Two groups allied with former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis have pumped more than $30 million into the 2024 Republican presidential race, more than five times the spending of 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 favourites.
The Trump-backing group, known as MAGA Inc, has spent more than $23 million this year, almost entirely on ads attacking DeSantis, a 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 doesn’t include all of his spending before his campaign’s official launch in May. Figures compiled by ad tracking firm AdImpact suggest that Never Back Down has spent more than $15 million.
Between them, MAGA Inc and Never Back Down have dominated the more than $40 million in presidential race spending reported so far by the outside groups, known as Super PAC, according to Reuters analysis. The groups are due to submit more comprehensive disclosures next month.
Super PACs are a special type of US fundraising group that typically receives a lot of money from the wealthiest Americans as a way of circumventing contribution limits meant to guard against corruption. The exemption is allowed as long as the Super PACs remain independent of the campaign they support.
This year’s record spending by outside groups has been fueled in part by massive transfers from political groups linked to the candidates.
Trump’s Save America group, which he created before launching his 2024 campaign, wired $60 million left over from the 2022 midterm elections to MAGA Inc, Save America revelations show.
A group linked to DeSantis’ re-election effort in the 2022 Florida gubernatorial campaign wired more than $80 million to Never Back Down, according to records posted on that group’s website.
Campaign finance experts say the transfers helped each side boost initial spending while creating meaningful financial ties between candidates and outside groups.
Trump’s Save America group is a political committee that by law cannot endorse its own electoral candidacies, according to legal experts.
“This just shows the lie that Super PACs are independent,” said Stuart McPhail, a campaign finance attorney with Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonpartisan watchdog. “Why would 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, filed legal challenges with the Federal Election Commission against the transfers from MAGA Inc and Never Back Down, arguing that Super PAC funding was controlled in part by the candidates.
“We’ve never had anything like this in campaign finance before,” said Saurav Ghosh, a lawyer with the Campaign Legal Center.
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