DeSantis Holding State Budget Hostage While His Staffers Solicit Donations to His Presidential Campaign from Lobbyists

AP Photo/John Raoux, File

Staffers for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) have been soliciting donations to his presidential campaign from lobbyists while the state budget sits on the governor’s desk and each line item is facing the threat of his veto pen, according to a new bombshell report.

NBC News’ Matt Dixon and Jonathan Allen note right away that these are staffers who work directly for the governor’s official, taxpayer-funded office and agencies, not the campaign, and that this activity is “a breach of traditional norms that has raised ethical and legal questions and left many here in the state capital shocked.”

According to the report, four separate DeSantis administration officials, “including those directly in the governor’s office and with leadership positions in state agencies,” sent text messages to lobbyists requesting a contribution to DeSantis’ federal presidential campaign account using a “bundle” program link, which tracked who helped secure the donation.

The lobbyists who received the text messages showed them to NBC News, and the reporters did not name the individual DeSantis staffers because they believed that might reveal the identities of the lobbyists who shared them.

“The bottom line is that the administration appears to be keeping tabs on who is giving, and are doing it using state staff,” one longtime Florida lobbyist told NBC News. “You are in a prisoner’s dilemma. They are going to remain in power. We all understand that.”

The key issue here is the timing: Florida law grants the governor line-item veto power over the state budget, meaning that DeSantis could potentially eliminate a program’s budget with one stroke of his pen. The 2023 legislative session ended earlier this month, and several bills still await DeSantis’ signature — including the record $117 billion pending in the state budget.

For lobbyists who have spent the entire session advocating for a specific bill or program (and in some cases, multiple sessions to get something across the finish line), it’s essentially a hostage situation. The implied threat is clear: donate to DeSantis 2024 or risk your pet project ending up on the chopping block.

Dixon and Allen noted that DeSantis’ office did not respond to a request for comment but they did get a text message back from one administration official who acknowledged that “team eog” (the Executive Office of the Governor) was engaged in raising money and said that “I (and many other staff) personally donated.”

As the reporters noted, this is a “jaw-dropping” violation of longstanding norms to have government staff soliciting donations for a campaign and could potentially be a violation of the law if these staffers were not careful to use their own personal phones and send the messages when they were off the clock from their taxpayer-funded employment.

“At a minimum, even if they are sitting in their home at 9 p.m. using their personal phone and contacting lobbyists that they somehow magically met in their personal capacity and not through their role in the governor’s office, it still smells yucky,” a longtime Florida elections law attorney said. “There’s a misuse of public position issue here that is obvious to anyone paying attention.”

NBC News interviewed ten Republican lobbyists in Florida, wrote Dixon and Allen, “all of whom said they couldn’t remember being solicited for donations so overtly by administration officials — especially at a time when the governor still has to act on the state budget… Most of the lobbyists said they felt pressure to give to the governor’s campaign.”

The article includes multiple quotes from the lobbyists expressing stress and dismay over the “very questionable” contribution requests, especially with the use of the bundle code links that would identify which DeSantis staffer would be able to “get credit with the campaign.”

“What the f*** am I supposed to do?” one lobbyist summed up the dilemma. “I have a lot of business in front of the DeSantis administration.”

The practice drew condemnation from other Florida Republicans, and Republican fundraisers and activists from other states, who commented that even if no laws were technically broken, the ethical “optics” were still terrible.

“The practice feeds the DeSantis corrupt swampy meme perfectly for opponents. For no f—— reason,” said one veteran Florida Republican. “Hard to be Mr. Break the Internet and Swamp when you do this. Really dumb.”

On Thursday, DeSantis signed 27 bills, including one that shields spaceflight companies from liability after an explosion or crash. Lobbying in support of that bill: SpaceX, the company controlled by Twitter owner Elon Musk, who hosted the governor’s glitch-plagued Twitter Spaces campaign launch. The budget is still awaiting final approval and signature.

Dixon appeared on Katy Tur Reports Friday afternoon to discuss his article and its implications.

This article has been updated with additional information.