, according to records published on that group's website.

Campaign finance experts say the transfers helped each side supercharge early spending while creating significant financial ties between the candidates and outside groups.

Trump's Save America group is a political committee that by law cannot back his own election bids, according to legal experts.

"This just shows the lie that the Super PACs are independent," said Stuart McPhail, a campaign finance lawyer at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonpartisan watchdog. "Why would the candidates take tens of millions of dollars they control and give it to a group they don't control? They wouldn't."

Another nonpartisan watchdog group, the Campaign Legal Center, has filed legal challenges with the Federal Election Commission against the MAGA Inc and Never Back Down transfers, arguing the Super PACs' funding was partly controlled by the candidates.

"We've never had anything quite like this before in campaign finance," said Saurav Ghosh, a lawyer at the Campaign Legal Center.

'DISASSOCIATED'

The Trump and DeSantis campaigns did not respond to requests for comment, but both Super PACs said the transfers were legal.

Never Back Down's transfer came from a group that raised the money under the name Friends of Ron DeSantis, but changed its name shortly before sending the funds. Never Back Down officials say DeSantis didn't order the transfer.

"Ron DeSantis had disassociated with it and the new leadership there made the decision about what to do with that money," said a Never Back Down official.

MAGA Inc called the allegations politically motivated.

"Campaign Legal Center is a fringe leftist organization that exists to file frivolous complaints," said MAGA Inc spokesperson Alex Pfeiffer.

The Campaign Legal Center is led by Trevor Potter, who was the Republican chairman of the Federal Election Commission in the 1990s and later general counsel for the Republican presidential campaigns of former U.S. Senator John McCain.

Many campaign finance experts expect the Federal Election Commission, whose leadership is evenly split between Republicans and Democrats, will likely dismiss the center's challenge.

BILLIONS IN 2020

Super PACs, which are also used aggressively by Democrats, sunk more than $3 billion into the 2020 elections together with other independent spending groups, according to OpenSecrets, a Washington nonprofit that tracks money in politics.

In the current election cycle, MAGA Inc's ads hammer DeSantis for votes cast in Congress a decade ago in favor of reducing spending on Social Security pensions and Medicare health insurance for the elderly.

Never Back Down's ads highlight the Florida governor's opposition to abortion and paint DeSantis, 44, as more youthful and composed than Trump, 77.

Campaign finance experts say that for the groups backing Trump and DeSantis, the transfers send a message that giving to the Super PAC is as good as giving to the campaign.

"If someone comes up to the Super PAC and makes a million-dollar donation, that's like putting a million dollars in a candidate's pocket," said McPhail.

(Reporting by Jason Lange in Washington and Nathan Layne in Wilton, Connecticut, additional reporting by James Oliphant; Editing by Scott Malone and Suzanne Goldenberg)