E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images; Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
- DeSantis has officially lost the support of the biggest donor to his 2022 re-election.
- Ken Griffin, a GOP billionaire megadonor, cited DeSantis "ongoing battle with Disney."
- "It's not clear to me what voter base he is intending to appeal to," said Griffin.
Ron DeSantis has officially lost the support of Ken Griffin, the Republican billionaire who was the biggest donor to the Florida governor's 2022 re-election campaign.
"I don't know his strategy," Griffin said in an interview with CNBC. "It's not clear to me what voter base he is intending to appeal to."
Griffin, the CEO of the multinational hedge fund Citadel, gave $5 million to DeSantis' re-election effort. And he told POLITICO in an interview last November that he was ready to support the governor's presidential campaign, saying that "our country would be well-served by him as president."
But Griffin has been apparently dissatisfied with way DeSantis' campaign has been run, and his comments in the CNBC interview are his most definitive to date.
"First-term governor -- just a phenomenal job," said Griffin. "But that hasn't been how this last few months has played out."
"The ongoing battle with Disney I think is pointless," Griffin continued. "In fact, it doesn't reflect well on the ethos of Florida."
Griffin, who's been public about his antipathy towards former President Donald Trump, also said he would sit out the primary altogether.
The DeSantis campaign did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
The governor has been waging a battle against the entertainment giant for well over a year, revoking the company's self-governing status in Disney World in April 2022 over the company's opposition to Florida's Parental Rights in Education Law — dubbed "Don't Say Gay" by critics.
Disney has since sued the State of Florida, alleging that DeSantis has tried to "weaponize government power" over the company.
DeSantis later told CNBC that he has "basically moved on" from the feud.
The Florida governor has since struggled to break through as a presidential candidate, with former President Donald Trump leading the field by a substantial margin.
According to recent polling averages, DeSantis currently has the support of somewhere between 12 to 15% of Republican primary voters nationwide.