Playbook: “If DeSantis does turn things around, he may have the FEC to thank. Up until the public disclosure of his campaign’s finances, the governor could maintain the fiction that he was running a frontrunner campaign with the resources to travel in presidential style and invest in large-scale ground games in both the early primary and Super Tuesday states.”
“Instead, the DeSantis campaign was the equivalent of three kids in a trenchcoat. When it was unbuttoned, we learned that the candidate campaigning on his executive experience and success running large organizations spent 40% of what he raised, with little to show for it. He had a million-dollar payroll and spent almost that much on travel. His small-dollar donor game was anemic (15% of donations), and $3 million of what he’d raised was earmarked for the general election.”
Though DeSantis insiders have been quietly grumbling about the mismatch between results and finances for weeks, the disclosure of the fundraising internals caused a reckoning. Donors and other supporters had to be mollified. Staff had to be fired. A new strategy had to be unfurled.”
To watch: DeSantis has a live interview with Jake Tapper of CNN at 4 p.m. ET.
