4
DeSantis lets go of more than 1/3 of campaign staff as reset continues
(www.politico.com)
Two things on this:
-
This undermines DeSantis' central argument around electability. His pitch to Republican voters is he is Trump (culture war fighter, grievance based politics, etc), but smarter and more professional. He has the same goals as Trump, but he is drama free and a savvy operator who will actually get things done, unlike Trump who couldn't focus or stay out of scandal long enough to accomplish things. DeSantis doing massive campaign staff layoffs and an overall "reset" (2? 3? months since officially launching) demonstrates that he is not as savvy as he'd have you believe. How can he run the government and "stop woke" or whatever, if he can't even run a campaign? How can he manage the county's budget, if he can't manage his own?
-
DeSantis is broke. The quarterly FCC filings show that he has spent basically all the money he has raised since starting his campaign. He's got basically no cash on hand, and has been relying more and more on his outside PAC to do the basic campaign type things, like organizing events. More importantly, over a third of the money he raised was from donors who maxed out their contributions, meaning they cannot give him any more cash during the primary. The people who can give more money are questioning whether they should given his sinking poll numbers and are actively looking for other horses to back. Basically, DeSantis has got no money and few people left to raise more money from. And there is only so much he can rely on his PAC for given laws about coordination and so forth.
My prediction is if DeSantis doesn't put on a big show at the debate next month, really get some viral zingers in there, he's going to continue to deflate until his campaign enters zombie mode and he ends up in fourth place in Iowa.
