A pollster and longtime advisor to Ron DeSantis has reportedly told colleagues their job is now simply to ‘make the patient comfortable’, as the Florida governor’s race for president stutters.
Ryan Tyson allegedly made the remark suggesting the campaign is nearly dead after DeSantis slumped from 35 to 12 percent in the polls with the Iowa caucus just three weeks away, The New York Times reported.
An official spokesman for DeSantis’ campaign immediately lashed out at the ‘media hit job’ and dismissed concerns his chances of defeating Donald Trump for the Republican nomination were finished.
But the paper spoke to a dozen people close to the DeSantis election effort after an autumn of upheaval which saw open antagonism between his campaign team and supporters in the Never Back Down Super PAC.
‘You’re running against a former president, you’re going to have to be perfect and to get lucky,’ said one.
‘We’ve been unlucky and been far from perfect.’
Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign is nearly dead according to a bombshell report in The New York Times that spoke to dozens of people close to him
DeSantis election effort has faced massive obstacles which included open antagonism between his campaign team and supporters in the Never Back Down Super PAC
DeSantis’ pollster and adviser Ryan Tyson allegedly told colleagues their job is now simply to ‘make the patient comfortable’
The resignation of Super PAC strategist Jeff Roe last week came at the end of a months-long bloodbath which also saw the ousting of his campaign manager, two Super Pac chief executives and its chairman.
And some have pointed the finger at the governor’s preference for working with his trusted Florida friends than experienced campaign professionals.
Super PACs are supposed to have arms-length relationships with the candidates they support to conform with campaign finance laws but DeSantis ensured he had three old friends overseeing Roe on the governing board of Never Back Down.
Roe lashed out at one, the governor’s university classmate Scott Wagner last month, reportedly telling him ‘You have a stick up your a**, Scott’,’ as they rowed about how the campaign had burned through $100million.
‘Why don’t you come over here and get it?’ Wagner allegedly fired back with NBC reporting that the two men ‘nearly came to blows.’
That meeting prompted the resignation of super PAC chief executive Chris Jankowski who months earlier had helped force out campaign manager Generra Peck.
She was replaced by James Uthmeier who had worked as DeSantis’s chief of staff in the governor’s office but had no campaign experience.
Wagner meanwhile has been promoted to chairman of the super PAC and has been robust in his defense of the governor.
‘Never Back Down has built a massive ground game with a robust infrastructure that allows us to deliver the governor’s record and his vision to voters around the country,’ he told the Times.
But the super PAC ditched $2.5 million in bookings for ads in Iowa and New Hampshire over the weekend amid claims it has been sidelined in the wake of the governor’s faltering showing in the polls.
A new super PAC called Fight Right is now working on the governor’s behalf but it is struggling to attract the scale of donations that surged in when DeSantis was flying in the polls.
DeSantis ‘ campaign immediately lashed out at the ‘media hit job’ and dismissed concerns his chances of defeating Donald Trump for the Republican nomination were finished
DeSantis’ university classmate Scott Wagner (left) is the latest chairman of his super PAC Never Back Down after a bonfire of resignations and sackings which saw Chris Jankowski (right) resign
A poll last week showed DeSantis slipping further behind Nikki Haley into third place in New Hampshire ahead of the Republican primary in the Granite State on January 23
Meanwhile professionals he rejected have gone on to work for Trump’s campaign, taking with them their inside knowledge of the governor’s weak points
And some that remain told the paper of the missteps that have dogged the DeSantis campaign since it officially launched with a livestream on X, formerly Twitter, at the end of May.
Technical glitches left many unable to tune in and while Peck boasted of ‘breaking the internet’, Trump hit back with a one-word riposte, ‘DeSaster’.
The governor’s early high profile made him a prime target for other candidates afraid to antagonize Trump’s support base and DeSantis began attracting more negative advertising than all the others put together.
It also led to a less than easy ride from conservative media supporters of Trump.
‘I used to think in Republican primaries you kind of could just do Fox News and talk radio and all that,’ he told conservative news host Steve Deace in October.
‘And, one, I don’t think that’s enough but, two, there’s just the fact that our conservative media sphere, you know, it’s not necessarily promoting conservatism. They’ve got agendas, too.
Never Back Down claimed to have knocked on two million doors by September but nearly half were outside the early voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.
The outsized influence of the governor’s friend was blamed for the super PAC’s biggest week of ad spending in Iowa coming back in June, a full seven months before the caucus.
And the super PAC which was tasked with attracting a groundswell of contributions from small donors has still received less than $1 million.
DeSantis is the only candidate to have spoken at meetings in all 99 of Iowa’s counties but he struggled in the early televised debates.
And his awkward public persona has been exposed under the media spotlight, according to strategist Stuart Stevens who worked on Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign and said DeSantis came across as ‘Ted Cruz without the personality’.
A new super PAC called Fight Right is now working on the governor’s behalf but it is struggling to attract the scale of donations that surged in when DeSantis was flying in the polls.
DeSantis’ communications director, Andrew Romeo, said the Florida Governor had been ‘underestimated in every race he’s ever run and always proved the doubters wrong’
Jeff Roe’s departure as chief strategist for the Never Back Down super PAC on December 16 was just the latest in a year of turmoil for the DeSantis campaign
‘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,’ he told the paper.
‘But DeSantis is a very different sort of creature. These were positive, expansive, optimistic figures. DeSantis is not.’
Tyson has publicly denied saying the job now was to ‘make the patient comfortable’.
The campaign’s current communications director, Andrew Romeo, insisted that its candidate was simply the target of unfair media coverage.
‘Different day, same media hit job based on unnamed sources with agendas,’ he told the Times.
‘While the media tried to proclaim this campaign dead back in August, Ron DeSantis fought back and enters the home stretch in Iowa as the hardest working candidate with the most robust ground game.
‘DeSantis has been underestimated in every race he’s ever run and always proved the doubters wrong — we are confident he will defy the odds once again on January 15.’