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Presidential candidate Ron DeSantis

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Hotel entrepreneur Robert Bigelow, the largest single sponsor of conservative U.S. presidential candidate Ron DeSantis, is calling for a correction of the candidate's policies. He will not give any more money until DeSantis has brought new donors on board and made his campaign much more "moderate".

Bigelow, who made his fortune with Budget Suites of America, a low-cost long-stay hotel chain, donated $20 million in March to the Never Back Down superpac, which supports the DeSantis candidacy.

In April, the incumbent governor of Florida signed a law banning abortions from the sixth week of pregnancy, the so-called "Six-Week-Ban" – one of the harshest and most controversial abortion regulations in the United States to date.

Bigelow thinks this is far too early. Many women don't even know they're pregnant at this early stage. If DeSantis does not change the course of his policy, Bigelow told the Reuters news agency, he will lose to Trump. »Extremism doesn't win elections.« That's what he communicated to the campaign manager.

They are "grateful" for the supporters and their donations, Reuters quotes a spokesman for the DeSantis campaign. This is the only way to have the "ability to be competitive in the long term".

DeSantis has been trying for months to trump Trump's strictly conservative course with his "fight against wokism" – but so far without too much success. Just recently, he caused a sensation with the announcement that he wanted to rewrite the curricula in Florida in order to interpret the time of slavery differently, i.e. less critically.

Many observers assume that he is unlikely to score enough points with such volts against Trump in the end. According to recent polls, Republican voters' approval of DeSantis recently fell to 13 percent, up from 47 percent for Trump.

Bigelow is by far DeSantis' biggest donor – and yet his criticism is only the latest sign of an already weakening campaign. So far, DeSantis has been able to collect far more money than his primary competitor Donald Trump: At the end of June, his donation account had 53 million dollars, with DeSantis more than double. But consumption is also apparently extreme. Recently, due to economic problems, DeSantis had to lay off 38 employees, more than a third of his team.

This is another reason why Bigelow's criticism hits hard. He will not donate any more money for the time being, according to the billionaire. "Not as long as I don't see that he's able to raise more money himself." Nevertheless, he still considers DeSantis "the best man for this country".

sbo/Reuters