The mismanagement of public money and its secret alliances with party politics has thrown sand in the gears of Mrs. Ron DeSantis’s bid to continue her governor husband’s legacy in Florida.
In a bid to continue DeSantis governorship, Princess Casey launched a welfare assistance program called Hope Florida, which was supposed to benefit the state’s downtrodden without taxpayer contributions.
“I don’t believe government is the solution to anything,” Casey DeSantis says. Instead she talks a lot about mobilizing the “20,000 institutions of faith” in Florida, who might show up with a tray of lasagna and some groceries to a hypothetical single mom having a tough time making ends meet.
Hope Florida, a phone referral system to direct people to assistance, purports to have helped 30,000 Floridians in its four year existence. However, Rep. Alex Andrade, a Pensacola Republican, says that there is zero proof from Hope Florida, no tangible track record, of success.
The sand in the gears of Operation Princess concerns a $10 million payment to the Hope Florida Foundation due to a settlement with Centene, the state’s largest Medicaid contractor, that overbilled Florida $67 million for Medicaid.
The $10 million should have landed in Florida’s general fund.
Instead the money ended up in the hands of political groups that campaigned against a state proposal that would legalize recreational marijuana last November.
DeSantis denied the allegations, but on Tuesday, Florida media obtained a draft of an agreement that seemed to contradict the governor.
According to that media obtained draft, $10 million was funneled through the charity connected to Casey’s organization, and eventually sent to two nonprofit groups involved in the campaign against the ballot measure. One of those groups gave money to a PAC tied to James Uthmeier, the governor’s then-chief of staff. Uthmeier was later appointed by DeSantis to be the state attorney general.
Governor Boots has defended his Princess, saying, “Some people feel threatened by the first lady. Let’s just be clear about that,” DeSantis said. “They know this; you saw her up here. You know, if you’re looking at 2026 and you’ve got some horse, you don’t want her anywhere near that. You’re very worried because she runs circles around their people. Everybody knows that.”
Byron Donalds, who has a frosty relationship with DeSantis, has also entered the governor’s race with the endorsement of Orange Blobface.
A Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy survey released in March showed Casey DeSantis with a 53 percent approval rating, slightly higher than that of Donalds, who came in at 48 percent.
