Ron DeSantis’s beleaguered presidential campaign will have spent “significantly more” on private jets for the Florida Governor than it has on airing television ads, according to federal records and revealed by the New York Times on Sunday.
The brutal dissection of the DeSantis campaign also reveals:
- DeSantis’s pollster Ryan Tyson described the final few months of “mak[ing] the patient comfortable,” in what the Times called “a phrase evoking hospice care”;
- “The DeSantis team had penciled in that Ken Griffin, the billionaire investor, would give his super PAC at least $25 million and likely $50 million, according to three people familiar with the matter. Mr. Griffin neither gave nor endorsed…”;
- Backer Steve Deace questioning if there is “enough runway to manifest… on caucus night”;
- DeSantis hired Jeff Roe in an attempt to dissuade Ted Cruz, Glenn Youngkin, and others from jumping into the primary;
- A GOP strategist described Ron as “Ted Cruz without the personality”.
The campaign is now said to have purged most of Roe’s influence, including most of his “Axiom Strategies” staff. Now run by close friends of DeSantis himself, the combination of the campaign, the Never Back Down PAC, and the new Fight Right PAC are still talking up their chances in Iowa, though still haven’t laid out a path forward from that moment, on January 15th 2024.
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