Maggie Haberman Pens Stunning NY Times Feature on DeSantis Campaign Turmoil: A ‘Disillusioned’ Candidacy, ‘Marked By Finger-Pointing’

AP Photo/Meg Kinnard

The New York Times, Sunday, published an extensive report on internal turmoil plaguing the presidential campaign of Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL).

In the piece — co-authored by Maggie Haberman, Shane Goldmacher and Nicholas Nehamas — more than 12 current and past DeSantis advisers dished on problems plaguing the campaign.

“Those advisers paint a portrait of a disillusioned presidential candidacy, marked by finger-pointing, fatalism and grand plans designed in a Tallahassee hotel in early spring gone awry by winter,” Haberman, Goldmacher and Nehamas wrote.

Much of the turmoil, according to the report, centers on relations between the campaign and the DeSantis-aligned Never Back Down Super PAC. Haberman and her colleagues report that “cash is scarce” and that Never Back Down flushed much of its cash on door-knocking operations in places like California — rendering it unable to bankroll TV ads in crucial early states like Iowa and New Hampshire.

The report asserted the campaign and the Super PAC have never been on the same page. From the article:

“The DeSantis candidacy has been hobbled for months by an unusual and unwieldy structure — one top official lamented that it was a “Frankenstein” creation — that pushed the legal bounds of the law that limits strategic coordination and yet was still beset by miscommunications. Those structural problems compounded a series of strategic miscalculations and audacious if not arrogant assumptions that led to early campaign layoffs. Profligate spending and overly bullish fund-raising projections put the campaign on the financial brink after only two months.

The candidate himself, prone to mistrusting his own advisers, did not have a wide enough inner circle to fill both a campaign and super PAC with close allies, leaving the super PAC in the hands of newcomers who clashed with the campaign almost from the start.

While much of the piece focused behind-the-scenes chaos, DeSantis himself wasn’t let off the hook. Stuart Stevens, a top strategist on Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign, told the Times that while DeSantis was being packaged as “Trump without the baggage,” he ended up being “Ted Cruz without the personality.”

In a statement to the Times, DeSantis communications director Andrew Romeo rejected the paper’s reporting.

“Different day, same media hit job based on unnamed sources with agendas,” Romeo said. “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 Jan. 15.”