A charity meant to help people stay off public assistance was the signature project of Florida’s popular first lady, Casey DeSantis. But over three years, it had managed to raise only about $2 million to help struggling families in Florida.
Then last fall, a $10 million windfall suddenly arrived from an unlikely source: a Medicaid contractor embroiled in a case of overbilling.
Within weeks, the money was gone — not to churches or other groups helping the needy. Instead, the Hope Florida Foundation quietly funneled it to two nonprofit political committees that helped Gov. Ron DeSantis and his allies defeat a November ballot measure that would have legalized marijuana.
The mystery of the $10 million — and how it ended up being used to help the governor’s political aims — has engulfed Mr. DeSantis and his wife in a growing scandal in Florida. Republican state lawmakers and news reporters are investigating the money trail just as Mr. and Ms. DeSantis are mulling whether she should run for governor next year to succeed her husband.
Ms. DeSantis has made the Hope Florida initiative central to her public persona since she started the program in 2021. Hope Florida connects low-income families with churches and local groups that might help them with housing, food or other needs so that they do not seek government assistance; the Hope Florida Foundation is its nonprofit fund-raising arm.
“Hope Florida is a philosophy,” Ms. DeSantis said in St. Augustine, Fla., on Thursday at an event with the governor trumpeting the initiative’s achievements. “It shows we can help people in need.”