Florida Governor Ron DeSantis reportedly hid in the back of his own political action committee’s campaign bus, fearing that same committee was spying on his actions as fractures grew between his campaign proper and the “Never Back Down” arms-length operation.
In a devastating new report by writer Marc Caputo, DeSantis’s campaign is revealed to have been at odds with itself and his PAC from day one, with major blowups over their infamous failed launch, state-level strategies, and staffing issues.
“DeSantis was so concerned he was being spied on by Never Back Down staff that he would try to isolate himself in the back of the super PAC’s bus during swings through Iowa,” wrote Caputo in a lengthy telling of DeSantis’s short-lived campaign tale.
“This should be a course they teach at Harvard over how not to lead an organization. The super PAC can’t coordinate with the campaign. And the super PAC was micromanaged in a weirdly opaque way,” one source told Caputo.
Another stand-out moment in the article describes the tensions between the campaign and the PAC:
It was a constant power struggle from the jump: The DeSantis operation in Tallahassee pitted against Roe’s Axiom team in Atlanta. The Tallahassee crew thought the professional consultants were pretend experts who masked fecklessness with data and jargon, while Atlanta thought Tallahassee exemplified a Dunning–Kruger effect of inexperienced rubes overestimating their abilities.
