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.
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.
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Never Back Down, the super PAC supporting Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign, began staff layoffs on Wednesday. An official at the PAC revealed that those laid off will be paid through January, but the extent of the layoffs is currently unknown.
According to George Andrews, a Never Back Down employee who was let go on Wednesday, budget cuts were responsible. “As of 6 am this morning, I learned I am now a free agent due to budget cuts beyond my control,” Andrews wrote in a post on LinkedIn.
The layoffs follow DeSantis’s resounding defeat to former President Donald Trump in the Iowa caucuses. Though DeSantis came in second place, he trailed Trump by a margin of 30 points. An official who spoke to the New York Times off the record said the PAC was “evaluating and paring down” other consultants, vendors, and staff members.
Despite the layoffs, Never Back Down CEO Scott Wagner released a statement insisting that the PAC will continue to work to get DeSantis elected.
“Never Back Down continues to host a slew of events on the ground for Gov. DeSantis in South Carolina, New Hampshire, and beyond aligned with our core mission of mobilizing grass-roots field operations in those states,” Wagner said. “We’ve mobilized several members of our robust Iowa team over to the other early primary states to help in these efforts and will continue working to help elect Gov. DeSantis, the most effective conservative leader in the race, our next President.”
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Never Back Down, the super PAC supporting Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' presidential campaign, began staff layoffs on Wednesday. An official at the PAC revealed that those laid off will be paid through January, but the extent of the layoffs is currently unknown.
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Ron DeSantis’s super PAC, Never Back Down, has dismissed its new CEO, Kristin Davison, just under two weeks into her role. Davison replaced the outgoing Chris Jankowski, who “backed down” from his role after a number of run-ins with other senior PAC leadership. In recent months, DeSantis has been heard to blame his own PAC for his campaign’s failings.
Davison will be replaced by Scott Wagner, a long-time ally of DeSantis who has been handed grace and favor jobs by the Florida Governor after managing his gubernatorial transition. Wagner apparently came to loggerheads with PAC strategist and Iowa “genius” Jeff Roe recently, with the pair squaring off in a board meeting. Wagner’s ‘Faithful and Strong’ Policies organization has links to Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney.
The news follows the resignation of former Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt, who left his position as board chairman just a week ago.
Amidst the internal turmoil, a new super PAC, ‘Fight Right’, has been formed by DeSantis allies. The establishment of this new group poses questions about the future of Never Back Down’s role as the DeSantis campaign approaches the Iowa caucus on Jan 15.
The personnel shakeup comes as Never Back Down reckons with other substantial concerns, including the effectiveness of its advertising campaigns. Insiders close to the governor have reportedly voiced doubts over the PAC’s TV ads, prompting DeSantis campaign manager James Uthmeier to recommend a shift in focus to a get-out-the-vote program.
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Ron DeSantis's super PAC, Never Back Down, has dismissed its new CEO, Kristin Davison, just under two weeks into her role. Davison replaced the outgoing Chris Jankowski, who "backed down" from his role after a number of run-ins with other senior PAC leadership. In recent months, DeSantis has been heard to blame his own PAC for his campaign's failings.
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It has been 60 days since Jeff Roe, the controversial leading man in Ron DeSantis’s ‘Never Back Down’ super PAC, told donors the Florida Governor had to start beating Trump within “the next 60 days” while begging for $50 million. Far from overtaking the former president, he has now fallen significantly further behind.
Team Trump has been counting down Roe’s self-imposed deadline for weeks, and observed on Monday that DeSantis “trailed President Trump by 33 points with 21 percent support” when he first announced but “millions of dollars later” trails Trump by 47 points, falling to “an embarrassing 12 percent support.”
Far from attempting to pretend Roe’s deadline never existed, however, DeSantis’s “rapid response director” Christina Pushaw chose to highlight Trump campaign posts pointing out the Floridian’s failure, claiming it as evidence her team “broke them”.
Her boss, however, disagreed. DeSantis told reporters the deadline wasn’t a “very smart thing to do,” and tried to distance himself from his own PAC’s messaging.
“[Jeff Roe’s] not my adviser, and they do what they want to do. I think that that’s fine. I don’t think very many people think that that was a very smart thing to do with whatever was going on with that.”
– Ron DeSantis, October 2023.
While some DeSantis diehards joined in the bizarre defeat lap, others were unconvinced, with one social media noting the Tallahassee team “can’t even break 20 percent in the polls.”
It has been 60 days since Jeff Roe, the controversial leading man in Ron DeSantis's 'Never Back Down' super PAC, told donors the Florida Governor had to start beating Trump within “the next 60 days” while begging for $50 million. Far from overtaking the former president, he has now fallen significantly further behind.
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Ron DeSantis has falsely claimed Donald Trump told supporters not to vote in the 2024 election, disingenuously reframing comments by the 45th President on the even greater importance of ensuring the election is conducted fairly.
In a video posted this week, DeSantis alleged Trump “is wedded to the teleprompter; he can’t get off that teleprompter, [and] anytime he does he says things like ‘don’t vote’. He’s telling people not to vote, like, we have all the votes we need.”
The Florida Governor was referring to a nine-second clip from a lengthy speech by Trump at a rally in Derry, New Hampshire, shared by the Jeff Roe-led DeSantis super PAC, Never Back Down, in which the former president says “don’t worry about voting”.
But far from being an injunction not to vote at all, Trump’s remarks formed part of a wider message on the need for Republicans to turn out in force on election night to observe the conduct of the vote counts and ensure there is no fraud. DeSantis, who has takenmoney from Dominion Voting Systems lawyers, seems less keen on Trump’s messaging on election integrity.
“[A]long with our borders probably the most important thing of all, we will secure our elections, because if you don’t have borders and if you don’t have fair elections this country will not survive,” Trump says.
“Our goal will be one-day voting with paper ballots and voter ID, but until then, Republicans, you have to get out in November,” he said at the same event, before again stressing: “We have to get out in November. We can’t let them cheat; the only way they beat us is going to be if they cheat; they can’t beat us otherwise. They don’t have the votes, and we don’t want to see those votes get manipulated.”
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Ron DeSantis has falsely claimed Donald Trump told supporters not to vote in the 2024 election, disingenuously reframing comments by the 45th President on the even greater importance of ensuring the election is conducted fairly.
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Editor’s Notes
Behind-the-scenes political intrigue exclusively for Pulse+ subscribers.
This latest misrepresentation is just the latest in a long line of Jeff Roe-inspired hatchet jobs against the former President, all of which have failed to help DeSantis
This latest misrepresentation is just the latest in a long line of Jeff Roe-inspired hatchet jobs against the former President, all of which have failed to help DeSantis show more
Chris Wilson, Head of Data at Ron DeSantis’s Never Back Down super PAC, was fired and sued by his former employer, Qorvis Communications, which accused him and his wife of diverting profits by secretly billing clients directly, and stealing some 28,000 confidential files to help establish a rival firm. An arbitration concluded, in 2008, that Wilson had to pay the firm a sum of $366,037.72 for a breach of his contractual duty of loyalty:
In its complaint, Qorvis alleged that Wilson, along with others, conspired to form their own business in the fall of 2003 and thereafter “proceeded to divert lucrative business opportunities to themselves and divide hundreds of thousands of dollars in proceeds among themselves.” It also alleged that Wilson and others “downloaded over 14 gigabytes (28,404 individual files) of Qorvis’ highly confidential and proprietary information” for purposes of pursuing the new endeavor. The 16-count complaint contended that Wilson breached the 2003 employment agreement, breached his duty of loyalty and duty to maintain confidentiality of employer information, interfered with contractual and business relationships between Qorvis and others, misappropriated trade secrets, converted Qorvis’ property and trade secrets for his own commercial use, and committed computer fraud.
Wilson recently expressed irritation when his polling company, WPA Intelligence, was exposed for placing an article in Newsweek, promoting an anti-Trump poll without disclosing that he works directly for DeSantis’s super PAC.
Wilson also worked as a data guru for Ted Cruz’s failed presidential campaign in 2016, as well as for anti-Trump Governor Kevin Stitt (OK), anti-Trump Senator Kevin Cramer (ND), and RINO Governor Brian Kemp in Georgia. He has also worked for the failed campaigns of Martha McSally in Arizona, Adam Laxalt and Dean Heller in Nevada, as well as Matt Rosendale in Montana.
While at Qorvis, one of Wilson’s roles was to assist Saudi Arabia in its efforts to rehabilitate its image following 9/11, which involved 15 Saudi hijackers, some with links to the Saudi government.
Pfizer was another “major client” of Wilson’s firm, who is also reported to have “worked closely” with Karl Rove, a Bush-world RINO and Never Trumper.
Wilson’s partner and chief operating officer Bryan Allen, who contributes the ‘A’ to WPA Intelligence, is an alumnus of Public Opinion Strategies (POS), an even more controversial DeSantis pollster with links to Rove, Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney, and even George Soros.
Allen is also an anti-Trump partisan, accusing the former president of “going full infowars on 9-11” and alleging the only difference between him and Bernie Sanders is that “Bernie really believes the crap that comes out of his mouth.”
Such sentiments are common at WPA Intelligence, with Chief Research Officer Trevor Smith claiming that Trump “is the establishment” and that his election fundraising is a “scam”, for example.
Wilson is currently being sued by his ex-wife Kathryn, who alleges “he ripped off a data software, Archimedes, that they built together when they were married, but that she acquired in the divorce. She is claiming that the version he’s using now to collect data on voters, Bonfire, is just a modification of Archimedes and she’s demanding that he stop using it, along with other damages.”
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Chris Wilson, Head of Data at Ron DeSantis's Never Back Down super PAC, was fired and sued by his former employer, Qorvis Communications, which accused him and his wife of diverting profits by secretly billing clients directly, and stealing some 28,000 confidential files to help establish a rival firm. An arbitration concluded, in 2008, that Wilson had to pay the firm a sum of $366,037.72 for a breach of his contractual duty of loyalty:
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Editor’s Notes
Behind-the-scenes political intrigue exclusively for Pulse+ subscribers.
Ron has the best people, clearly! But if you want a little more on this, WPA is also closely tied to Jeff Roe, as well as his other major client (other than DeSantis), Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, who is still mulling a late entry into the GOP primary, himself
Ron has the best people, clearly! But if you want a little more on this, WPA is also closely tied to Jeff Roe, as well as his other major client (other than DeSantis), Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, who is still mulling a late entry into the GOP primary, himself show more
Corporate media outlet Newsweek has been caught failing to disclose that an opinion editorial attacking former President Donald Trump was written by two employees of a polling firm whose founder and CEO is the chief pollster for the pro-DeSantis SuperPAC Never Back Down. The authors, Byron Allen and Amanda Iovino, are both employees of WPA Intelligence, and used their op-ed column to claim Trump is losing white voters, passing off Never Back Down talking points as thin analysis. Newsweek makes no mention of WPA Intelligence’s affiliation with Never Back Down.
Chris Wilson, the founder and CEO of WPA Intelligence, serves as the data director and chief pollster for the Never Back Down SuperPAC. Outside of his polling duties, Wilson appears to be a close confidant of the PAC’s chiefstrategistJeff Roe – the two recently launching an AI chatbot that they hope will sway voters to DeSantis through text messages.
WPA Intelligence’s Byron Allen has also produced polling for the anti-Trump group Club for Growth. In November of last year, the Club released polling done by Allen suggesting Ron DeSantis held an 11 point lead over Donald Trump in Iowa and a 15 point lead in New Hampshire. At the time, there was a strong effort among Trump’s detractors to push a narrative that the former President faced crumbling support within the Republican Party. Recent polling shows Trump with a 23 to 37 point lead over DeSantis in Iowa and a lead of 14 to 40 points in New Hampshire.
Allen has not hidden his personal disdain for Trump, posting on X (formerly Twitter) in 2015 during the presidential primary: “Difference between Bernie and Trump is that I think Bernie really believes the crap that comes out of his mouth.”Allen has also accused Trump of being a 9/11 Truth conspiracy theorist and suggested the former President couldn’t find Benghazi on a map.
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Corporate media outlet Newsweek has been caught failing to disclose that an opinion editorial attacking former President Donald Trump was written by two employees of a polling firm whose founder and CEO is the chief pollster for the pro-DeSantis SuperPAC Never Back Down. The authors, Byron Allen and Amanda Iovino, are both employees of WPA Intelligence, and used their op-ed column to claim Trump is losing white voters, passing off Never Back Down talking points as thin analysis. Newsweek makes no mention of WPA Intelligence's affiliation with Never Back Down.
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Ed Rollins – a recent co-chair of the pro-Ron DeSantis SuperPAC ‘Ready for Ron’ – has admitted that “…no one in the Republican primaries is going to beat, defeat President Trump,” adding: “[Trump] has a strong, solid base. It’s gotten stronger as he’s gone through these terrible indictments. The fact that he’s been indicted on 91 counts is just absurd.”
This isn’t the first time that Rollins has expressed criticism of Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign. In July, he announced he was backing down from DeSantis, calling the Florida Governor a “flawed candidate.” Addressing the flurry of mid-summer donor calls for a DeSantis campaign reboot, Rollins said, “A top-to-bottom makeover and real accountability may be the only thing that saves Ron DeSantis, but even then you still have the governor at the top… And it is getting harder and harder by the day to see not just his people as the problem, but him as the problem.”
It is not just former DeSantis supporters – turned detractors – like Rollins who are expressing a sense of inevitability regarding Trump winning the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Jeff Roe, chief strategist for the pro-DeSantis SuperPAC Never Back Down, was caught on a leaked audio recording telling donors the campaign was in desperate need of $50 million and that DeSantis only has 60 days to try and defeat Trump before the primary race is effectively over.
Recent polling shows Trump with a near insurmountable lead over the rest of the 2024 Republican field. Polling conducted immediately after the first Republican primary debate showed no change in Trump’s lead despite the media trying to stoke voter backlash against the former President’s decision not to participate.
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Ed Rollins – a recent co-chair of the pro-Ron DeSantis SuperPAC 'Ready for Ron' – has admitted that "...no one in the Republican primaries is going to beat, defeat President Trump," adding: "[Trump] has a strong, solid base. It's gotten stronger as he's gone through these terrible indictments. The fact that he's been indicted on 91 counts is just absurd."
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Jeff Roe, the chief strategist for Ron DeSantis’s Super PAC Never Back Down, has taken responsibility for co-ordinating online attacks and spreading dirt on the Republican outsider and DeSantis’ rival, Vivek Ramaswamy. Roe undertook similarly dirty tactics in 2016 against then-candidate Ben Carson.
In a leaked conversation before the recent GOP primary debate, Roetold a number of DeSantis donors and supporters, “Everything you read about [Ramaswamy) is from us… Every misstatement, every 360 he’s conducting or 180 that he is going through in life, is from our scrutiny and pressure. And so, he’s not going to go through that very well, and that will get worse for him.”
Roe, who runs the legally embattled Axiom Strategies, also admitted to his audience that “a big night” for Ramaswamy may prove problematical for the Florida Governor, who required a breakout moment during the debate. The opposite happened, however, with Ramaswamy dominating national and international media coverage, handing DeSantis a rather forgettable performance.
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for Ramaswamy, responded: “America watched Vivek dominate the debate stage, it’s no wonder Never Back Down is pissing away another $20+ million after Labor Day.”
Roe recently demanded another $50 million from donors, as his PAC shifts resources to Iowa with a $12 million ad spend, and an admission that he has fewer than 60 days to defeat Donald Trump.
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Jeff Roe, the chief strategist for Ron DeSantis's Super PAC Never Back Down, has taken responsibility for co-ordinating online attacks and spreading dirt on the Republican outsider and DeSantis' rival, Vivek Ramaswamy. Roe undertook similarly dirty tactics in 2016 against then-candidate Ben Carson.
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Ron DeSantis’ super PAC ‘Never Back Down‘ has poured over $12.3 million into a new advertisement campaign in a desperate attempt to reinvigorate the Florida Governor’s 2024 Republican presidential nominee campaign.
The vast majority of the funds was allocated to the state of Iowa, in which the Florida Governor trails former President Donald Trump by over 20 points. Around $11.4 million has been spent targeting media markets in the state, with the rest used for a national buy on the already DeSantis-sympathizing Fox News, according to AdImpact data.
The ads are due to start on September 6 and are expected to run through until Halloween.
Never Back Down’s total spend is up to $31 million, outspending Donald Trump’s super PAC, MAGA Inc, by nearly $10 million. Only Tim Scott’s TIM PAC has spent more at $37 million.
However, Never Back Down has announced its intention to increase ad spending to as much as $25 million in Iowa and New Hampshire, where DeSantis is polling fourth behind the 45th President, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Chris Christie. The campaign will include TV bookings, digital and direct advertisement – such as mailers and text messages – and will shift focus onto the Governor of Florida’s “personal qualities” and his wife, Jill “Casey” DeSantis.
Despite the staggering financial commitments the super PAC has made to DeSantis, rumors abounded last month that it may look to abandon the Florida Governor due to his crumbling numbers and support.
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Ron DeSantis' super PAC 'Never Back Down' has poured over $12.3 million into a new advertisement campaign in a desperate attempt to reinvigorate the Florida Governor's 2024 Republican presidential nominee campaign.
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Editor’s Notes
Behind-the-scenes political intrigue exclusively for Pulse+ subscribers.
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