Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis fired 38 staff members in “an array of departments” in an effort to “reboot” his campaign after experiencing dipping poll numbers in the 2024 Republican presidential primary.
“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,” DeSantis campaign manager Generra Peck said in a statement, according to Politico. “Gov. 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.”
The cuts follow a DeSantis speech writer, Nate Hochman, retweeting a disastrous unofficial campaign ad that featured Gen Z memes and Nazi imagery. Hochman was one of the 38 fired.
The @desantiscams account just deleted this video after at least one campaign staffer RT'd it. I wonder if this was also made in-house. pic.twitter.com/JA1D9qqONF
— Luke Thompson (@ltthompso) July 23, 2023
While the press coverage revolved around Hochman — a darling of the new Right — those let go by the campaign were primarily involved in planning “large-scale events.” “The campaign wants to focus more on earned media rather than expensive large-scale events,” NBC reports.
The DeSantis campaign communicated its desire to cut spending, as Alex Isenstadt writes in Politico: “The campaign announced it had raised $20 million during the second quarter of this year. But it had spent a good chunk of that money. Much of the sum it raised, moreover, came from donors who had given the maximum amount and could not give again.”
Despite the drama, the word out of the DeSantis camp simply reaffirmed that his team was looking forward to reclaiming the primary in the coming months.
“DeSantis and his wife, Casey, who is one of his closest political advisers, want the campaign reoriented by September, when they believe Americans will start to tune into the 2024 race, said one fundraiser who attended the Park City retreat,” Bloomberg reports.
It’s unclear whether these cuts and redirection will catch DeSantis’ faltering poll numbers.
Elizabeth Crawford is a rising senior at Hillsdale College studying politics. A member of The American Spectator’s 2023 intern class, Elizabeth enjoys drinking good tea and plans to pursue a career in journalism.
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