DeSantis faces calls for campaign shakeup as Republicans get antsy
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Gov. Ron DeSantis‘s (R-FL) presidential campaign is facing new calls to oust campaign manager Generra Peck.
“If you look at the numbers, it’s pretty clear that whatever they’re doing currently isn’t working,” said Jeffrey Lazarus, a political scientist at Georgia State University. “So if I’m DeSantis, some kind of change is necessary. Change of personnel, change of strategy, change of whatever.”
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NBC reports that some DeSantis allies and donors are calling for Peck to be let go in order to reinvigorate his lagging campaign.
“It’s time for that kind of change. It’s time for a shakeup at the top,” one DeSantis ally told the outlet as DeSantis’s declining poll numbers and recent staff layoffs have led some among the donor class to wonder if he truly can dethrone former President Donald Trump as the GOP‘s 2024 front-runner.
However, the DeSantis campaign has already started attempting a new media strategy. The governor sat down with CNN for his first major interview outside conservative media as a presidential candidate on Tuesday. He defended his 2024 bid from critics.
“I mean, the proof is in the pudding,” DeSantis told CNN host Jake Tapper. “I mean, I took a state that had been a 1-point state, and we won it by 20 percentage points, 1.5 million votes. Our bread and butter were people like suburban moms.”
DeSantis doubled down on targeting Iowa voters ahead of the Jan. 15 caucuses next year as part of his campaign strategy. “That is not going to make the same type of splash, as if you were trying to run ads nationally or do those other things and so we’ve been making really good progress,” he said.
https://twitter.com/CNN/status/1681421174948126720
But the interview was largely overshadowed by the news that Trump received a target letter from special counsel Jack Smith, who is investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, and a Fox News town hall Trump participated in on Tuesday night.
Despite the less-than-perfect rollout of the new strategy, DeSantis’s campaign has remained tight-lipped over recent staffing problems. Over the weekend the team let go of roughly a dozen staffers amid second-quarter reports that showed the campaign employed 92 people and spent $1 million on payroll. The campaign’s second-quarter report showed it raised $20 million but spent $8 million, leaving $12 million in cash on hand. Of that $12 million only $9 million can be used during the GOP primary. Additionally, most of the campaign funds came from large donations, meaning many have maxed out the legal limit they can give to DeSantis for the rest of the cycle.
“The media has tried to destroy Ron Desantis’s campaign since day one because they are scared to death he will beat Joe Biden,” Andrew Romeo said in a statement. “The Governor has never cowed to false media narratives and he isn’t about to start now. We won’t be deterred and are going to win the nomination.”
The DeSantis campaign did not address specific staffing questions posed by the Washington Examiner.
Trump allies pounced on the sitdown DeSantis held with Tapper. “Some reboots were never going to be successful, like Dynasty, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, or even MacGyver. And now we can add Ron DeSantis’s 2024 campaign to the list of failures,” said Jason Miller, a Trump 2024 senior adviser, in a statement.
“The real story here is that the DeSantis campaign doesn’t know how to turn things around with their current candidate. Case in point: They don’t actually want any Republican primary voters to see his CNN interview,” he continued. “DeSantis could have easily joined one of CNN’s high-profile primetime hosts and reached millions of new voters if he had something compelling to say, but with an unlikable candidate, no campaign message, and rapidly sinking poll numbers, the campaign is doing an afternoon hit that nobody will watch.”
In May, Trump held his first CNN town hall with host Kaitlan Collins after shunning the network following the 2016 presidential elections. Other 2024 rivals, including former Vice President Mike Pence and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, also participated in town halls with CNN.
Ford O’Connell told the Washington Examiner that DeSantis’s campaign is not necessarily comparable to his campaigns for Florida governor. “He truly engineered a miracle in Florida,” O’Connell said. “The problem is he assumes everyone else knows what that miracle is and then that miracle relates to them outside of Florida.”
O’Connell recommends that the campaign drill down on a message that resonates with voters in order to consolidate his role as the non-Trump candidate who can defeat President Joe Biden in 2024. “He needs to reshape his message and remind people that he’s going to better their lives and give them something to believe in,” he said.
Similarly, other Republicans have called for DeSantis to switch campaign tactics. “Two big things they need to focus on: Going lean and going bold,” said former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker on Fox News Wednesday. “I know this first hand. Just having a great track record as governor is not enough, particularly when you go head-to-head with someone like Donald Trump.”
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“He needs to step out, not just have good performances but actually kinda light a fire with primary and caucus voters with some really bold ideas that will not only help him in the polls but ultimately help with the fundraising at the lower-dollar level which is what you need these days to sustain a campaign.”
Lazarus, the political scientist at Georgia State, said DeSantis will likely need to consistently attack Trump if he wants the nomination. “They’re trying to paint themselves as the alternative to Trump without actually saying anything about why DeSantis is better than Trump,” he said. “If you’re not going to attack the front-runner, you can’t win.”