Pressure mounts for DeSantis candidacy to catch fire

TAMPA, Fla. — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is entering month No. 3 as a presidential candidate simultaneously bolstered by solid fundraising numbers and dogged by political chatter questioning the future of his campaign.

Despite his campaign raising more money in the second quarter of this year than that of former President Donald Trump, his national poll numbers remain stubbornly — and distantly — behind the clear front-runner. Some DeSantis donors are growing wary of the lack of progress or are holding back to watch more of the race play out.

DeSantis’ team is making some changes, including letting go of several people after the campaign spent more than $1 million on payroll and related expenses for a large crew of more than 90 staffers, campaign finance records show.

He’s also shifting his media strategy. DeSantis sat down Tuesday for an interview on CNN with host Jake Tapper, the governor’s first national mainstream media appearance as a presidential candidate that wasn’t with a conservative outlet. For years, DeSantis has shunned interviews with most mainstream journalists.

Still, DeSantis’ tone has remained confident as pressure builds for his candidacy to catch fire. His backers have argued that politicos are too eager to write DeSantis’ political obituary, pointing to his unlikely win as governor in 2018 when many observers had counted him out.

DeSantis raised an impressive sum of about $20 million in the month and a half after officially announcing his candidacy, according to recently filed campaign finance reports. But just 15% of that was from small-dollar donors giving less than $200, a common proxy for measuring candidates’ grassroots support.

It’s unclear from the Trump campaign’s report how much of his $17.7 million raised came from small-dollar donors. Most of his funds were transferred from a separate committee and his campaign did not respond to emailed questions. But Trump has historically reigned as the top Republican for small checks.

The DeSantis campaign spent millions in this short period, largely on ad placement, fees to a Republican online fundraising platform, digital fundraising consulting, travel and payroll. These expenses left the campaign with $12.2 million of cash on hand as of June 30, though about a fourth of it — $3 million — is earmarked for the general election. Trump, who entered the race late last year, had roughly $10 million more in his campaign account at the end of the quarter.

Super PACs backing each candidate have much more, but are not required to file reports detailing their finances until the end of the month.

About 40% of DeSantis’ total haul came from Florida donors, a sign of his continued prominence in his home state. Other top states included California, Texas, New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, in that order.

During the CNN interview, DeSantis attributed the doubts about his candidacy to him “taking fire really nonstop” in the period between his November landslide reelection victory, which supercharged his presidential buzz, to his official entry into the race in mid-May, during which he “had to do my job” overseeing Florida’s legislative session.

“A lot of people view me as a threat. I think the left views me as a threat because they think I’ll beat (President Joe) Biden and actually deliver on all this stuff, and then of course people that have their allegiances on the Republican side, you know, have gone after me,” he said. “But the reality is this is a state-by-state process.”

As his team has faced headwinds, it has remained committed to its focus on early states, especially Iowa. Trump lost the state to Sen. Ted Cruz in 2016′s crowded Republican primary.

“Americans are rallying behind Ron DeSantis and his plan to reverse Joe Biden’s failures and restore sanity to our nation, and his momentum will only continue as voters see more of him in-person, especially in Iowa,” DeSantis campaign spokesperson Andrew Romeo said in an email.

Still, Steve Cortes, a spokesperson for Never Back Down, the pro-DeSantis super PAC, acknowledged during a Twitter broadcast earlier this month that DeSantis is “way behind” in the national polls, calling his path to victory an “uphill battle.”

Polling averages compiled by the data analysis site FiveThirtyEight show that DeSantis’ overall favorability has slipped while the percentage of people who view him unfavorably has grown. Trump’s lead over DeSantis has widened in recent months. Even the typically friendly hosts on Fox News have begun pressing DeSantis on his polling performance.

Meanwhile, back home, Farmers Insurance announced this month it was leaving the state of Florida, deepening the state’s already dire homeowner’s insurance crisis that has caused residents to pay the highest premiums in the nation. And a small number of malaria cases were reported in Sarasota County, the first time the U.S. has had locally acquired cases of the disease in 20 years.

Jim Merrill, a veteran Republican strategist in New Hampshire who worked for Sen. Marco Rubio’s 2016 campaign, said DeSantis’ position remains strong, though he clearly “has work to do.”

“I’ve seen this happen over many cycles, where we kind of reach this point in the summer where progress may not be happening as rapidly as you’d like it to be, and donors in particular can get antsy,” he said. “You’ve got to be strategic, calm — be deliberate and not overreact. What I see in (the DeSantis campaign) is modest adjustments that reflect reality.”

If DeSantis is headed for a full-blown reset, it wouldn’t be his first. In the 2018 race for governor, DeSantis’ campaign flailed after he was widely criticized for saying during a TV interview that Floridians shouldn’t “monkey this up” by electing his opponent, Andrew Gillum, who is Black. Weeks before the election, DeSantis hired veteran Republican operative Susie Wiles to bring order to his error-prone campaign. Not long after DeSantis eked out a win in that race, he had a falling out with Wiles. His 2022 gubernatorial reelection team featured a mostly different cadre of people, some of whom, like campaign manager Generra Peck, are now working on his presidential bid.

On Monday, Trump’s campaign distributed a memo to journalists that was addressed to DeSantis donors, titled “Questions You Should Be Raising.” It was signed by two senior Trump campaign officials, including Wiles — who is working again for Trump. The memo encouraged donors to seek “answers or accountability” on the DeSantis campaign’s spending.

“If you still collectively pour millions of dollars into the failing Ron DeSantis campaign, you can’t say you weren’t warned,” it reads.

DeSantis, like other Republican candidates in the race, has also struggled to escape the pull of Trump’s news-making, even when it’s for historic criminal charges. During this week’s CNN interview, the first questions Tapper asked DeSantis were about the possibility of Trump being indicted for a third time over his actions leading up to the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Merrill, the New Hampshire strategist, said a third Trump indictment might not move many primary voters, though it may push candidates like DeSantis to begin attacking Trump with more force.

“At some point, someone is going to say, ‘Look, there’s too much drama. We can’t win with all this hanging over Donald Trump’s head,’” he said. “People have been very delicate about when they go there … (but) at some point you’ve got to increase your market share. And you can’t do that by ignoring one of the biggest ongoing developments of the primary cycle.”