Ron DeSantis’ campaign has fired more than 40% of its original staff, a housecleaning that comes after concerns about how fast it spent money during its first six weeks.
All told, 38 staffers have been let go from the campaign since its May 24 launch: a dozen last week and at least 26 more Tuesday afternoon. The latest round was first reported by Politico.
The campaign also has appointed Carl Sceusa, who was already on its payroll, as its chief financial officer. He will replace Melissa Power, who is leaving the campaign at the end of the month.
“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,” Generra Peck, DeSantis’ campaign manager, said in a statement. “Governor DeSantis is going to lead the Great American Comeback and we are ready to hit the ground running as we head into an important month of the campaign.”
An adviser familiar with the specifics said the campaign did not “kill,” or totally get rid of, any specific department.
“We were just bloated. We had too many people, that’s absolutely fair to say,” the adviser said.
Peck's job is safe for now, said a DeSantis donor familiar with the internal deliberations. She led DeSantis' re-election campaign, which won by nearly 20 percentage points last year, so DeSantis feels a debt of gratitude toward her, the donor said.
“He owes her because of the re-elect," the person said.
Staff cuts were a topic of conversation at a DeSantis donor retreat last weekend in Utah. Specifically, there was talk about cutting the number of staffers focused on coordinating and setting up live DeSantis rallies and campaign events.
The campaign wants to focus more on earned media rather than expensive large-scale events.
DeSantis' campaign has been trying to revamp its operations for a number of weeks as he continues to slip in the polls, unable to make up ground on former President Donald Trump.
For some, that is too long a timeline.
A Republican strategist who is not working for any of the campaigns said DeSantis erred in not making all of his cuts at once because the slow burn defeats the purpose of giving allies “second hope” with a public campaign reset.
“You can’t last this many media cycles with a reboot story,” the strategist said. “You’re going to start seeing movement away from him of donors and supporters.”
The person added: “How the f--- does a reboot take three weeks? You’ve got to do this in one news cycle.”
