DeSantis Campaign’s Lavish Spending on Private Jets Overshadowed Advertising Costs

The campaign of Ron DeSantis for the 2024 Presidential election was marked by extravagant spending on private jets, surpassing even the costs allocated for television advertising. This preference for luxury travel, as reported by Florida Politics and highlighted by Boing Boing, revealed a stark contrast between the public image and private practices of the DeSantis family.

Perhaps the single most shocking statistic of the campaign was that it spent more on private jets than TV advertising. This speaks to an enormous sense of entitlement and an almost pathological detachment from reality.

– Florida Politics

In 2023, Ron and Casey DeSantis’ penchant for high-end travel was funded by a now-defunct Florida economic development agency, which covered a $1.6 million bill for a week-long global trade mission. This expenditure was accompanied by $66,000 for hotel stays and $9,800 for meals, amounting to nearly $9,000 per night for hotels and $1,400 daily for meals.

During Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign, this trend of lavish spending continued unabated. Political commentator Rick Wilson of the Lincoln Project described the campaign’s financial trajectory: “They went through a total of about $130 million to $140 million… to end up spending about $30,000 per voter they got in Iowa. They are out of money, they’re out of time. They spent an incredible amount of their campaign resources… because Casey can’t fly commercial, because she has to be on private jets.”

This spending pattern has been criticized as demonstrating a sense of entitlement and detachment from everyday realities, with more funds being channeled into private jet travel than into vital campaign advertising. The DeSantis campaign’s approach to expenditures raises questions about their financial priorities and their perception of luxury versus necessity in political campaigning.