Florida governor Ron DeSantis fundraised $8.2 million in the first 24 hours after the official launch of his 2024 presidential bid, his campaign said Thursday.
The haul comes after DeSantis kicked off his campaign in a Twitter Spaces conversation with Elon Musk on Wednesday evening that was plagued by technological glitches as the feed struggled to accommodate more than a half million users. Musk and tech entrepreneur David Sacks said the servers were “melting” and “straining” under the stress, causing the audio feed to go in and out and to sound distorted.
The campaign took the technological issues in stride, with a spokesman saying there was so much enthusiasm for DeSantis’s vision that he “literally busted up the internet.” The governor was able to raise $1 million in a single hour on Wednesday, according to the campaign.
Meanwhile, President Biden raised $6.3 million in his first 24 hours as a candidate in 2019. While former president Donald Trump raised roughly $9.5 million in the six weeks after announcing his own 2024 bid in November.
DeSantis’s $8.2 million total includes both online contributions and donations secured by callers who participated in a “Ron-O-Rama” on Thursday to make calls to fundraise for the campaign.
DeSantis enters the race as the current runner-up to Trump, who continues to dominate 2024 polling. In a RealClearPolitics average of national polling, Trump leads with 53.9 percent support, while DeSantis comes in second at 21.3 percent. Former vice president Mike Pence, who has not yet entered the race, is in third at 4.7 percent, followed by former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley at 4.6 percent, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy at 2.9 percent and Senator Tim Scott at 1.9 percent.
The pro-DeSantis Never Back Down PAC is planning a $100 million voter outreach push, per the New York Times, an effort that includes knocking on the door of every possible DeSantis voter at least four times in New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina and at least five times in Iowa. The group plans to hire more than 2,600 field organizers by Labor Day.
A key part of the efforts, according to the report, is a facility on the outskirts of Des Moines. The facility, which has been nicknamed “Fort Benning,” has already put 189 staffers through an eight-day training program.
“No one has ever contemplated the scale of this organization or operation, let alone done it,” Never Back Down executive director Chris Jankowski told the outlet. “This has just never even been dreamed up.”
The PAC expects to have a budget of at least $200 million.