Struggling DeSantis Campaign Sends Out Talking Points for ‘Reset’ After Laying Off Dozens of Staffers

Governor DeSantis’s faltering presidential campaign is sending out new talking points, keying in donors on how it plans to combat the governor’s sliding poll numbers ahead of the first debate, which is looming next month.In mid-July, Mr. DeSantis’s campaign leaked a memo to NBC News detailing how it planned to make a U-turn in its handling of the press and would seek more coverage in the mainstream press.Now, the governor’s campaign is sending out talking points about “Leaning into the Reset,” which were obtained by journalist Ben Jacobs and initially penned by the campaign’s communications director, Andrew Romeo.Mr. DeSantis’s “campaign is taking aggressive steps to streamline operations, focus its messaging, position itself as the underdog in the 2024 Republican primary, and re-emphasize the campaign’s greatest asset: Governor DeSantis and his family.”The memo goes on to detail “What Will Be Different,” noting that the campaign is aiming to cut travel and event costs (the New York Times reported this week on the DeSantis family’s “taste for private planes”) and “embrace being the underdog and use the media’s ongoing narrative about the campaign to fuel momentum on the ground.”The memo leak came on Tuesday, just as it became public that the campaign would be shedding an additional 26 staffers, as first reported by Politico. In sum, the campaign has fired 38 staffers since its May 24 launch.“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,” the campaign manager, Generra Peck, said in a statement.In Federal Elections Commission filings from the second quarter, it was disclosed that Mr. DeSantis’s campaign had raised about $20 million and spent about $8 million, or about 40 percent of his campaign’s war chest, between its launch and the filing deadline, July 15.Despite the spending, Mr. DeSantis has failed to gain ground against President Trump in the national polls, with his support falling to 18.6 percent on July 26 from 20.6 percent on May 24, according to FiveThirtyEight’s average of polls.Over the same period, Mr. Trump’s support decreased to 51.9 percent from 54.1 percent, a similar decline in terms of points to that of Mr. DeSantis but one that represents a smaller proportion of his overall support.In terms of what to expect from the governor in the coming weeks, the memo describes talking points revolving around the economy, the border, Communist China, and Mr. DeSantis’s cultural priorities.On the economy, the memo describes a strategy aimed at criticizing President Biden for inflation, which appears to be waning, and making overtures to stop “runaway spending” and the national debt.Regarding the border, Mr. DeSantis is promising to “declare war on the Mexican drug cartels,” to “finally build the wall,” and to “stop the flow of fentanyl and human trafficking into our country.” Mr. DeSantis also promises to be more hawkish on China, preventing Beijing from “spying on our citizens and stealing our technology.”The final talking point, which the governor appears to plan to double down on, is his attack on “woke ideology,” which he says has “infiltrated our schools and military.”Talking points conspicuously absent from the memo but that have taken center stage in the governor’s campaign thus far are his state-level Covid policies, his battle with Disney, and other Florida-centric talking points. Their absence, and the absence of any reference to Florida as a “blueprint” for America, marks a departure from his previous focus on his record as governor.

Struggling DeSantis Campaign Sends Out Talking Points for ‘Reset’ After Laying Off Dozens of Staffers

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