When Jeff Roe signed on as an adviser to the main pro–Ron DeSantis super PAC in March, it appeared that the Florida governor, fresh off a 19-point reelection victory, was the future of the Republican Party. Roe was the hottest operative in GOP politics, having steered Glenn Youngkin to an upset victory in Virginia’s 2021 gubernatorial election, and his decision to join the Never Back Down PAC was validation that DeSantis had the best chance to wrest the party’s 2024 nomination from Donald Trump. But six months later, DeSantis’s national poll numbers are down about 50%, and his struggling presidential bid is being buffeted by layoffs, infighting, and embarrassing leaks.
According to sources, Roe and the DeSantis campaign are blaming each other for DeSantis’s faltering candidacy. In June, I reported that Roe had complained to people about how the campaign wasn’t getting more press coverage. “Trump defined the election conversation while DeSantis focused on policy,” a GOP operative said, explaining how DeSantis followed an outdated campaign playbook instead of giving GOP voters red meat. Sources say Roe was frustrated that DeSantis waited until early August to replace campaign manager Generra Peck. Peck is a talented operative who gained DeSantis and his wife Casey DeSantis’s support for having overseen the governor’s decisive 2022 reelection campaign. But she had never worked at the presidential level, and a source says Roe blamed her for overspending too early in the race. Peck declined to comment.
Sources say Roe has also expressed frustration over the fact that DeSantis is relying so heavily on his wife for strategy advice. According to the GOP operative, Casey, a former local newscaster, told people that the Republican Party was ready to move on from Trump. The operative recalled the infamous campaign ad Casey tweeted last fall that showed black-and-white photos of her husband as a narrator intoned: “God looked down on his planned paradise and said: ‘I need a protector.’ So God made a fighter.” “We can revise that now. God chose Ron to get his ass kicked by Trump,” the operative said.
Roe denied making disparaging comments about Casey DeSantis. “That is absolute flat bullshit,” Roe told me. “Even if I thought it, I wouldn’t say it. And I don’t think it.”
After I spoke to Roe, a spokesperson for Never Back Down sent a statement from Never Back Down chairman Adam Laxalt: “There has literally been leaked audio of Jeff praising the first lady and saying what an asset she is to the campaign and the country. Anonymous sources saying otherwise are doing nothing more than waging a smear campaign against the effort to get Ron DeSantis elected president.”
DeSantis, meanwhile, was reportedly angry after a firm associated with Never Back Down, and owned by Roe, posted an embarrassing debate strategy memo online just ahead of the first GOP debate last month. (Because of campaign finance rules, super PACs are barred from coordinating with campaigns. Posting the memo online might have been a way to communicate without running afoul of the law.) Among the memo’s condescending suggestions: DeSantis should “attack Joe Biden and the media 3-5 times”; “defend Donald Trump”; and “invoke a personal anecdote story about family, \kids, Casey, showing emotion.” “The governor was furious when the memo was released,” a major donor to the super PAC and campaign told me. “He was apoplectic, as any candidate would be. It made him look like a puppet of Jeff’s, which is as far away from reality as possible.” A prominent Republican close to the DeSantis campaign said: “Ron is telling everyone that the biggest mistake he ever made was hiring Jeff Roe.” (It was the PAC that formally hired Roe while DeSantis was considering his run.)
The Never Back Down spokesperson provided a statement from the PAC’s CEO, Chris Jankowski: “As we move past preseason and get closer to the Iowa caucus, our opponents are desperate to make up as many nonsensical process stories as they can. It won’t work. Along with Jeff and our senior leadership team, we will continue to build out the best operation in the field and fight for Ron and Casey DeSantis every day.”
The DeSantis campaign pushed back against claims that Roe had badmouthed Casey DeSantis. “This is totally false,” communications director Andrew Romeo said in a statement. “We are thrilled with the work Never Back Down has done to create a historic multistate field program that no other campaign will come close to matching, provide robust paid media air cover to help introduce Ron DeSantis to voters in the early states, and help the governor to have already visited 53 of Iowa’s 99 counties through their special guest invitations.” Romeo added that “it’s no surprise anonymous sources who feel threatened by Ron DeSantis continue to try to smear him with lies in the corporate media.”
It’s common for there to be tension between a presidential campaign and a super PAC. But the mistrust between the DeSantis campaign and its super PAC has reached dysfunctional levels. For example, a source close to Never Back Down accused Roe’s enemies inside the campaign of tipping off The New York Times to the campaign memo posted online.
In recent days, Roe has been embroiled in more controversies. NBC News recently reported that Never Back Down had ended voter outreach efforts in Nevada and Super Tuesday states, a further sign that the Iowa caucus is make or break for DeSantis. Politico reported on leaked audio of Roe bragging to donors that Never Back Down was behind negative press about Vivek Ramaswamy. The New York Times obtained a recording of Roe begging donors for $50 million to shore up the super PAC’s funding. “It’s the fatal character flaw in Jeff Roe. He makes it all about Jeff Roe. There’s a lot of donor concern about the Roe-and-Jankowski–led super PAC,” the major donor to the super PAC and campaign told me.
Embarrassing leaks are signs of a campaign in serious trouble. But in many ways, DeSantis’s travails shouldn’t be surprising. The case for his campaign hinged on the theory that the Republican base was abandoning Trump and looking for an alternative. But that didn’t happen. Trump’s enduring support, even amid four criminal indictments, has effectively put DeSantis in a box. He can’t attack Trump because that would alienate his supporters, but he can’t ignore him either. Furthermore, as I reported in my profile of DeSantis about a year ago, many former DeSantis staffers said the robotic and famously thin-skinned candidate would crash on the national stage. “DeSantis is a distressed stock,” a second GOP operative recently told me. “Reality is hitting. He is a bad candidate,” added a third operative.
On Wednesday, Politico reported that many of the biggest donors to DeSantis’s gubernatorial reelection campaign are not financially backing his presidential bid or are also placing bets on other candidates. Roe told me that the path to the nomination remains wide open and that Never Back Down, which reported having nearly $97 million in the bank in its most recent filing, has the resources to stay in the fight. The PAC is also embarking on a $25 million ad blitz targeting Iowa and New Hampshire this month through October. “The campaign is doing great. He had a great debate performance. He handled the hurricane like he always does, with steady leadership,” Roe said. “We’re going to win.”