For Ron DeSantis, Sunday, February 19, was the start of another busy week of not officially running for president.
That night, he left Tallahassee on the private jet of a Florida hotelier, heading to Newark before a meeting with police officers in Staten Island on Monday morning. He then boarded a twin-jet Bombardier to attend a speech in suburban Philadelphia, before flying to a Knights of Columbus hall outside Chicago, then home to his job as governor of Florida.
The tour and others like it were made possible by the convenience of private air travel and the large number of wealthy and, in some cases, secretive donors footing the bill.
Before an expected offer to the White House, Mr. DeSantis has relied heavily on his wealthy allies to take him around the country to test his message and raise his profile. Many of those donors are family boosters of Florida, some with business interests ahead of the state, according to a New York Times review of Mr. DeSantis. Others have been shielded from the public by a new nonprofit, The Times found, in a deal that drew criticism from ethics experts.
DeSantis, who is expected to formally announce his candidacy next week, is not the first politician to take advantage of the speed and comfort of a Gulfstream jet. Candidates and officeholders in both parties have long accepted that the benefits of a donor’s jet are worth the political risk of appearing indebted to special interests or out of touch with voters.
But ethics experts said the trip, and specifically the nonprofit’s role, shows how Mr. DeSantis has allowed him to work under rules meant to prevent donors from exerting secret influence. As a declared federal candidate, he would face much stricter requirements for accepting and reporting such donations.
“Voters deserve this information because they have a right to know who is trying to influence their elected officials and whether their leaders are putting the public good above the interests of their big benefactors,” said Trevor Potter, president of the Campaign Legal Center and a Republican who headed the Federal Election Commission. “Governor DeSantis, whether or not he intends to run for president, should clearly and fully disclose who is supporting his political efforts.”
The representatives of the governor’s office and the political operation of Mr. DeSantis declined to comment or provide details about who arranged and paid for their flights.
Mr. DeSantis has aggressively navigated his state’s ethics and campaign finance laws to avoid flying commercials. And he has made new efforts to avoid transparency: Last week, he signed a bill that exempts travel records held by law enforcement, dating back to the beginning of his term, from public records requests.
Mr. DeSantis is still required to report contributions and expenditures on his campaign finance records, but the new law likely prevents law enforcement agencies from releasing more details, such as itineraries, flight information or even lists of visitors to the governor’s mansion. (Mr. DeSantis says he is trying to address a security issue.)
In February, Mr. DeSantis traveled to Newark on a plane owned by Jeffrey Soffer, a prominent hotel owner who, according to several lawmakers and lobbyists, has sought a change in state law to allow him to expand gambling at his Miami Beach resort .
The February trip and others were organized by And To The Republic, a Michigan-based nonprofit, according to Tori Sachs, its executive director. The non-profit organization was formed in late January when Mr. DeSantis was beginning to test the national waters and quickly became a critical part of his warm-up campaign. He organized nearly a dozen conference calls with the governor in at least eight states.
Ms. Sachs did not say how much was spent on the flights or who paid for them.
Navigating the gaps
It is not clear how Mr. DeSantis will explain the trips organized by the nonprofit without violating state ethics laws. Florida generally prohibits officials from accepting gifts from lobbyists or individuals, such as Mr. Soffer, whose companies employ lobbyists, unless those gifts are considered political contributions.
But both Ms. Sachs as a person involved in the recent trip of Mr. DeSantis said they did not count the trips as contributions or political gifts. The person was not authorized to discuss the matter and spoke on condition of anonymity. The group’s practice “is to provide transportation for special guests,” Ms. Sachs, “in full compliance with the law.”
Florida’s ethics rules, however, give politicians plenty of loopholes. In some circumstances, for example, officials may accept paid travel to give speeches as part of their official duties. The state ethics commission has also allowed officials to accept gifts from lobbyists if they are channeled through third-party groups.
Since taking office in 2019, Mr. DeSantis, who has worked in public service his entire career and declared a net worth of $319,000 last year, has consistently leaned on others to pick up the tab for private flights.
His political committee has accepted private air travel for about 55 wealthy, mostly Florida-based contributors and companies associated with them, including heads of oil and gas companies, home developers and builders and executives health care and insurance, a Times analysis of campaign finance. sample records.
Additional travel donations went to the Republican Party of Florida, which Mr. DeSantis often used as a third-party transmission.
Half a dozen lobbyists and donors who spoke to The Times said they grew accustomed to calls from the governor’s political aides requesting planes, in at least one case, for a last-minute trip home from abroad of the state and, most recently, for a flight to Japan.
The trip to Japan, which was part of an overseas tour that gave Mr. DeSantis’ chance to showcase his foreign policy was considered part of the governor’s official duties and was organized in part by Enterprise Florida, a public-private business development group. . But the office of Mr. DeSantis did not disclose how he was paid or how he traveled. Enterprise Florida did not respond to requests for comment.
The office of Mr. DeSantis rarely releases information about unofficial events. (In February, when he traveled to four states in one day, his public schedule simply said, “No events scheduled.”) And Mr. DeSantis has dismissed criticism leading up to his trip. In 2019, The South Florida Sun Sentinel revealed a previous flight in New York in a plane owned by Mr. Suffer. Mr. DeSantis said he had followed the proper procedures.
“Everything is legal, ethical, there is no problem,” he told reporters.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Soffer declined to comment.
The warm-up campaign
Shortly after winning re-election in November, the governor set about building his national profile. He began traveling the country visiting Republican activists, dining with donors, speaking at events and promoting a new book, “The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival.”
Part of his travel was paid for by the Friends of Ron DeSantis, a Florida political committee that supported his campaign for governor and reports on his donors. The committee had more than $80 million on hand as of last month, money that is expected to be transferred to a federal super PAC to support his presidential run.
Since November, this committee has received 17 political travel contributions from nine donors. They include Maximo Álvarez, an oil and gas distributor, and Morteza Hosseini, a Florida homebuilder who has often lent his plane to the governor and become a close ally.
But the trips paid for by the nonprofit group, And To The Republic, don’t appear in state records.
The group is registered as a social welfare organization under section 501(c)(4) of the federal tax code, which means its primary activity cannot be related to political campaigns. Other potential presidential candidates and officials also have relationships with similar organizations, often called dark money groups because they are not required to disclose their donors.
The founder of the non-profit organization, Ms. Sachs, said he was formed to promote “state policy solutions that are setting the agenda for the country,” and described Mr. DeSantis as one of the first elected officials to “associate” with the group. Another such official, Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa, has appeared at the group’s events in his home state, along with Mr. DeSantis.
I To The Republic has hosted Mr. DeSantis at events in South Carolina, Nevada and Iowa, all key early primary states. Some of these events were promoted as “The Florida Blueprint,” borrowing the title of Mr. DeSantis.
The agreement has made it difficult to track Mr. DeSantis and its costs. The Times and other media used public flight trackers to verify the governor’s use of Mr. Suffer, which was first reported by Politician.
Other trips organized by the group include Feb. 20 stops outside of Philadelphia and Chicago and the return trip to Tallahassee, in which Mr. DeSantis flew in a plane registered to a company run by Charles Whittall, an Orlando developer. Whittall, who gave $25,000 to the political committee of Mr. DeSantis in 2021, said he uses a charter company to rent his plane and did not provide it as a political contribution.
In March, he traveled to Cobb County, Ga., on a plane owned by an entity connected to Waffle House, the Georgia-based restaurant chain. The company did not respond to a request for comment.
Other potential DeSantis rivals have made headlines for their use of private jets. As much as governor of South Carolina and as ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley faced criticism for flying on private jets owned by wealthy South Carolinians.
In 2020, The Associated Press reported that donors gave hundreds of thousands of dollars in private air travel to Donald J. Trump’s fundraising committee. Among the donors was Ben Pogue, a Texas businessman whose father later received a presidential pardon.
Still, Mr. Trump, who owns his own plane, has repeatedly tried to draw attention to Mr. DeSantis’ travel, claiming that the private jets were indeed campaign contributions and that “Ron DeSantis is a candidate for full time to president”.
Shane Goldmacher and Michael C. Bender contributed to the report. Kitty Bennett and Sheelagh McNeill contributed to the research.
