Ron DeSantis' pollster and top strategist thinks the Florida Republican's presidential campaign is slowly dying.
The New York Times cited Ryan Tyson, a longtime DeSantis ally, who told "multiple people" that they've reached the point in the campaign that they need to "make the patient comfortable." It's a phrase generally used at the end of life when hospice comes in to help.
Other allies are talking about "reputation management," both for DeSantis and themselves, amid a "slow-motion implosion," the report explained. DeSantis has suffered a number of campaign stumbles, almost entirely candidate-driven.
In March, multiple sources told The Daily Beast that DeSantis struggles with basic social skills. Campaign strategists tried to come up with a way that they could prevent interactions with people directly because they perceived DeSantis as "off-putting at best and rude at worst."
DeSantis came out of a 20-point win for governor in 2022 and it appeared he couldn't lose. That is until he met people in Iowa.
"Over the summer, when a 15-year-old Iowa girl who has depression asked Mr. DeSantis if her mental health issues would prevent her from serving in the military, he interrupted her question to make a joke about her age," the Times recalled.
The early primary and caucus states demand pressing the flesh several times with candidates. They take it seriously. While DeSantis could get away with rallies in Florida, he must meet people in person in the early states.
When he launched his campaign, he did it with an ad claiming on the eighth day, God created Ron DeSantis. In less than three months, as Mother Jones’ Noah Lanard wrote, “Even if DeSantis can overcome his awkwardness and learn to make small talk, it’s unclear whether he’ll be able to hide his general weirdness once he steps more clearly into the national spotlight.”
Meanwhile, DeSantis started as number two to Donald Trump, earning him a one-way ticket to months of attacks, mockery and slow leaks from opposition research documents attacking the governor for more bizarre stories like eating pudding with his fingers.
The Times cited, " The super PAC’s chief executive quit, the board chairman resigned, the three top officials were fired and then the chief strategist stepped down — all in less than a month, enveloping Mr. DeSantis’s candidacy in exactly the kind of chaos for which he once cast himself as the antidote."
They went on to interview more than a dozen current and past DeSantis advisers, most of whom point to a "disillusioned presidential candidacy."
Mitt Romney's 2012 top strategist, Stuart Stevens, said that when voters thought they were getting Trump, without the baggage they were actually getting "Ted Cruz without the personality." Cruz is generally regarded as the least-liked Senator in the body.
“There was a superficial impression that DeSantis was in the mode of big-state governors who had won Republican nominations and been successful — Reagan, Bush, Romney — but DeSantis is a very different sort of creature,” Stevens told the Times. “These were positive, expansive, optimistic figures. DeSantis is not.”
Read the full breakdown of the DeSantis downfall at the Times.
