The Ron DeSantis campaign is undergoing another shakeup, this time firing campaign manager Generra Peck. The Florida governor picked Peck to run his successful 2022 re-election bid despite a lack of national campaign experience.
Therein likely lies the problem. Running for governor and running for president are two very different beasts. The media attention, the huge national divide, and the sheer magnitude of attacks, particularly in these turbulent times, are unlike any other year in federal level politics.
That being said, DeSantis’s new pick, James Uthmeier, has never run a campaign at the state or national level.
Uthmeier has served as the governor’s apparently very conservative chief of staff. According to DeSantis’ super PAC Never Back Down communications director Andrew Romeo, the governor’s trusted associate has been “one of Governor DeSantis’ top advisors for years and he is needed where it matters most: working hand in hand with Generra Peck and the rest of the team to put the governor in the best possible position to win this primary and defeat Joe Biden.”
Peck will stay on the team as the campaign’s chief strategist.
Critics and donors were quick to blame Peck for DeSantis’s sluggish showing in the GOP primary thus far, unable to gain any traction against frontrunner, Donald Trump.
One donor who attended a DeSantis donor retreat in Utah late last month commented about Peck, “I like her. I think she’s great. But this is the NFL. This is about winning.”
This is the third rearrangement in the campaign, the most recent one happening just under three weeks ago when the campaign let go of close to ten staffers who had been involved in event planning.
Ron DeSantis: Don’t Call It a Reboot
Uthmeier is reticent to use the ‘reboot’ word that the media has tossed around in the past few weeks to describe the DeSantis campaign’s shuffling.
According to The Messenger News, advisers prefer to call this the last campaign “reload” and are confident that DeSantis will pull through to victory.
“People have written Governor DeSantis’s obituary many times,” Uthmeier said in a written statement to The Messenger. “From his race against establishment primary candidate Adam Putnam, to his victory over legacy media-favored candidate Andrew Gillum [in 2018], to his twenty point win over Charlie Crist [in 2022], Governor DeSantis has proven that he knows how to win. He’s breaking records on fundraising and has a supporting super PAC with $100 million in the bank and an incredible ground game. Get ready.”
In any other race without Donald Trump and his antics, I’d agree with the new campaign manager. However, 2024 will not be any other race, and Donald Trump is not any other competitor. No other presidential candidate has managed to survive two impeachments, a slew of accusations and, so far, three criminal indictments and still lead the pack in the primaries.
Love or hate Donald J. Trump, the man is a case study in resilience, perseverance, and maybe blissful ignorance.
Still, DeSantis remains optimistic, responding to Harris Faulkner of Fox News when she called his campaign “mission failure”:
“We’re laying the groundwork to be able to actually win delegates which is what you need to do, so you gotta make those investments. We’re the only one really doing that on the ground in places like Iowa and New Hampshire and we’re going to continue to do that and I understand if we weren’t a threat they wouldn’t be putting out those statements.”
However, behind the scenes, donors aren’t so confident. Last week the biggest individual donor to “Never Back Down,” the Super PAC supporting Ron DeSantis’ presidential bid, hotel entrepreneur Robert Bigelow threatened to withhold funds from the campaign unless the Florida governor attracts new major donors and adopts a more moderate approach.
“He does need to shift to get to moderates. He’ll lose if he doesn’t … Extremism isn’t going to get you elected,” Bigelow said in an interview, adding that he had communicated these concerns to DeSantis’ campaign.
Bigelow is likely expressing concern about Florida’s most recent six-week abortion ban.
Still, DeSantis isn’t wavering.
“We’ve got a record of success and you’re going to be able to see that as this campaign goes on. The naysayers have always hit me. But we lead and we deliver results and that’s why we’ve been successful and we’ll continue to be successful in this campaign.”
We’ll see how successful in the coming months.
Jennifer Galardi is the politics and culture editor for 19FortyFive.com. She has a Master’s in Public Policy from Pepperdine University and produces and hosts the podcast Connection with conversations that address health, culture, politics and policy. In a previous life, she wrote for publications in the health, fitness, and nutrition space. In addition, her pieces have been published in the Epoch Times and Pepperdine Policy Review.
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