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Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ campaign is firing 38 staffers, about one-third of its total roster, in an effort to cut back on spending as the Florida governor’s presidential bid stumbles. According to a report from Politico, which confirmed the layoffs with advisors from the campaign, the cuts to staff revealed today expand on a downsizing announced earlier in July and the sudden departures of senior advisors Dave Abrams and Tucker Obenshain.
The DeSantis campaign has floundered in recent months, and while the Florida governor remains in second place in the race for the 2024 nomination, DeSantis has had little to no success in closing his massive polling gap with frontrunner Donald Trump.
Earlier this month the campaign fired about a dozen of mid-level staffers when it realized it had burned through more than $7.9 million in the first weeks of the campaign. The operation had made a critical mistake in maxing out the legal amount of contributions from a majority of their major donors, and it was struggling to find a foothold among voters who could contribute small donations.
As previously reported by Rolling Stone, the DeSantis campaign has also struggled to land on a messaging strategy that actually appeals to voters. DeSantis has leaned hard into his pandemic-era policies as Florida’s governor, hoping to differentiate himself from Trump. But according to various Republican operatives and campaign officials who spoke to Rolling Stone, polling shows and internal research shows most GOP voters are no longer motivated by Covid politics.
“No one believes he actually believes any of the stuff about the vaccine,” one GOP megadonor who had supported DeSantis against Trump said. “If you talk to the noncrazy people he’s got working for him, they don’t believe it, either. It’s politics.”
And the politics aren’t adding up for the DeSantis campaign. With the Iowa caucus less than six months away, it seems the Florida governor is banking on a hard reset to get his team back into shape.
