Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis
entered the Republican presidential race with an unmatched war chest
and a $269 million plan to change how campaigns are usually funded.
His
first campaign manager, Generra Peck, developed the strategy and
selected the leadership to lead a massive new super PAC called Never
Back Down. Lawyer-supervised meetings between the campaign-in-waiting
and the super PAC’s team fine-tuned the mission — setting the stage for a
historic paid door-knocking effort in early states.
Under
campaign finance rules, the two operations could not privately
coordinate most of their spending. But they aimed to function as an
integrated whole — built with the candidate’s approval, advised by a
single law firm, overseen by a board that included DeSantis confidants
and seeded with $82.5 million that DeSantis had raised for his
gubernatorial reelection. It was the first time a major campaign ceded
so much of its operations to an entity it could not legally control.
With just weeks to go before the Iowa caucuses, the experiment is now in tatters.
The super PAC that funded almost all of the DeSantis advertising and
field programs and much of the candidate’s travel and events has been
sidelined by the people that created it.
On
Saturday night, about four hours after this story first published
online, Jeff Roe — a key architect of Never Back Down’s strategy —
joined a string of departures, announcing he was resigning and further
deepening the group’s tumult. He said he “cannot in good conscience stay
affiliated with Never Back Down" after the super PAC sent statements to
The Washington Post suggesting the group fired officials connected to
Roe’s firm over “mismanagement and conduct issues.”
“They
are not true and an unwanted distraction at a critical time for
Governor DeSantis. I am resigning my position effective immediately,” he
wrote. “Governor DeSantis has been an exceptional governor and I hope
he will be the 47th President of the United States. I wish the Governor,
First Lady, and their entire team the best through the rest of the
campaign.”
Five
other senior officials have left Never Back Down since late November.
Three officials with Roe’s firm were fired, and the board chairman and
the founding chief executive both resigned, amid internal concerns about legal compliance. A verbal conflict from inside the group’s Atlanta offices became public, as did DeSantis’s own misgivings
about the outside group’s leadership. The governor and his campaign
staff have been frustrated by reporting on the drama around Never Back
Down and critical of the group’s ad strategy, with DeSantis’s second
campaign manager, James Uthmeier, publicly instructing donors to give
elsewhere for TV ads.
Rather than a new playbook for presidential campaigns, the broader DeSantis project has exposed
the dangers of depending on emerging loopholes in campaign finance law
that allow candidates to turn over traditional election efforts to
groups that can take donations of any size from corporations or
individuals.
“The
super PAC model of winning a presidential primary, I think, is
staggering, if not on the ropes,” said one DeSantis donor. “And if
you’re going to have a successful presidential primary campaign you need
to be able to raise hard dollars.”
DeSantis
— who has sometimes been criticized as awkward in his public
appearances and has struggled to win over new voters all year — is still
polling in second place in Iowa, and Never Back Down is running a
formidable ground operation in the early states that could provide for a
surprisingly strong finish. But he now finds himself in an uphill
struggle against the recent momentum of former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley and the continued dominance of former president Donald Trump.
This
account of the struggles of DeSantis and the super PAC supporting him
is based on interviews with 22 people involved in the effort, most of
whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not
authorized to speak publicly and wanted to describe private events.
Some
described a troubled structure that allowed people close to the
governor to shift the major strategic decisions of the super PAC, often
over the objections of the group’s staff. At the same time, others close
to DeSantis in Tallahassee blamed the failure of the broader effort on
the team of strategists and vendors who had been hired to run Never Back
Down. Ultimately, they said, those closest to DeSantis drove the effort
to revamp the independent group.
“The
professionals are out and DeSantis wants to go into the home stretch
with his closest confidants,” said one person familiar with the effort
who was not directly involved with either camp. The person added that
people in DeSantis’s inner circle want to “go into the final fight with
people who are close to [Uthmeier] and closer to the governor.”
Never
Back Down is still full of campaign veterans, with Phil Cox — a
longtime adviser to DeSantis — rejoining as a senior adviser and others
taking on heightened roles. Campaign officials and attorneys have
repeatedly said they have adhered to campaign finance laws and have said
it is normal for a candidate’s supporters and loyalists to run
independent organizations supporting them.
“We’re
not going to be distracted by more false narratives coming from unknown
sources with harmful agendas,” said DeSantis campaign communications
director Andrew Romeo, adding: “We appreciate the independent efforts of
our outside partners at NBD as they are building a historic ground game
for the fight ahead.”
On
Saturday, a top official at Never Back Down elaborated on the firings
in a statement that for the first time publicly suggested their
rationale. “Following mismanagement and conduct issues, including
numerous unauthorized leaks containing false information, senior
officials were terminated,” said Never Back Down chairman Scott Wagner.
“We don’t have time to indulge false narratives from those with ulterior
motives.”
The
Post asked employees for a response. A lawyer for the employees then
contacted Wagner claiming his assertions were categorically false and he
revised his statement, replacing the first sentence with: “Following
some opinions regarding mismanagement and conduct issues, including some
who believed there appeared to be numerous unauthorized leaks
containing false information, NBD and some senior officials parted ways.
”
A representative for the three former employees declined to comment Saturday.
Three
people familiar with the super PAC’s decision-making described reasons
for suspecting the three fired officials of wrongdoing, but the
organization did not provide clear evidence implicating them. Two other
people familiar with the inner workings of the group said they are not
aware of proof.
‘Don’t wear the same jersey’
Few
candidates had appeared better positioned for a presidential campaign
than DeSantis was after the 2022 midterm elections. He had won
reelection in a once-purple state by 19 points, even as candidates
backed by his chief rival, Trump, lost statewide races around the
country.
DeSantis’s
reelection had been managed by Peck, who had retained tens of millions
in unspent campaign funds that could not be directly used by a federal
candidate. In the weeks that followed, she set about building an
operation that could leverage that money and millions more that they
believed donors would fork over to the DeSantis effort.
Peck
was among those who supported hiring Roe, the chairman of the largest
Republican consulting firm, Axiom, to run the super PAC in part because
of his experience in Iowa, according to people with knowledge of her
thinking. Roe had overseen Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s 2016 Iowa caucuses
victory and was working for Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, DeSantis’s
potential rival for the 2024 nomination.
Roe, who had auditioned for other candidates including Trump and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, agreed to sign on with DeSantis and not to let parts of his firm work for any other presidential candidates.
Chris Jankowski, a Republican strategist brought in to helm Never Back
Down, was given the task of hiring the rest of the team and he later
hired a number of other Axiom consultants. Peck did not want
Axiom to become the dominant force in Never Back Down, the people said.
Some in DeSantis’s orbit questioned in particular how Roe — a
larger-than-life political figure who often drew media attention — would
mesh with the governor’s operation.
The
structure created separation between the two teams. As DeSantis
struggled, people around DeSantis soon began to blame Never Back Down
for the larger problems.
“The
team in Tallahassee could not understand how NBD’s staff could not
forfeit their own brand and desire for control. It was like men are from
Mars, women are from Venus during the first months of the campaign,”
said a person with knowledge of the campaign’s thinking.
Another
person close to the campaign suggested the problem was not the super
PAC model itself but divisions among operatives who don’t all “wear the
same jersey.” The Never Back Down team — which had been told by Roe to
not wear Axiom-branded apparel around the office — came to believe they
were being blamed for the campaign’s failures, both in budgeting and the
candidate’s message.
Suggestions by some
in the DeSantis orbit that they were cashing in on the race also stung,
according to people familiar with Never Back Down, as the early margins for Roe and his Axiom colleagues had been kept low, according to people familiar with the super PAC. By
the end of June, Roe had taken a personal loss on the project, though
his firms were expected to make money in the second half of the year.
(In federal filings, he reported a $409,000 in-kind donation to Never
Back Down for unreimbursed expenses.)
The
scope of the group’s field operation — originally designed to include
Super Tuesday states like California and Texas — was eventually narrowed
to Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. A firm controlled by Roe did
the door-knocking in Iowa, while a firm affiliated with Cox, a longtime
adviser to DeSantis, took on the contracts in New Hampshire and South
Carolina.
The
two operations sought other ways to offset costs for the campaign. A
company was founded, N2024D LLC, with help from attorneys for the
campaign and Never Back Down to pay for a lease of the private plane DeSantis used to travel to events.
People
close to DeSantis also made other efforts to use unregulated money,
further expanding the complicated and secretive web of groups revolving
around the DeSantis campaign. One project raised money through a
nonprofit group controlled by Wagner, Faithful and Strong, which does
not disclose its donors and had become a major contributor to Never Back
Down.
The
money was then sent to another nonprofit, Building America’s Future,
which according to tax filings had previously been run by Peck, who was a
former business partner of Cox. That group spent the money at IMGE — a firm that lists
Cox as chairman and DeSantis deputy campaign manager Ethan Eilon as
president — to search for potential small-dollar donors. The data that
resulted from that effort was controlled in part by IMGE and could then
be used by other clients, like the DeSantis campaign, to raise money for
the governor directly.
“We
don’t discuss vendor contracts, but it is misleading to frame a
contract with IMGE as producing data that ‘could be shared’ with the
DeSantis campaign. The reality is that IMGE is a business that sells and
rents lists to a wide variety of campaigns and organizations,” said a
person familiar with BAF’s role in the arrangement.
Faithful
and Strong’s contributions to BAF were designated in legal documents as
nonpolitical, according to another person familiar with the
arrangement. Wagner has denied any improper coordination between groups.
Ad strategy was a source of friction between the campaign and the super PAC as Tallahassee made instructions explicit. An unsigned memo on July 6, published by NBC News,
contained sentences in bold that Never Back Down interpreted as
marching orders. The memo urged more ad spending in New Hampshire, and a
pullback in spending in the Super Tuesday states until a reevaluation
of strategy in the fall.
Never Back Down staff, who had been watching Sen. Tim Scott
(R-S.C.) and his allies pour millions into early television advertising
with little impact, spoke about spending money in August in the
expensive Boston media market as being comparable to lighting the funds
on fire for media attention. But the spending went ahead anyway. The
group spent $2.5 million on Boston television from late July through
September.
Campaign
officials, on the other hand, came to believe Never Back Down’s TV
strategy wasn’t effective, according to another person familiar with the
campaign’s thinking, worrying that ads were not running enough to “burn
in.” They also thought the super PAC wasn’t doing enough negative ads
as DeSantis came under fire from Trump and Haley.
As
DeSantis fell in the polls, the tensions only ramped up. DeSantis
operatives and the governor himself were especially frustrated by a Roe
strategy memo, posted on Axiom’s website, that laid out advice for
DeSantis ahead of the first GOP presidential debate and was leaked to
the media, drawing ridicule. At the super PAC, there were some concerns
that someone in DeSantis’s immediate orbit was trying to embarrass
either Roe or Never Back Down. Campaign leadership, meanwhile, suspected
upset Never Back Down officials of trying to hurt them.
By
the fall, many of the initial assumptions of the DeSantis operation had
failed to materialize. Trump had grown stronger on the back of being
indicted in four separate cases, despite his avoidance of the debates.
And the money that Never Back Down had expected to flood in as the
nominating contests approached also became a problem, as some donors
began turning elsewhere.
In
mid-November, tempers flared the day of a strategy session at Never
Back Down’s offices in Atlanta, the first such series of meeting where
members of the board and a former DeSantis attorney named David
Dewhirst, a close ally of Uthmeier, were present. At one point after
Dewhirst had left the room, multiple people familiar with the events
said that Roe confronted Wagner about the Building America’s Future
prospecting program, which may have diverted potential money for Never
Back Down, a clash someone described to NBC News. Others disputed that
was the topic of discussion.
Jankowski,
the CEO, resigned days later after finding out that Dewhirst had
incorporated a group in Tallahassee — called Fight Right — that some on
the board wanted to use to pay for ads attacking Haley. In a statement
released amid public reporting over the internal discord, Jankowski said
that his concerns with the group’s direction went “well beyond a
difference of strategic opinion.”
Another
board member, former Virginia attorney general Ken Cuccinelli, wrote an
email for the record that was leaked to NBC News, describing the
“manner in which the Haley hit and its funding appears to be proceeding
is exceedingly objectionable to me.” Less than two weeks later, the
board chairman, former Nevada attorney general Adam Laxalt, who had
often aligned himself with Cuccinelli, resigned, citing family
obligations.
Laxalt declined to comment through a spokesperson, and Cuccinelli did not respond to requests for comment.
By
the time of Laxalt’s departure, Uthmeier had written a public memo on
behalf of the campaign embracing Fight Right for future television ads
and describing Never Back Down as a field operation, even though the
group at that point had spent more in advertising than any other
campaign or group this cycle, according to AdImpact.
By
the end of November, the three supervisors overseeing most of the
group’s staff — interim CEO Kristin Davison, communications director
Erin Perrine and Matthew Palmisano, who oversaw the group’s advance
operation — were fired by the board.
“Things
have changed with new leadership and the DeSantis mantra of ‘head down,
do the work,’ is winning out at the PAC,” said the person with knowledge of the DeSantis campaign’s thinking. Another said logistics and events are “better than ever.”
That
is not the consensus view. “Morale at the PAC is low. No one knows who
is in charge. People are just trying to get through,” said another
person with knowledge of the situation.
“I
thought they’d run a lean, mean, caucus-going machine,” said Justin
Clark, the deputy Trump 2020 campaign manager. “It hasn’t been a strong
machine.”
Still,
some in DeSantis’s orbit are holding out hope for a comeback. During
his first campaign for governor, DeSantis won despite shaking up his
team late in the race.
“Clearly,
we are underperforming. Clearly we haven’t lived up to the billing. But
I do think this adaptive behavior is going to produce better results in
the end,” said Dan Eberhart, a DeSantis donor. “Clearly, Haley has some
momentum nationally. Clearly, Trump is lapping the field. But I think
he’s got an underdog’s chance at pulling off a humongous upset.”
No comments:
Post a Comment