Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and his wife, Casey, took great care not to allow their staff to send campaign emails or tweets without their consent during the 2024 presidential election. The company is accused of being a micromanager, a former employee has accused in a new report.
The level of control Mr. DeSantis exerted over his staff, most of whom had no experience working on national political campaigns, created a “bottleneck” that led to repeated social media posts and fundraising emails. said several former DeSantis campaign aides. told the Daily Caller.
“There’s nothing in the organization that doesn’t involve Mr. DeSantis or his wife,” a former campaign official told the magazine.
“That includes everything, including tweets.”
“Mr. DeSantis had to approve every fundraising email,” said another former aide.
Former election officials say Florida’s governor’s insistence on personally scrutinizing all interactions rather than delegating chores created a “bottleneck” in which submitted work was sent to the governor or his wife. It was said that it sometimes took up to three days for the publication to be approved by either party. .
“Only one to three form emails were sent because DeSantis has to review all emails before sending out fundraising emails,” the former staffer said. “So we failed to launch Twitter Spaces and ended up running the same messaging for several days due to bottlenecks.”
Another former aide said, “It sometimes took two or three days for tweets from people participating in digital campaigns to be approved, which had to go through extremely difficult bureaucratic approval structures.” Because it didn’t happen,” he recalled.
“Both the governor and the first lady had to see another tweet before publishing it,” they added.
DeSantis ended his bid for the White House earlier this month after a checkered eight-month campaign.
Mr. DeSantis, 45, who won reelection as governor in 2022 in a landslide, was widely seen as the Republican most likely to defeat former President Donald Trump, 77, in the Republican primary.
However, his support peaked in national opinion polls In a glitchy Twitter space with Elon Musk in May of this year, months before the start of his presidential campaign.
DeSantis’ campaign underwent multiple messaging “resets” and laid off a significant number of staff just two months into his disastrous start.
Last November, anger reportedly erupted during a strategy meeting for a super PAC aimed at countering South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley’s then-surging campaign, leading to a near brawl.
The DeSantis-aligned “Never Back Down” super PAC saw several leaders and strategists resign in the weeks following the heated talks.
Mr. DeSantis managed to finish second in the Iowa caucuses, but called off his campaign before the New Hampshire primary and endorsed Mr. Trump, citing a lack of a clear path to victory.
