Rebekah Mercer strokes a check to Ron DeSantis

One of the big,unanswered questions about the gubernatorial campaign of Republican U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis has been whether some of the billionaires and super rich folks listed on his national finance team – Sheldon Adelson, Rebekah Mercer, Foster Friess, to name a few  – would actually pony up themselves to help DeSantis.

Well, Rebekah Mercer last week wrote a $25,000 check to DeSantis, political committee. It's a drop for the bucket for the highly influential conservative activist and daughter of hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, but it does indicate her commitment to the Palm Coast conservative.

The Mercers own (in addition to the disgraced and politically toxic data firm  Cambridge Analytica) a stake in Breitbart News, formerly run by Steve Bannon.  Breitbart has been promoting DeSantis aggressively. The site has also been knocking repeatedly DeSantis' primary opponent, "anti-Trump, pro-open borders establishment candidate Adam Putnam," as a Breitbart contributor  called him earlier this month.

That author of that piece, Steve Hantler, has a piece on RealClearPolitics o today headlined, "Trump-Bashing Will Sink GOP Establishment's Adam Putnam." An excerpt:

…As the campaign wore on, Putnam – who refused to attend a single Trump rally in Florida during the campaign, even though he is a statewide official – continued to offer a steady stream of negative commentary of the candidate.  When Trump defended himself against attacks made by Khizr Khan and the news media during the 2016 Democratic convention, Putnam lashed out at Trump for being "abhorrent and dishonorable" and said Trump's defense of himself "makes me question how badly he wants to win.  He keeps running his mouth about the most ridiculous things."…

CNN has described Hantler as a frequent "stand-in" for Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus, who has donated $250,000 to DeSantis' political committee. Marcus, like Putnam, was not an early fan of Trump either. He initially backed Jeb Bush for the 2018 presidential nomination, just like Putnam did.