Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is in New Hampshire touting his new economic policy and will be there the next two days — a move which comes as his campaign laid off dozens of staffers and opts to focus primarily on early primary states rather than winning over Super Tuesday voters.
DeSantis continued his blitz of New Hampshire over the weekend after visiting Iowa on Thursday and Friday, attending a church service, meeting with state Sen. Regina Birdsell, attending former Republican Sen. Scott Brown’s No BS Backyard BBQ, and visiting Brown’s Lobster Pound in the Granite State, according to an update from the DeSantis campaign.
“Expect to see more of this type of energetic campaigning from the governor. He will spend the next two days in New Hampshire touting his new economic policy in multiple forums and will then take his plan to Iowans as he resumes Never Back Down’s bus tour on Thursday,” the update reads, teasing DeSantis rolling out his ten-point plan dubbed the “Declaration of Economic Independence.”
These moves follow the release of a leaked memo in July that revealed the DeSantis campaign’s strategy to reassure donors who are worried about his failure to rise in the polls.
The memo stated in part:
Ron DeSantis is running a campaign to win everywhere. It would be a mistake to take a paid media and field program off the table in service of other states, we will not cede New Hampshire. From what we can tell, pro-DeSantis efforts are currently and will continue to run a robust effort in Iowa, South Carolina, and New Hampshire, that includes paid media and field.
While Super Tuesday is critically important, we will not dedicate resources to Super Tuesday that slow our momentum in New Hampshire. We expect to revisit this investment in the Fall.
Further, the DeSantis campaign recently laid off dozens of staffers as part of an overarching effort to revitalize DeSantis’s campaign, as Breitbart News detailed:
The campaign reportedly laid off 38 staffers, which DeSantis’s campaign manager, Generra Peck, described as part of the “aggressive steps” it has taken to “streamline operations” and boost the governor’s position in the polls.
“Following a top-to-bottom review of our organization, we have taken additional, aggressive steps to streamline operations and put Ron DeSantis in the strongest position to win this primary and defeat Joe Biden,” Peck said in a statement.
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Jack Knudsen / Breitbart NewsAll of this comes as DeSantis struggles to improve his standing in the polls, dropping into the teens in both last week’s Morning Consult survey and this week’s New York Times/Siena survey.
DeSantis continues to struggle to emerge as the frontrunner in the states he is solely focusing on now as well, including New Hampshire. The latest American Greatness/National Research Inc. survey released last week showed DeSantis dropping to 11 percent, down from 15 percent two weeks prior. Former President Donald Trump came in as the frontrunner with 41 percent– a two-point increase from the 39 percent support he saw in the previous Granite State survey.
“I think it’s pretty clear, as evidenced by the small-dollar donors — 15 percent of the entire take, right?” Donald Trump Jr. told Breitbart News in July when discussing DeSantis’s presidential bid. “So it’s all the billionaires, that’s who wants that [DeSantis] because they want a president they can control.”
“He’s not gonna listen to them if it’s not what’s right for the American people. And I think that’s evidenced by everything we’ve seen for the last few months and, again, so you can create a lot of an image online. … You get them trying to copy Trump’s interpersonal reaction, you realize there’s almost no personality there,” he said of DeSantis.
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Jack Knudsen / Breitbart News