Granted the 2024 presidential election is still a long time away but a pair of SFGATE reporters are trying to read the tea leaves in terms of what the big money donors are thinking. And they’ve come up with some evidence that maybe there has been a shift toward DeSantis:

San Francisco Giants principal owner Charles B. Johnson — a Republican mega-donor who has been criticized for some of his recent contributions — may be primed to back Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis over former President Donald Trump in a 2024 GOP presidential primary.

Johnson has donated nearly $500,000 to Friends of Ron DeSantis since January 2021, Florida state election records reviewed by SFGATE show…

Johnson is one of a handful of wealthy conservative donors to have possibly jumped ship. Billionaire Walter Buckley gave more than $1.5 million to Trump Victory prior to the 2020 election; since Nov. 2021, he’s given $1.25 million to DeSantis. Billionaire businessman John W. Childs dispersed six-figure checks to both Trump and DeSantis prior to the 2020 election, but has only recently given another big donation to DeSantis ($200,000 in March 2022). And Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross, who held a controversial Trump fundraiser in 2019, gave $100,000 to DeSantis in April 2022. None have donated to Trump since 2021.

Between January 2021 and August 5, 2022 DeSantis has raised $142 million, much of it from large dollar donors.

Of course there are a bunch of caveats here. For one, DeSantis is up for reelection this fall while Trump is not, so donations could be seen as part of an effort to keep him in office. But DeSantis is expected to easily defeat Charlie Crist this fall so why would donors be making so many big donations now?

Bloomberg has a piece up today that offers a convincing explanation. In order to be a credible candidate for 2024, DeSantis needs to do more than just win this year. Ideally, he needs to put in a dominating performance to launch a 2024 campaign:

Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is heavily favored to cruise to a second term in the November general election, but anything less than a convincing win over Democrat Charlie Crist could spell doom for any 2024 presidential aspirations…

A blowout in the Nov. 8 general election would give the governor the bounce he needs to launch a presidential campaign. He’s already persuaded billionaires including Citadel founder Ken Griffin to open their wallets, and a resounding victory would likely attract more deep-pocketed donors.

DeSantis will want to at least exceed Trump’s 3.3 percentage-point victory over Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential race in Florida to show he can carry the battleground state with broad support, said Susan MacManus, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of South Florida in Tampa.

That makes a lot of sense. If DeSantis were to scrape by, beating Crist narrowly, his credibility as a presidential candidate would be open to question. If on the other hand he crushes Crist that would probably open a lot more wallets. So I think what we’re seeing is early investment in DeSantis designed to set him up for future fundraising as a 2024 candidate.

The other caveat that comes to mind is that all of those donations mentioned above happened before the Mar-a-Lago raid by the FBI which some have claimed reset the GOP’s priorities and returned the focus to Trump. That could be true and it certainly seems to be what Trump’s people think. One of them was quoted as saying “The DeSantasy is over!”

My own take is that Trump’s ability to dominate the airwaves isn’t quite what it used to be without Twitter. Once he announces his candidacy that situation may change and donors may reevaluate their priorities, but until then I think DeSantis is still very much in the 2024 race.

I also think there’s still a chance, maybe only a small one but a chance nevertheless, that Trump will decide not to run. Trump is clearly motivated in part by a desire to dominate his doubters. If you tell him he can’t win he’ll run to prove you wrong. But no one is really mocking the idea that he could win the way Obama mocked him in 2011 at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner. He’s already won the White House so at this point it wouldn’t make any sense. And Democrats are clearly worried he could win it again, though they’re still not above taunting him. For his part, DeSantis has walked a fine line and definitely hasn’t set himself up as a rival to Trump.

Again, it’s probably a long shot but I don’t think it’s impossible that Trump could settle for playing kingmaker and endorsing DeSantis and even campaigning for him. Without the provocation and the mockery spurring him on, maybe that’s enough for him? We’ll know soon enough.