Florida Governor Ron DeSantis rounded out his tour of every of Iowa’s 99 counties this weekend with a promise that he’ll emerge victorious within the Hawkeye State’s caucuses come January, regardless of trailing the present GOP frontrunner by practically 30 factors.
“We’re going to win Iowa,” the Florida governor stated throughout an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that aired Sunday. I believe it’s going to assist propel us to the nomination.”
Outperforming expectations in Iowa has lengthy been excessive on the DeSantis marketing campaign’s priorities, particularly since he scored an endorsement from the state’s fashionable governor, Kim Reynolds, who had beforehand stated she would keep out of the race.
The marketing campaign hopes {that a} victory or close-second end result would pierce the veil of inevitability that has shrouded the GOP primaries so far, with former president Donald Trump sustaining a large polling lead.
However DeSantis’ pronouncement comes as By no means Again Down, the political motion committee that has performed an outsized position in his marketing campaign, has undergone a number of rounds of employees shake-ups and vital inner turmoil. The newest, reported Saturday night by Politico, is the firing of CEO Kristin Davidson, who was let go simply 9 days after the PAC’s earlier CEO, Chris Jankowski, resigned following days of infighting. The PAC additionally fired a spokesperson, Erin Perrine, and one other high official. By no means Again Down’s chairman, former Nevada Senate candidate Adam Laxalt, introduced he was stepping down from the board on Friday.
An inner e-mail despatched Saturday evening named longtime DeSantis ally Scott Wagner as interim CEO. He’ll additionally exchange Laxalt as chair of the board. By no means Again Down spokesperson Jess Szymanski stated the group nonetheless has “probably the most organized, superior caucus operation of anybody within the 2024 major subject.”
The DeSantis marketing campaign has reportedly grown annoyed with the ineffectiveness of By no means Again Down’s TV promoting blitz. “The marketing campaign doesn’t assume [Never Back Down’s] present interim management needs to be inside a mile of a TV finances,” one marketing campaign official near DeSantis instructed Politico. The PAC has plowed $16 million into promoting in Iowa alone.
Early final week, DeSantis marketing campaign supervisor James Uthmeier wrote to donors, urging By no means Again Right down to deal with subject operations in Iowa as a substitute of promoting. Uthmeier additionally hinted {that a} newly shaped pro-DeSantis PAC, Struggle Proper, ought to take over digital promoting. That division of marketing campaign labor has began to take form already, Politico reported Saturday.
DeSantis’ chief rival was additionally in Iowa this weekend for a giant rally in Cedar Rapids, the place he mocked the Florida governor. “We hit him very exhausting, and he’s been falling out of the air like a really critically wounded fowl,” Trump stated of DeSantis.
“Finally,” DeSantis stated Sunday, “Republican voters are going to have the selection of Donald Trump, which I believe would make the election a referendum on him and loads of the problems that he’s coping with, or me, and that will likely be a referendum on Biden’s failures, on all the problems within the nation which might be affecting folks.”
