Failure to Re-Launch? DeSantis Replaces Campaign Manager
The DeSantis campaign is seeing some worrying signs. Will this help?
Ron DeSantis has been attempting to shift his campaign a bit, trying to get back on the right track. Unfortunately, the attempt to pivot has not been very successful. The DeSantis campaign has operated as a pretty much Very Online campaign, and he’s been stuck on the culture war stuff even with an excellent interview with Jake Tapper and a pretty solid new platform.
There was a significant layoff from the campaign, with up to one-third of the staff removed to reduce overhead. Now, we find out from Marc Caputo at The Messenger that DeSantis has changed campaign managers.
Outgoing campaign manager Generra Peck will remain as chief strategist on the campaign as part of the restructuring. Peck guided DeSantis’s blowout reelection bid last year, but she quickly became the subject of criticism from DeSantis advisers and donors in mid-July after his presidential campaign stalled and money dried up.
The campaign then twice cut staff and expenses and retooled DeSantis’s press strategy to make him more available to the mainstream media.
But donors and some outside advisers weren’t satisfied, leading DeSantis last week to ask Uthmeier to diagnose problems with the campaign and see if he could fix them. Ultimately, it led the governor to ask Uthmeier to take the job.
DeSantis is in a precarious position. His donors aren’t small-dollar folks. They have already maxed out their contributions. His PAC has a lot of money, but he’s not allowed to coordinate with them. What’s worse, as much as he’s making a play for the early states, his stock is dropping in New Hampshire. A new poll now has him tied with Chris Christie - who, as a northeastern Republican himself, will probably have his best performance there among any of the early states.
So, the campaign turnaround continues, but the other non-Trump candidates are also on the rise. If DeSantis wants to stay in second place, he will really need this campaign adjustment to stick. Which could be a challenge, considering all the continued reservations major donors are having behind the scenes (if the rumors are to be believed, and I think some of them could be).
If DeSantis ends up getting the nomination, it will be one of the greatest comebacks in political history. Sure, he started out in second place, but the campaign has had an extremely rough start. If he doesn’t get the nomination, it will be a case study in future elections as to how you should not start your campaigns. The DeSantis team made a lot of decisions that went against the grain, and if he fails to get the nomination, then it’s a lesson learned for future upstart campaigns.
But I go back to something I’ve said repeatedly: It’s way too early to count anyone out, from Donald Trump all the way down. Anything could happen, and this absolutely chaotic primary will be an interesting one to watch for posterity’s sake.