Tech and finance moguls are putting money and weight behind ‘Trump with a brain’ Ron DeSantis............Right on time, Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida whose star has risen rapidly over the past couple of years, appeared and efficiently worked through a photo line, before addressing the room over salads and chicken at lunch in the hotel’s RIME restaurant. With the majestic Rocky Mountains in the background, the group had assembled for the second of a pair of fundraising events for DeSantis in Utah in late July, raising money for his 2022 gubernatorial reelection campaign. Jorgensen, who serves as chair of the Utah Republican Party, recounts that the event was composed of some “upper-class donors” in “dressed-up casual” attire, as it was a “more expensive fundraiser,” he estimated (tickets to the lunch event reportedly went for $5,000 a pop). DeSantis spoke for about half an hour, Jorgensen remembers, touching on topics such as pushing back against supposedly “woke” corporations such as Disney, and how he opened up the economy in Florida during the pandemic.
It’s DeSantis’s unabashed pro-business, anti–political correctness stances, combined with just enough of former President Donald Trump’s pugnaciousness, that have earned him admiration among some of Florida’s increasingly powerful tech and finance set, some of whom wager he could ride the wave all the way to the White House in 2024...................
https://fortune.com/2022/09/08/business-billionaires-backing-ron-desantis-2024-president-shift-business-conversation/
