On a day on which he emerged uninjured from an actual car crash in Tennessee, Ron DeSantis was reported to have made his most drastic attempt yet to turn round a presidential campaign seen as in danger of coming off the road itself, announcing a deep slashing of staff numbers.
Politico said advisers to the Florida governor confirmed that more than a third of campaign staff were being cut, “a total of 38 jobs shed across an array of departments”, two senior advisers among them.
DeSantis’s campaign manager, Generra Peck, said: “Following a top-to-bottom review of our organisation, 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.
“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.”
With the first Republican debate a month away, DeSantis is still clearly the strongest challenger to Donald Trump.
But the former president enjoys national and key-state polling leads of about 30 points, regardless of the 71 criminal charges against him and the prospect of more.
No other candidate in the 13-strong field has made a significant move but DeSantis is widely held to be floundering, with donor sources maxed out and his policy proposals, often to the right even of Trump, falling flat with the public.
Politico also reported new hires including a “top political adviser” to the Georgia governor, Brian Kemp, a rising party figure who some Republican operatives have suggested could yet enter the primary.
For Vanity Fair, the columnist Molly Jong-Fast gave voice to progressive glee over DeSantis’s struggles to connect with Republican voters.
DeSantis, Jong-Fast wrote, “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.”
Referring to a previous high-profile Republican flop, the Wisconsin governor who wilted before Trump in 2016, Jong-Fast said DeSantis “makes Scott Walker look charming”.
“Plus,” she added, “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.”
