(NewsNation) — GOP presidential hopeful Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis told donors on a call Tuesday he is staying in the race, according to two sources with knowledge of the conversation who spoke to NewsNation.
DeSantis said he plans to go through at least the Super Tuesday group of primaries on March 5th.
Campaign aides also told supporters they hope Donald Trump will hit rival Nikki Haley so hard in the next week she is politically weakened by next Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary.
DeSantis told donors the campaign is on better money footing despite having financial problems last year, sources said.
However, many of the efforts normally handled by the campaign are now being done by the super PAC Never Back Down so that the overhead for the campaign is reduced.
The super PAC sponsored several days of events featuring DeSantis last week throughout Iowa as well as meet-and-greets Tuesday in Greenville, South Carolina, and Claremont, New Hampshire.
There will be two town halls Wednesday featuring DeSantis in Hampton and Derry, New Hampshire.
Sources said that DeSantis told his supporters not to listen to the media stories predicting his campaign’s fate.
In an editorial printed Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal said DeSantis “faces no clear path to the nomination. He’s well behind Ms. Haley in New Hampshire and South Carolina. If he believes, as he says, that Mr. Trump cant win in November, he should leave the race and give Ms. Haley a chance to take on Mr. Trump one on one.”
During a campaign rally in Atkinson, New Hampshire, Trump said Haley “is a disaster. … I moved her to the United Nations. Honestly, she was not a good negotiator.”
In response, Haley has increased her criticism of Trump and claims “chaos” surrounds the former president.
“Biden and Trump both focused on investigations, past issues, things that aren’t taking us forward. We can either have more of the same or we can say it’s time to change and move forward. I think our kids want that. I don’t want my kids to grow up like this,” she said at a town hall Tuesday evening.
