Exclusive-DeSantis and his backers paid $95,000 to Iowa religious leader’s group, documents show

investing.com:

By Alexandra Ulmer and Joseph Tanfani

(Reuters) — As Florida Governor Ron DeSantis scrambles to shore up his struggling run for the Republican presidential nomination, he has spent far more than any rival on courting an influential Christian conservative leader and his following in the key early voting state of Iowa.

Trailing far behind former President Donald Trump in national polls and beset by turmoil in his campaign, DeSantis and his advisers are spending heavily in Iowa in hopes of stalling Trump’s momentum by beating him in the state’s caucuses on Jan. 15, where Republicans begin to choose their next presidential nominee. The state’s influential evangelical voting base is crucial to that strategy.

The DeSantis campaign, a super PAC linked to him and a nonprofit group supporting him together paid $95,000 in recent months to the Family Leader Foundation, an Iowa-based nonprofit led by evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats, according to campaign finance reports and a document prepared by an Iowa state lawmaker who was helping the Vander Plaats organization raise money for a July 14 presidential candidate forum.

The document and the amount spent by DeSantis and his allies are previously unreported.

For that money, DeSantis and supporting groups got three pages of advertisements in a booklet distributed at the July forum attended by 2,000 Christian conservatives, and tickets to the summit, lunch and an after-dinner event.

But the real value may be more in building a relationship with Vander Plaats, whose endorsement is coveted in the early-voting state, said three campaign finance experts and an academic who studies Iowa campaign spending.

Vander Plaats and his group are leaders in the state’s Christian conservative