Global Courant
WASHINGTON (AP) — Gov. of Florida, Ron DeSantis had a multi-car accident Tuesday while traveling in a motorcade to campaign events in Tennessee for his 2024 presidential bid, but was unhurt.
Traffic slowed and caused four cars in the motorcade to collide, Chattanooga, Tennessee, police told WTVC-TV. One employee suffered minor injuries, police said.
The Republican White House hopeful and his team “are unharmed,” campaign press secretary Bryan Griffin told The Associated Press.
DeSantis campaign representatives did not answer questions about who was driving the governor and did not provide details about the accident. DeSantis went through to his event, spokesman Andrew Romeo said. A spokesman for the Florida governor’s office deferred questions about the accident to the campaign.
DeSantis would hold events in central and eastern Tennessee, which he’s drawn a lot of attention to during his recent campaigns. Earlier this month, he addressed more than 1,800 attendees at a state GOP dinner in Nashville.
The governor of Florida, that has stayed behind front-runner Donald Trump in the GOP presidential contest was expected to be at a fundraiser Tuesday at a private residence in Chattanooga. Hosts for the fundraiser had to pay $10,000 per couple for the event, while co-hosts paid $5,000 and other attendees paid $2,000 each, according to the Chattanooga Times Free Press.
DeSantis was scheduled to attend additional fundraisers in Knoxville and Franklin on Tuesday.
The Republican nominee has been attending a series of fundraisers lately as his campaign has experienced surprising financial strain. He was in Utah last weekend to raise money and in New York last week for an event in the Hamptons.
Just two months later participation in the competitionhas DeSantis already been cutting staff as he faces new questions about his aggressive spending, his media strategy and his apparent willingness to fight with all enemies except Trump, the one person he must defeat to claim the GOP’s 2024 presidential nomination.
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“The DeSantis campaign is recalibrating. Clearly we have to,” said Republican strategist Terry Sullivan, who led Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign. “But at the end of the day, they are still better positioned than any other Donald Trump challenger times 10.”
The team at DeSantis has quietly expressed his confidence for months when voters would eventually tire of Trump’s escalating legal troubles and personal baggage. But that same baggage, playing out in the US justice system just as the GOP primaries intensify, leaves little oxygen for its rivals to break through. And Trump’s standing with the Republican primary voters seems to grow stronger with each new legal challenge.
Still, DeSantis’ team has so far raised a staggering $150 million for his presidential ambitions. The vast majority, $130 million, has gone to a super-PAC run by allies who cannot legally coordinate with the campaign.
The DeSantis campaign itself raised more than $20 million in his first six weeks in the race, recently declassified federal documents revealed that he and his team spent more than $8 million on a spending spree that included more than 100 paid staffers, a large security team, and luxury travel.
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This story has been corrected to show that DeSantis was in Nashville earlier this month, not last week.
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Follow the AP’s coverage of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis https://apnews.com/hub/ron-desantis.
