DeSantis Fires a Dozen Staffers as Campaign Payroll Burn Rate Nears 30%, Meanwhile Two-Thirds of All Campaign Funds Come from Big Donors, 15% from Small Donors

There is a lot of granular dissection of the DeSantis campaign taking place as the music stops and the staff clamor for a chair.

Keep in mind, Donald Trump released his campaign fundraising details showing over a million small donors helped raise $35 million with an average contribution of $34.20. Small donors, that’s millions of middle class and working class MAGA folks, are the fuel for President Trump’s campaign.

According to the latest FEC filing [DATA HERE] the DeSantis campaign team took in $20.1 million, but burned through $7.9 million in just six weeks. This presents a major problem for the campaign, because over two-thirds of those contributions were from maxed-out donors who cannot contribute again. Only 15% of DeSantis campaign fundraising came from small donors.

[DATA HERE]

As NBC notes, “the numbers suggest, for the first time, that solvency could be a threat to DeSantis’ campaign, which has touted its fundraising ability as a key measure of viability.” The big problem for Ron DeSantis is his reliance on big donors.

(NBC) – […] more than two-thirds of DeSantis’ money — nearly $14 million — came from donors who gave the legal maximum and cannot donate again, NBC’s analysis shows. Some of those donors gave the $3,300 limit for both the primary and general elections, boosting DeSantis’ totals with cash that can’t be used to try to defeat Trump.

DeSantis finished June with more than $12.2 million in the bank, but his filing indicates that $3 million of that can only be used in the general election. Trump’s campaign ended the quarter with $22.5 million on hand. At the same time, DeSantis spent about 40 percent of what he raised, in part by paying salaries to 92 people (before the staff firings). (article here)

The issue of relying on billionaires, rich people, corporations and Wall Street was always an Achilles heel for DeSantis. Once those donors have contributed the maximum amount, either individually or through bundling their friends to support him, that’s it.

Every campaign needs a wide and deep donor group from the voters in order to tap them intermittently for assistance as the campaign continues. DeSantis just doesn’t have that with only 15% of his total raised coming from small donors. That makes the burn rate a major problem, and with the scale of payroll assembled, he needs to cut expenses after less than two months of campaigning. Casey will not be happy.

(NBC) – Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign has fired roughly a dozen staffers — and more are expected in the coming weeks as he shakes up his big-money political operations after less than two months on the campaign trail.

Those who were let go were described to NBC News by a source familiar as mid-level staffers across several departments whose departures were related to cutting costs. The exits come after the departures of David Abrams and Tucker Obenshain, veterans of DeSantis’ political orbit, which were first reported by Politico.

Sources involved with the DeSantis campaign say there is an internal assessment among some that they hired too many staffers too early, and despite bringing in $20 million during its first six weeks, it was becoming clear their costs needed to be brought down.

[…] DeSantis’ campaign had 92 people listed as being on the payroll for at least some period of time during its first fundraising period, according to campaign finance reports filed Saturday with the Federal Election Commission. It is by far the most of any Republican presidential candidate, and it has left his campaign with huge payroll expenses and, the new filings show, fewer resources than originally thought. (read more)

Team DeSantis is having a crisis and coping party this weekend in Tallahassee, where they will address the issues of greatest concern to the billionaires. However, absent a structural change in the candidate, the team, the outlook and the entire purpose of their assembly – nothing will work.

As noted by those connected to the campaign, “They think DeSantis’ inner circle underestimated just how hard — and expensive — it would be to break the grip on the Republican base held by Trump, who has a commanding lead and is seen as the overwhelming frontrunner. Even in Florida, a state that re-elected DeSantis by nearly 20 percentage-points just seven months ago, Trump now has his own 20-point lead on DeSantis, according to a Florida Atlantic University poll released last week.”

I said last year not to worry about DeSantis too much, because the more people would be exposed to him the less likely his campaign would succeed. This was not snark on my part, this is just the reality that is Ron DeSantis. The reason why the influencers recruited by Christina Pushaw are so abrasive, sanctimonious, condescending, annoying and detrimental to his campaign, is because his influencers are just like him. Pushaw factually enlisted the help of people who have the same personality as Ron DeSantis – which is to say they are a miserable unlikable bunch.

There are not enough uppity jerks in the base of the Republican Party, people who look down on others while taking selfies of their lunches, to overwhelm the ordinary base of regular folks who comprise the MAGA community. DeSantis polls well with a very narrow segment of rude, affluent people, and there just are not enough of them.

The issues for the DeSantis campaign are structural and embedded in the DNA of the campaign participants. This is not a fixable flaw. I knew this last year when I was watching the team assemble; these are the same GOPe types that form the core of the never-trumpets. Just a miserable bunch of out-of-touch political types.

The Sea Island Super PAC (Never Back Down) has money, around $200 million, but the campaign itself is on life-support after only a few months. Even with the super pac buying off everyone they can, they don’t end up changing the dynamic of the voting base.

You might say I have been a little hard on DeSantis, and if he just stayed as governor all would be ok. Unfortunately, that’s not accurate or possible. Ron DeSantis could not avoid running for 2024 because this 2024 race was the entire reason he was put into the 2018 Florida Governor’s contest to begin with. Once you realize DeSantis is a long-planned operation, going back to Trump’s 2018 mid-term, then you realize why he needs to be removed.