Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is shaving more than a third of his campaign staff from the payroll in a move designed to keep him financially solvent into the fall.
DeSantis, who is running in second place behind former President Donald Trump in most early-state primary and national polls but has slipped in recent surveys, has laid off 38 people since the start of the second quarter, his campaign confirmed Tuesday.
“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,” campaign manager Generra Peck said in a statement. “Governor 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 layoffs include 10 event staffers whose departures had already been announced, plus two senior advisers, Dave Abrams and Tucker Obenshain, who have left to launch an outside operation designed to provide logistical and event support to his bid. The other staffers are from “across all departments,” three senior advisers to the campaign tell CBS News.
The advisers were granted anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak about the shakeup.
“The campaign isn’t shying away from taking the aggressive steps necessary to put Gov. Ron DeSantis in the best position possible as the campaign heads into the fall,” one of the senior advisers said. “I think overall we’ve been upfront about the reset and we’re leaning into it.”
DeSantis raised roughly $20 million in the fundraising quarter that ran from April to June, a haul earned mostly from high-dollar donors who contributed the maximum four figure sums possible to his primary and general election campaign accounts. With nearly 90 people on his payroll by the end of the quarter — a total considered bloated and premature by rival Republican and Democratic campaigns — his federal campaign spending report showed donations from people giving less than $200 lagging, a sign he is struggling to find “small-dollar” supporters willing to continue donating over the course of the primary campaign.
The Florida governor, however, continues to benefit from one of the largest independent super PACs established to back a GOP presidential contender. Never Back Down PAC has amassed more than $130 million, primarily from funds he first raised last year as part of his gubernatorial re-election campaign that he was able to transfer.
The super PAC has been expected to shoulder much of the expensive and time-consuming work of organizing in the early states. It has hired hundreds of staffers to knock on doors in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, with plans to expand to the first 18 states set to hold primaries. On Thursday and Friday, DeSantis is set to appear at a series of public events hosted by Never Back Down in Iowa, and despite federal laws barring his campaign’s direct coordination with the super PAC, he is expected to ride aboard a bus owned and operated by the PAC in between the events.
DeSantis is not the first Republican presidential contender to dramatically pare back in the opening months of a White House bid. But those who have done so carried on with mixed success.
In July 2007, with just $2 million left in his campaign coffers, Sen. John McCain let go roughly 80 staffers in a purge that many believed would quickly lead to his quick downfall. But McCain ultimately rallied to win the Republican presidential nomination about a year later. In October 2015, one-time Republican frontrunner Jeb Bush, similarly backed by a super PAC that amassed tens of millions of dollars, had to slash his campaign’s payroll by about 40% and reassigned campaign headquarters staffers from Miami to the early primary states in a bid to save costs. He dropped out after the South Carolina primary, failing to win or place second in any early-state contest.
Other GOP governors who began with broad national attention and intrigue among the party’s base of support also quickly fizzled out amid financial woes. In 2011, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty withdrew about three months after beginning his 2012 presidential bid amid a serious cash shortfall. And Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who shot out to the front of the pack and raised millions at the start, withdrew from the 2016 contest by September 2015 before his campaign took on serious debt.
Aaron Navarro contributed to this report.
