First, "Koch network raises over $70 million for push to sink Trump - J
The political network established by conservative industrialists Charles and David Koch has raised more than $70 million for political races as it looks to help Republicans move past Donald Trump, according to an official with the group.
With some of this large sum to start, the network, Americans for Prosperity Action, plans to throw its weight into the GOP presidential nominating contest for the first time in its nearly 20-year history. The network spent nearly $500 million supporting Republican candidates and conservative policies in the 2020 election cycle alone.
[...] The Koch network’s goal in the 2024 presidential primaries, which has been described only indirectly in written internal communications, is to stop Trump from winning the Republican nomination. In February, a top political official in the network, Emily Seidel, wrote a memo to donors and activists saying it was time to “have a president in 2025 who represents a new chapter.”
Since then, Republican voters have rallied around the former president, with his support in polls strengthening his front-runner status after his two indictments. Some of the biggest donors in Republican politics, including some in the Koch network, had been hanging their hopes on Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida as Trump’s most promising rival. But DeSantis has disconcerted many donors with his early campaign stumbles and a slip in his poll numbers.
With seven months until the primaries, the Koch coalition of conservatives is still searching [...] A memo that circulated inside the Koch network this month made the case that Trump’s renomination was not inevitable, arguing that the issue of electability could still weaken him.
Yeah, and if not DeSantis, Nicky Haley or some such?
DeSantis is the focus of the second item carried by Seattle Times:
The administration of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, R, steered $92 million last year in leftover federal coronavirus stimulus money to a controversial highway interchange project that directly benefits a top political donor, according to state records.
The decision by the Florida Department of Transportation to use money from the 2021 American Rescue Plan for the I-95 interchange at Pioneer Trail Road near Daytona Beach fulfilled a yearslong effort by Mori Hosseini, a politically connected housing developer who owns two large tracts of largely forested land abutting the planned interchange. The funding through the DeSantis administration, approved shortly after the governor’s reelection, expedited the project by more than a decade, according to state documents.
Hosseini plans to develop the land — which includes a sensitive watershed once targeted for conservation by the state — into approximately 1,300 dwelling units and 650,000 square feet of nonresidential use, including an outdoor village shopping district. [...]
“With or without the interchange, we would have built Woodhaven there, but it certainly helps,” he told the Daytona Beach News Journal in March 2019.
Government documents obtained by The Washington Post through open-records requests show a steady relationship between DeSantis and Hosseini in recent years. The governor’s office occasionally received requests for DeSantis to attend events or support proposals from Hosseini, and DeSantis extended invitations to Hosseini in return for events in Tallahassee.
Hosseini helped DeSantis arrange a round of golf at Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia in 2018, according to the Tampa Bay Times. A year later, Hosseini donated a golf simulator [etc. ...]
Developers are Crabgrass, and DeSantis has that big, big patch of the stuff growing on his front yard electoral lawn. Bless Ron. Having friendly supporters.
So, yeah, Nickky Haley or some such. Ron's radioactive on too many levels.
Fault lines presage an earthquake. Trump will not like this, and Koch money spent elsewhere will be remembered.