Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis skipped the Conservative Political Action Conference this week amid sharpening tensions between him and former President Trump.
DeSantis instead tended to the party’s donor class, addressing the Club for Growth’s annual conference in Palm Beach Thursday.
The conclave of the GOP’s 120 top donors was held at the ultra-luxe Breakers resort.
“I’m not content to just keep taxes low and stay out of anything else,” DeSantis said in a muscular address to the party’s moneymen. “I mean I believe woke ideology is pernicious. … my policies are helping to protect people from having the woke ideology shoved down their throats in institution after institution.
“You can fight back, and you can beat these people. Because in Florida we’ve beaten them time and time again, on education, on lockdowns, you name it, we’ve come out on top. And not only have we come out on top in policy, we’ve transformed the state into the nation’s leading red state,” the governor said
DeSantis has addressed CPAC in the past and reps for the governor declined to comment on why he was passing this year.
Trump spoke at CPAC every year of his presidency and since leaving the White House.
Some pols stayed away as the conference faced a cloud of scandal this year from sexual misconduct charges leveled at CPAC boss Matt Schlapp.
Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union which puts on the conference, has been accused of groping a male staffer of Herschel Walker’s Georgia Senate campaign.
He was later served by a lawsuit from the anonymous accuser.
Schlapp has denied the allegation.
The accuser — who promised the Daily Beast he would come forward if Schlapp denied the charges — has yet to do so.
Former Vice President Mike Pence, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, and Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel did not attend CPAC.
Past sponsors — including Fox News and the nonprofit Turning Point USA — did not participate in this year’s conference.
By: Ny Post
