Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign is only six weeks old, and look how well it’s doing. He’s polling a distant second behind his state’s most famous resident. His team has dropped straight-up homophobic (and, of course, homoerotic) ads. And he’s added pizza to the list of foodstuffs with which he’s now unflatteringly associated. To top it all off, he’s now had to further gut his campaign team because he spent too much money too quickly and with little to show of it.
As per Politico, since the campaign’s launch on May 24, the DeSantis team has slimmed down by a whopping 40%, or 38 staffers total of what was once a 90-plus person operation. Last week he let go of about a dozen people. On Tuesday he added/subtracted another 26. Those number include 10 event planning positions, as well as the departures of two senior advisors.
In a statement, campaign manager Generra Peck tried to spin the news as a win. “Following a top-to-bottom review of our organization, we have taken additional, aggressive steps to streamline operations and put Ron DeSantis in the strongest position to win this primary and defeat Joe Biden,” Peck said. “Gov. DeSantis is going to lead the Great American Comeback and we’re ready to hit the ground running as we head into an important month of the campaign.”
Won’t having what let’s charitably call a more exclusive campaign staff get in the way of DeSantis’ main gig, i.e., being the governor of Florida? Possibly, although these days he mostly seems to go to war with companies he doesn’t like, even if it empties his own constituents’ pockets. Sometimes he even meddles in the affairs of other states.
Then again, DeSantis is attempting to “reset” his campaign, after a mere six weeks on the trail. But given his financial and staff issues, this is more like a struggling TV show firing most of its original cast and moving to a network no one watches.
(Via Politico)