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Ron DeSantis’s biggest donor is considering switching his support to Donald Trump, in a sharp rebuke of the Florida governor’s White House aspirations.
Robert Bigelow, a Nevada real estate investor who has funded space exploration and research into paranormal activities, gave over $20mn to the DeSantis campaign earlier this year, the largest donation to any 2024 candidate, according to the latest federal filings.
But Bigelow criticised DeSantis for running a weak campaign — and said Hamas’s attack on Israel last month showed the US needed a “streetwise” leader such as Trump.
“I’ve got to look at who would probably be the strongest commander, with the most experience . . . And that’s only one guy,” Bigelow told the Financial Times.
“Who would you want as a commander? I’d want somebody that would be a hell of an ass kicker if he needed to be,” he said. “On the face of it, you lean toward Trump.”
Bigelow also said he thought Trump would now defeat DeSantis to win the Republican presidential primary — provided he stayed out of jail.
“I think Trump is too strong,” Bigelow said. “I think Trump has the momentum, the inertia, to beat him.” Trump was a “bull”, Bigelow added, but DeSantis was “dinner”.
The comments come just ahead of the Republican party’s third primary debate, in Miami, where the candidates will try to gain some momentum in their attempts to catch frontrunner Trump, who will not attend.
Recent polls of likely Republican voters put the former president about 30 points ahead of his rivals in the early 2024 primary contests. DeSantis and former UN ambassador Nikki Haley are fighting for second place.
While DeSantis received a boost to his White House bid this week after clinching the endorsement of Iowa governor Kim Reynolds, the Florida governor’s campaign has struggled to gain traction this year, while Trump’s popularity has risen among Republicans despite the array of felony charges against him.
Bigelow, the founder of Budget Suites of America and Bigelow Aerospace, had warmed to DeSantis because he tried to keep Florida’s economy open during the pandemic, saying the state “epitomised the land of the free”.
In March, he saw DeSantis speak at Stoney’s Rockin’ Country, a Las Vegas venue where Bigelow likes to dance the Texas two-step, and invited the governor for lunch.
Bigelow wrote DeSantis’s campaign a cheque for $20,000,500 after hearing that someone else might chip in $20mn. “I am not going to be number two,” he said. “You’ve got to have a sense of humour.”
But his relationship with DeSantis started to crack after the governor signed a Florida bill in April banning abortion past six weeks of pregnancy.
“Six weeks, she just found out she’s pregnant, the odds are,” Bigelow said. “It’s a sham. It’s make-believe. It’s condescending.”
After he publicly criticised DeSantis for the law in August and threatened not to give him more money, Bigelow said he expected the governor to contact him. But it was DeSantis’s wife Casey who called, two weeks later.
“Not having him bothering to call me for an explanation taught me that he’s more of a user of people, actually, and that I didn’t matter enough for him to pick up the phone,” Bigelow said.
DeSantis had also become “way too focused on conservatism”, while Trump was more socially moderate, Bigelow said. DeSantis was also less willing to engage in the rough and tumble of US election politics, he added.
“If he’s going to be in the gutter and you want to beat him, you better be willing and ready and able to go in the gutter too,” said Bigelow, referring to the former president. “You better be able to kill — and that’s not who Ron is.”
Asked for comment, a DeSantis spokesperson referred to the governor’s comment to NBC in August: “If I had a nickel for every naysayer I’ve had in my life, I’d be a very, very wealthy man.”
The 79-year-old property tycoon spoke to the FT over four hours in his compound in Las Vegas, describing his belief in the existence of extraterrestrial beings and that human consciousness survives death.
Bigelow once owned Skinwalker Ranch, a hotspot for believers in paranormal activity. He spent hundreds of millions of dollars on Bigelow Aerospace, launching two spacecraft with Russian partners, and investigated claims of UFOs for a once-secret Pentagon programme. In 2016, Elon Musk’s SpaceX attached his Bigelow Expandable Activity Module to the International Space Station, where it remains in orbit.
“Politics is just something you have to suffer,” Bigelow said. “Space is a lot of fun.”