When Ron DeSantis fired a dozen staffers earlier this month, the failing Florida man was just getting started. Today the candidate, on the brink of collapse, fired dozens more — a total of 38 jobs so far — whittling down his campaign staff by more than one-third.
From Politico:
The expanded cuts are the latest sign that the Florida governor’s team is pivoting to a slim-down operation amid concerns over their finances. 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.
During a donor retreat in Deer Valley, Utah, last week, Peck acknowledged that the campaign had overspent in some areas and that further adjustments would need to be made. Advisers also outlined plans for DeSantis — who has been criticized for overseeing a bloated operation — to reposition himself as an insurgent underdog. They also said they would aim to reduce costs by doing smaller, more intimate events and cutting down its travel expenditures.
The anti-woke governor has been asleep at the wheel for months on end, mismanaging his campaign finances and focusing on a slew of petty, vindictive projects that have clearly turned voters off. Plus, he’s just plumb unlikeable. And nobody sums up the DeSantis ick factor better than Molly Jong-Fast did in yesterday’s rant in Vanity Fair:
DeSantis is a terrible politician with negative charisma, and the chances of him riding into the White House are looking less likely. He is aggressively dull and wooden, making his interactions with voters border on painful to watch. His head bobs in a strange and unnatural way, and he wears high-heeled cowboy boots. DeSantis makes Scott Walker look charming. He makes Paul Ryan look lively. Plus, voters tend not to vote for people who seem like they’re screaming at them all the time. No amount of donor dollars can make DeSantis, a MAGA marionette traipsing across Iowa and New Hampshire, seem like a real human boy.