'Let Ron be Ron'—DeSantis' campaign begs donors to stand by for a reboot

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has officially been in the Republican presidential primary for just two months. Voting is nearly six months away, but his campaign is already being forced to reboot as DeSantis keeps sinking in the polls and the campaign is burning through cash at an unsustainable rate. Campaign officials are now frantically trying to explain how they’ll save DeSantis’ candidacy using one clichéd line after another. He’s going to run a “leaner meaner” and “insurgent” campaign. He’s “ready to prove the doubters wrong again.” At a Sunday meeting with big donors, they even busted out perhaps the most tired line of all: They’re going to “let Ron be Ron.” Because “that’s what got him here.”

The question is, where’s “here”? The campaign obviously wants donors to interpret “here” as “governor and top-tier primary candidate,” but under the circumstances, “here” could equally be “flailing just weeks after launching his primary campaign and sinking in the polls as voters get a better look at him.”

DeSantis raised $20 million between entering the race and the first FEC filing deadline, but he was heavily dependent on big donors, with many already having given the maximum $3,300 for the primary and $3 million of what he raised earmarked for the general election. (You know, the one he doesn’t look like he’ll reach.) The lack of widespread enthusiasm for his candidacy that shows up in polls is also showing up in fundraising, with The New York Times reporting, “In Mr. DeSantis’s first week as a candidate, in late May, his campaign paid significantly more in fees to WinRed, the main donation-processing platform for Republicans that receives a cut of every online dollar donated, than it did in the entire month of June.”