3 CEO's have been named and resigned within his Super PAC in the last month.
DeSantis Campaign in Turmoil Ahead of Republican Primary Voting
(Bloomberg) -- Ron DeSantis is giving his closest allies greater control over the daily operations of his presidential run, another shakeup in the Florida governor’s 2024 bid just weeks before the first Republican nominating contest.
Scott Wagner, one of DeSantis’ oldest friends from their time at Yale and an attorney in Miami, assumed leadership last weekend of the allied super political action committee, Never Back Down. That group has been effectively running DeSantis’ operation in Iowa.
Never Back Down leadership has been in disarray in recent weeks, with three top officials leaving in rapid succession. The group’s chief executive officer Chris Jankowski resigned in late November. Since then, the super PAC’s chairman Adam Laxalt left, followed by interim chief executive officer Kristin Davison, who departed days after being appointed to the top job. Wagner is the third CEO of the group within past month.
The personnel turmoil did not stop there.
Three Florida-based lobbyists, with close ties to DeSantis’ campaign manager James Uthmeier, have formed a new super PAC called “Fight Right” to handle advertising. DeSantis and his team have been unhappy with Never Back Down’s attacks on Nikki Haley, the governor’s chief rival for second place in the Republican field.
“Fight Right has publicly announced their operation features minimal overhead, and 100% of contributions go direct to TV ads,” Uthmeier announced in a memo on fundraising. DeSantis met with donors last week in Palm Beach, Florida, to try to raise money for the new group.
Political Fights
The leadership shakeups are the latest instances of infighting between the governor’s campaign in Tallahassee and Never Back Down, headquartered in Atlanta and run by longtime Republican operative Jeff Roe, who has never had the full trust of the Florida team
As the Florida governor’s poll numbers have dropped, the finger-pointing and blame game have grown. The campaign operatives privately say Never Back Down has
spent money irresponsibly — much to the benefit of Roe’s company Axiom Strategies — while the super PAC team views the Florida campaign as a group of novices, who have no national political experience.
Roe did not respond to a request for comment.
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