Ron DeSantis has a big problem: Himself
A wasteful platform of racism and sexism with an anti-education tilt.
Florida governor Ron DeSantis’ Presidential campaign recently went through some staff shakeups after the FEC released a new set of data in late June. According to NBC News, the DeSantis campaign fired about a dozen staff members in early July. This is a little surprising, so early in the campaign for 2024. The staff had only six weeks to pull together a campaign that brought in $20M in that time. Not a bad haul for a six week stint. The problem comes on the expenditures side. In those same six weeks, the DeSantis campaign spent $7.9M. Nearly $8M in expenditures is a lot of money for a campaign only six weeks old.
From a financial manager perspective, that is an unnerving spend rate. What was this money spent on? I will pull some data from the data warehouse and have a report next time after I correct the data completeness issues I mentioned yesterday (link below).
The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Building in Public
Thank you for reading The Keys Report. This post is public so feel free to share it. I realized I made a mistake. I wrote some software and it does the wrong thing. I’m unable to provide the kind of results I’d like to discuss today. That’s the good news. There’s no bad news and there’s more good news: I get to write about my previous understanding of the situation and confirm my new understanding.
Regardless of the details, a 39.5% spend rate is unsustainable. DeSantis is polling at about 17% according to the first New York Times/Sienna College Poll of the Race for Republican Nominees of the cycle. For comparison, DeSantis at 17% is well behind Donald J. Trump at 54%, and well ahead of Mike Pence at 3%. This is a difficult situation to be in. The needle isn’t moving where it needs to be with a huge spend behind it. What should DeSantis do, considering his campaign employs 92 people, far more than any other Republican nominee. Tim Scott’s campaign employees 54, and Trump’s campaign employs 40.
When I see a campaign employee 92 people, I think there are far too many cooks in the kitchen. A political candidate committee is a vehicle to develop strategy. Ninety-two people is more than enough to develop a strategy. A candidate’s strategy should focus on:
the broad strokes needed to deliver a compelling message,
poll high based on that message,
engage with the constituency in meaningful and impactful ways,
and reach the right mix of institutional donors and individual contributors.
A campaign strategy should be the braintrust of the operation. From a business perspective, the DeSantis campaign doesn’t need to employ 92 people for this outcome. Maybe DeSantis is a misguided control freak and needs to employ people for both the strategy and tactics of running a campaign.
The tactics should be outsourced to people and vendors with the expertise for tactical execution. I have to question the effectiveness of DeSantis’ reach based on the fact that his institutional donors are maxed out, and his grassroots fundraising is stalled.
Running an overstaffed campaign may be why the effectiveness is so low. Too many cooks, too many opinions, too many different directions. Someone on DeSantis’ staff, or DeSantis himself, noticed and took corrective action. After those first dozen staff members were fired in early July, another 26 staff members were replaced by late July.
“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,” DeSantis campaign manager Generra Peck said in a statement. “Gov. 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.”
And the person who made that statement, campaign chief Generra Peck, was replaced by policy advisor James Uthmier on August 8. Peck remains with the campaign as chief strategist, though for how long remains to be seen. Peck ran the DeSantis’ reelection campaign to a blowout victory in 2022, which saw DeSantis win by a dominant 59.4% to 40% margin over Democrat challenger Charlie Crist. I wonder if Peck views this as a demotion. I won’t speculate about the quality of relationship between Peck and DeSantis. However, notable donors were unhappy enough with the fundraising and polling results they called for her replacement.
In Peck’s defense, she doesn’t have a lot to work with. The biggest problem with the DeSantis campaign isn’t fundraising, or lack thereof, even though it’s a big problem. The biggest problem isn’t a high burn rate on expenditures, even though it’s a big problem. The biggest problem with the DeSantis campaign is the candidate himself. Ron DeSantis is not a likable candidate for a lot of demographics. He actively campaigns on a platform that:
All in the name of a moral crusade against “wokeism”.
Who does that draw to the campaign? Who are the voters, and who are the donors? Well, DeSantis’ views on slavery benefitting black people isn’t going to draw a huge black constituency. I don’t see how it would. A white man telling women what to do with their bodies probably doesn’t draw a lot of women voters. Limiting the books available in Florida schools is a slippery slope toward banning books, which probably doesn’t attract the educated crowd, or people who value freedom of speech, thought, and expression. And wasting tax payer dollars in a feud with the largest employer in his home state is just a staggering miss in every demographic.
Who does the DeSantis platform appeal to? I don’t even want to write it, it’s so offensive. Process of elimination paints a very clear picture of DeSantis’ target demographic, and a different candidate already has that demographic locked up.
Writing this post gives me some jumping off points to cover in the coming weeks. I’d like to do a deeper dive into DeSantis’ expenditures, specifically looking at where the campaign spent money. What categories or buckets of spending did he have? Where was it effective and not? I’d also like to look more at the effectiveness of Peck’s strategy in Florida’s 2022 gubantorial race versus her effectiveness in the early weeks of the Republic primary season. I’d also like to examine what makes an effective platform and what makes effective messaging of that platform. I’d like to connect the dots of how a campaign could reach voters, donors, and effectively amplify the campaign finance loop.
On Friday I’ll talk about some of the tools and technology I use to pull these posts together.
Do you have any thoughts about the DeSantis campaign? Share them in the comments.