• AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    11 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    Aug 12 (Reuters) - As Florida Governor Ron DeSantis scrambles to shore up his struggling run for the Republican presidential nomination, he has spent far more than any rival on courting an influential Christian conservative leader and his following in the key early voting state of Iowa.

    For that money, DeSantis and supporting groups got three pages of advertisements in a booklet distributed at the July forum attended by 2,000 Christian conservatives, and tickets to the summit, lunch and an after-dinner event.

    In emailed comments to Reuters, Vander Plaats said the charges were “not even close to exorbitant” for the chance to be promoted before an audience of nearly 2,000 “engaged grassroots activists” at a forum that received extensive national political coverage.

    In 2010, the year he took charge of the Family Leader group, he led a campaign that unseated three Iowa Supreme Court justices who had voted to overturn the state’s gay marriage ban.

    The fundraising document, reviewed by Reuters, lists contacts at Republican presidential campaigns, super PACs and other groups supporting the candidates, and details how much each was willing to spend ahead of the mid-July Family Leader forum, among the largest gatherings of social conservatives in Iowa before the caucuses.

    According to the Vander Plaats’ group fundraising document, the DeSantis campaign paid $25,000 to the organization for its ad in a commemorative booklet distributed at the event and an invitation to a special after-event dinner with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.


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