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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign is making cuts to its staffing, a person who is familiar with the decision but unauthorized to speak publicly on it told The Washington Post on Tuesday.
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The campaign restructuring involves the departures of 38 staffers — more than a third of the payroll — in recent weeks, including the changes confirmed Tuesday. The departures are part of a broader reset for the campaign, which is taking place just two months after DeSantis officially announced his run for the Republican nomination.
“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,” Generra Peck, DeSantis’s campaign manager, said in a statement. “Governor 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.”
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Politico was the first to report on the terminations.
On Tuesday, the campaign sent a note on “messaging guidance” to top supporters which stated that the campaign is “leaning into the reset.” The campaign says in the note that it will cut down on event and travel costs and “embrace being the underdog.” Central themes of the campaign will focus on the economy, the U.S.-Mexico border, China and “culture” — which the campaign defines as social issues in schools and within the military.
“We will press the gas on what works and pump the breaks [sic] on what doesn’t,” the note says.
Analysis: DeSantis’s silver bullet is now a dud
DeSantis’s campaign changes come as the governor grapples with how to break from a crowded field that polling shows is chasing former president Donald Trump for the nomination.
Skepticism about the viability of DeSantis’s 2024 bid has grown since he announced his run in May.
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While DeSantis and allies had banked on his popularity as governor and perceived electability when compared to Trump, polling still consistently shows the GOP base broadly favors Trump ahead of his fellow contenders.
A Monmouth University poll released Tuesday found that nearly 7 in 10 Republican voters say Trump is either “definitely” or “probably” the GOP’s strongest candidate against President Biden. Less than a quarter of Republican voters said DeSantis would be a stronger candidate when compared with Trump. Forty-seven percent said DeSantis would be weaker when compared with the former president.
Some people who have advised and supported DeSantis had raised private concerns about the effectiveness and insularity of his campaign operations, The Post reported earlier this month, as well as concerns about his message.
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Along with a Republican base that continues to favor a former president, DeSantis has been scrutinized for taking positions too far to the right on hot-button issues — such as LGBTQ+ rights and abortion — that could alienate more moderate voters.
DeSantis’s campaign raised $20 million in the second quarter, ranking second only to Trump’s combined committees in the Republican field. But the DeSantis campaign has run at a high burn rate with only 15 percent of donations coming from small donors who could consistently give again.
Ahead of the staffing news, however, DeSantis had expressed confidence in his position and the ground game his allies are building in early states, saying he’s campaigning for the long term.
“Watch and learn,” he said at a July event in Iowa when asked how he’d diminish Trump’s lead.
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Other shifts to the campaign are already underway as part of a broader reset. The campaign has started rolling out national policy and plans to do more mainstream media interviews around those proposals, a person close to the campaign told The Post earlier this month. This person also said they view the upcoming presidential debates — which DeSantis has been prepping for extensively — as the next opportunity to shake up the race. The first Republican primary debate is scheduled for Aug. 23 in Milwaukee, and DeSantis is among a handful of Republican presidential candidates who have qualified.
Another recent shift, according to several people close to the campaign: Phil Cox, a top strategist on DeSantis’s gubernatorial reelection, has become more involved with the campaign in recent weeks after stepping away earlier this year from the super PAC supporting DeSantis’s bid, Never Back Down.
Cox had stepped back because he did not want the work his company, GP3 Partners, did with Saudi-funded LIV Golf to be a distraction, according to the people close to the campaign. A DeSantis campaign memo recently highlighted the Trump family’s “cozy relationship with the Saudi Royal Family” as a potential avenue of attack. One person close to the campaign said Cox also didn’t want his name attached to the super PAC when he ultimately had little control over the group.
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“He knows the governor and knows how to win,” another said. Cox has been helping the campaign raise money and is part of its finance committee.
Addressing donors at a retreat in Park City, Utah, on Sunday, Peck, DeSantis’s campaign manager, acknowledged that the campaign had overspent and said it would cut event costs, people present said. Although some donors have privately said they want Peck replaced, she still retains DeSantis’s and his wife’s trust, according to people close to the campaign.
Peck “owned that we built too fast,” said one donor who attended, and highlighted a widely shared moment from a relatively low-cost (roughly $900) event recently in Tega Cay, S.C. — where a self-proclaimed “hardcore Trump supporter” praised DeSantis — as evidence that the campaign can succeed on a leaner budget.
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“If Trump doesn’t show up we know it’s all quivers on Ron DeSantis,” said the donor who attended the Park City retreat, adding that DeSantis “wants this to be about his deeds versus others’ words.” The donor said he left the retreat “feeling a lot better than I did going in Friday” and that the event was full of core supporters who “know there’s going to be ups and downs” and believe the “media barrage against [DeSantis] at some point has to work to our advantage.”
Dan Eberhart, a DeSantis donor, told The Post he thought “it was a great moment in the campaign to reshuffle.”
“Dropping some ballast to ensure his house is in order and ready to sail as we head into the fall when it starts to actually matter,” he added.
Trump advisers have in some ways privately admitted they have benefited from the DeSantis campaign’s problems. Much of the Trump campaign’s money and attention is being spent on indictments and legal bills, and some of Trump’s team say they believe DeSantis could have gained more traction in recent months if his campaign had done better.
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A Trump presidential campaign aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, told The Post that Trump’s team expects to ramp up staffing and that they “would never rule out the possibility” of hiring some of the DeSantis campaign staffers who were recently fired.
The staffing news comes the same day the DeSantis campaign confirmed that the governor and members of his team were involved in a car accident Tuesday morning but DeSantis was uninjured. DeSantis and his team were in Tennessee for campaign events.
Josh Dawsey and Isaac Arnsdorf contributed to this report.
2024 presidential candidates Several major Republican candidates and three Democrats have officially declared they are running for their party’s 2024 presidential nomination,. We’re tracking 2024 presidential candidates here.
Republicans: Top contenders for the GOP 2024 nomination include former president Donald Trump, who announced in November, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Here is The Post’s ranking of the top 10 Republican presidential candidates for 2024.
Democrats: President Biden has officially announced he is running for reelection in 2024. Author Marianne Williamson and anti-vaccine advocate Robert Kennedy Jr., both long-shot candidates, are also seeking the Democratic nomination. Here is The Post’s ranking of the top 10 Democratic presidential candidates for 2024.
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