Casey DeSantis

Casey DeSantis may once (in the distant days of late 2023) have possessed some hope that she would become First Lady of the United States.

Now, though, the First Lady of Florida has adjusted her expectations and wants only to become the Governor of her own state.

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/5267460-florida-first-lady-casey-desantis-controversy/

As with her husband, Ron, though, so with Casey: nomination has to come before election.  Before she contends with the Democratic Party nominee, she has to contend with her fellow Republicans. And in that respect, she is encountering some turbulence. 

She raised her profile early in her first-ladyship, with a program called "Hope Florida -- A pathway to prosperity" in 2021, a program implemented by the Florida Department of Children and Families.   

The goal of the program is to maintain a network of private sector non-profit and faith based groups that will help individual Floridians develop the resources, skills, opportunities, etc. to become self-sufficient economically. Put more bluntly, "Let's get names off the lists of those receiving public assistance, but do it in a way that doesn't starve anybody." 

A nice thought, but as always with such thoughts, execution is the key. It appears that in the first year of operation of the Hope Florida Foundation, the foundation raised $867,000. But most of it was from corporations doing business with the state government or regulated by it, so this might have seemed a bit like a shakedown from the start. Disbursements within that first year (to the private sector non-profit groups etc.) were minimal. 

Hmmm.  What's going on? On April 15 of this year the chairperson of the foundation told a committee of the Florida House that the organization had no bylaws, budget, or recorded minutes.  

Dana Carvey's Church Lady would point out, in a faith based way, that if something shady WERE going on, that absence of a paper trail would be very, con -veeeeen -ient. 

But then things get weird, with Centene Corp. Centene is a Medicaid contractor with the state.  It appears to have over-billed the state for its services, and to have settled the dispute with a promise to re-pay millions of dollars. Some folks claim a portion of that settlement money was in fact sent to the Hope Florida Foundation and ended up in the hands of political groups campaigning against a ballot measure to legalize marijuana last fall. 

That would be bad.