‘Cease and Desist:’ Iowa GOP County Leader Blasts DeSantis Super PAC for ‘Lying’ About Grassroots Backing

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by Marc Caputo

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign outsourced its ground game to a super PAC in Iowa, earning positive press coverage and gaining a possible edge in what could be the most important Republican contests in the race for the White House.

But at least in one county, the arrangement has backfired.

In an extraordinary letter obtained by The Messenger, Muscatine County’s GOP demanded that the pro-DeSantis “Never Back Down PAC cease and desist all attempts to contact and collaborate with the Muscatine County Republican Party of Iowa.” The letter, sent by certified mail, went on to accuse the PAC of potentially “unlawful and unethical collaboration … with Republican County Parties in the State of Iowa.”

Never Back Down disputed the accusation of wrongdoing and an independent campaign finance expert consulted by The Messenger said the PAC did not appear to be breaking the law.

The legal issue aside, the dispute is rooted in the unique way that DeSantis is using the super PAC to canvass voters on the ground. Typically, that’s handled by a campaign while a super PAC – often funded by billionaires and with corporate money — functions as a mammoth PR machine churning out millions of dollars’ worth of mailers and TV and radio ads to help a candidate.

To Muscatine GOP Chair Daniel Freeman, DeSantis is essentially “lying” by astroturfing the grassroots nature of the Iowa caucuses, which are set to take place in January.

“He is the first presidential candidate that is going out and buying and paying for representation … he’s not building a grassroots organization,” Freeman said. “And it could very well be that he uses Never Back Down because he can’t garner state support from individual residents in Iowa. Therein lies the problem. He is misleading the public of Iowa by sending busloads of people to a parade and they don’t even live in the area and in fact, most of them don’t even live in the state of Iowa.”

Freeman said he’s neutral in the race and neither supports nor opposes DeSantis, current frontrunner Donald Trump or any of the other dozen candidates.

But Never Back Down’s spokeswoman, Erin Perrine, blamed the former president’s campaign.

“They’re running a flailing Iowa campaign,” she said. “Trump can’t fill an event. They can’t match us in endorsements. They haven’t even tried. They can’t and won’t organize. They’re not capturing people at events the way we are. They’re not as sophisticated and, frankly, they’re not as well-staffed as we are. They’ve failed at every operational level.”

Asked for comment, Trump campaign senior adviser Chris LaCivita gave a one-word reply: “nuts.”

Iowa state Sen. Adrian Dickey, a DeSantis campaign surrogate, disputed the notion that DeSantis needs to buy support, saying that the candidate keeps returning to the state and “the crowds keep getting bigger and the cheers keep getting louder.”

Still, Freeman’s letter came at a difficult time for DeSantis.

The Florida governor has been crushed by bad headlines recently that detail how polls of Republican primary voters indicate DeSantis has lost support to Trump announcing his presidential campaign last month, elevating the importance of first-in-the-nation Iowa, which DeSantis has long viewed as a likely make-or-break state.

Flush with at least $80 million raised by DeSantis during his 2022 reelection, Never Back Down has plans to spend as much as $200 million to boost DeSantis, with a disproportionate amount aimed at Iowa, where organization is key to assembling crews of voters who stick together in a caucus and attract other caucus-goers to their candidate of choice. The committee has established its training camp for paid canvassers in Iowa and boasts of 17 paid political advisers and operatives – the largest ground game the state has seen.

During the My Waterloo Days parade earlier this month in Blackhawk County, Never Back Down dispatched a bus of as many as 20 T-shirt-wearing DeSantis backers to walk the streets.

When word reached nearby Muscatine County, it was a troubling sign to Freeman that corporate money – which is largely banned from financing political candidates and parties in the state – could be flowing into county parties, which ultimately prompted his letter.

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