Ron DeSantis' campaign has been worse than you even think

How not to "reboot."

(Ron DeSantis)

The first time — at least that I could find — of a story running about Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis rebooting his two-month old campaign was July 15.

Headlined “Ron DeSantis fires roughly a dozen staffers in a campaign shake-up,” the NBC News story documented how the Florida governor was streamlining his operation and overhauling his message. Ok!

Eleven days later, he’s still at it! Just yesterday, news broke that DeSantis actually fired almost 40 people — roughly 40% of his campaign staff — in a MASSIVE attempt to cut costs from his ballooning and bloated campaign.

And, this morning in POLITICO, came reports of finger-pointing between the campaign and Never Back Down, the exceedingly well-funded super PAC supporting DeSantis’ presidential ambitions.

As POLITICO noted:

There are serious doubts whether the layoffs will do anything to address a fundamental weakness of DeSantis’ presidential bid: the rising tension and distrust brewing between his campaign and the main super PAC supporting him, Never Back Down.

The finger-pointing is in full swing, multiple people affiliated with both entities told Playbook, with each side blaming the other for tripping up the candidate they still believe has the best shot at beating DONALD TRUMP for the Republican nomination.

Uh, that seems bad!

This is not, ideally, how campaign reboots work. The general theory with negative stories — and this, undoubtedly, is one — is that you get all of the bad news out at once.

That way, it’s all in one news cycle — and you move on. You don’t reboot for 11 days and, at the end of those 11 days, have a story out about how your campaign and your super PAC can’t figure out how to get along or who really is in charge of the operation.

This is campaign management 101. And it’s being badly done by the entire DeSantis team.

I actually think that we are underestimating what a debacle the DeSantis effort has been to date.

Consider that he got into the race just over two months ago — on May 24. And over that time, the following things have happened (Note: This is not a complete list.)

1. His campaign announcement on Twitter was an utter shit show. The platform kept crashing and it wasn’t until more than 30 minutes into the production that DeSantis actually got to announce he was running.

2. His campaign — we later learned — put out a homophobic video (they initially said the video was the work of someone outside the campaign) bashing Donald Trump for his views on lesbian and gay issues.

3. DeSantis suggested (and then doubled down on the suggestion) that slavery wasn’t all bad because some slaves learned trades that they used after slavery ended. Um, ok.

4. His campaign fired a staffer for retweeting a video using imagery associated with the Nazis to promote DeSantis’ candidacy

5. A top adviser said — on Twitter X Spaces — that the campaign was “way behind” and faced an “uphill battle” in the race.

6. His campaign burned through campaign cash — $8 million to date — on luxury travel and a massive staff

7. His poll numbers have steadily sunk.

   

Like I said, this is NOT a complete list — and I am sure I am forgetting a thing (or twelve).

If ANY other campaign had anything like this record in its first two months, we would be talking about what an utter disaster both it and the candidate were/are.

DeSantis has received some bad press over his struggles, yes, but I don’t actually think it’s consistent with how bad things have been.

He’s only two months into this campaign! He’s already rebooting (and rebooting and rebooting) and being thrown off message on a nearly-daily basis by some dumb thing that either he or his campaign has said or done.

If the campaign ended today, it would go down as one of the worst we have seen in modern memory — and that is saying something. (Hello Scott Walker!)

What does it all mean? The next few weeks — leading up to the August 23 first Republican presidential debate — are absolutely critical for DeSantis. He has to find a way to end the “reboot” news cycle (like, now) and start talking about things that might actually move votes.

And then, in the debate itself, DeSantis has to show that all of the hype surrounding him following his 2022 reelection victory in Florida is actually backed up, you know, something.

There’s absolutely nothing that we’ve seen from DeSantis or his operation that suggests that this sort of turnaround is likely. Hell, it may not even be possible given how badly off track the campaign currently is.

One thing is for certain: If DeSantis can’t stop the bleeding — and the steady flow of stories about the inner workings of his own campaign — he’s done for.