OAN Staff Taylor Tinsley
5:40 PM – Wednesday, July 16, 2025
Governor Ron DeSantis has appointed a new state Chief Financial Officer, setting up a conflict with Trump after the president already endorsed a candidate for the position in the race set for next year.
On Wednesday, DeSantis (R-Fla.) tapped State Senator Blaise Ingoglia as the state’s newest CFO, saying he is the most conservative senator who has set a clear record as a warrior for all the things Floridians elected them to do.
“I want people that have conservative principles,” DeSantis said. “I want people that are dedicated to the mission, but I also want people that run into the fire, that run towards the battles.”
54-year-old Ingoglia is a businessman and hardline DeSantis ally. He previously served as the Chair of the Florida Republican Party from 2015 to 2019.
Aside from overseeing the state’s finances, the CFO also supervises the insurance industry and serves as Chief Fire Marshal.
Ingoglia asserted his office is going to be proactive and that he’s going to be a “conservative pitbull” when it comes to spending.
“With the audit authority at the CFO’s office I promise you we are going to start digging in and we are going to start calling out some of this wasteful spending,” Ingoglia said.
Ingoglia will serve the remainder of former CFO Jimmy Patronis’ term, who left the job earlier this year after landing a seat in Congress. He is expected to face off against State Senator Joe Gruters (R-Fla.) in next year’s election for the position, who President Trump has already endorsed.
“If George Washington rose from the dead and came back and tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Will you appoint Joe Gruters CFO?’ my response would be no, I can’t do that without betraying the voters that elected me,” DeSantis said.
DeSantis cited several reasons why he didn’t and wouldn’t appoint Gruters, reiterating he goes by record. The GOP governor asserted Gruters has taken major positions contrary to what the state’s voter base wants to do.
The governor claimed Gruters voted to violate Floridians Second Amendment rights while Ingoglia stood in favor. DeSantis also said Gruters voted against legislation to hold teachers unions accountable for their partisan activism.
“On immigration he was the author, an architect, of this terrible amnesty bill that would have made everything I’ve done, including Alligator Alcatraz, to help President Trump’s illegal immigration removal agenda illegal in the state of Florida,” DeSantis claimed.
DeSantis was at odds with several members of Florida’s GOP-led legislature over advancing a bill sponsored by Gruters earlier this year, which the governor strongly rooted against seeing as how it axed millions of dollars from his office for immigration enforcement. Senator Ingoglia notably voted against it.
Gruters, who also served as Chair of the Florida Republican Party (2019-2023), has named Trump’s 2024 co-campaign manager, Chris Lacivita, and the president’s top pollster, Tony Fabrizio, as senior strategists for his campaign.
In a statement, Fabrizio said “DeSantis learned the hard way that opposing Trump in statewide Republican contests is a recipe for disaster.”
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