POLITICO Playbook: Scarred DeSantis staffers form a support group
We talked to a dozen or so onetime aides and consultants to the Florida governor, and they all said the same thing: DeSantis treats staff like expendable widgets. He largely relies on a brain trust of two: himself and his wife, CASEY DESANTIS, a former local TV journalist. Beyond that there are few, if any, “DeSantis people,” as far as political pros are concerned.
Yes, DeSantis recently hired highly regarded operative PHIL COX. But there’s no savant that he’s been through the trenches with, like a KARL ROVE or DAVID AXELROD — let alone an army of loyalists. That’s probably not fatal to his White House prospects, but it can’t help.
A few key nuggets from our reporting:
— A “support group” of former DeSantis staffers meets regularly to trade war stories about their hardship working for the governor. The turnover in his office and among his campaign advisers is well known among Republicans: In three of his five full years in Congress, he ranked in at least the 70th percentile in terms of highest turnover in a House office, according to data compiled by Legistorm. In the governor’s office, he has only two staffers who started with him when he was a junior member of Congress.
— Within six months of taking office as governor in 2019, DeSantis fired five staffers. One was a 23-year-old scheduler who’d been with him since the beginning of his gubernatorial race. Shortly after she was sent packing, an unnamed member of DeSantis’ administration was quoted in a Florida blog trashing her performance. A month later, his deputy chief of staff left, prompting Florida reporters to press him about the rapid churn in his operation.
— Another story relayed to us by five former staffers: At the beginning of his administration, DeSantis directed the Florida Republican Party leader to fire a party official who had cancer — on that person’s first week back from surgery.
— DeSantis often blames his staff for his own blunders, we’re told. After DeSantis went on Fox News in 2018 and implored Florida voters not to “monkey this up” by supporting his African American Democratic opponent for governor, he and his wife chewed out his campaign staff for not cleaning up the mess, according to three former staffers. Shortly after, DeSantis brought in a whole new group of advisers.
— Aides would lure DeSantis to staff meetings with cupcakes, saying that it was a colleague’s birthday to get him to attend. In the gubernatorial primary, DeSantis visited his campaign headquarters just a couple of times. On election night, he entered the war room after his win and remarked, “Wow, I didn’t know this many people worked for me,” according to four former staffers.
DeSantis’ office didn’t respond directly to these specifics, but called the line of questioning a false narrative. His chief of staff, ADRIAN LUKIS, sent a 5-page document with statements from 14 current and former staffers, consultants and GOP party leaders praising DeSantis, including his former chief of staff SHANE STRUM.
“Throughout my time as Chief of Staff, the Governor empowered me to make sure that everyone who worked for him had the best interests of the state at heart,” Strum wrote. “We didn’t tolerate leakers, and we didn’t tolerate grifters. Fortunately, aside from some individuals we had to part with early in the administration, the Governor has had a strong and loyal team, who he appreciates.”
But many former DeSantis aides we spoke with told a different story. They did not want to be quoted by name because of potential professional repercussions.
“Loyalty and trust, that is not a currency he deals in,” one said. “It’s him and Casey. But everyone else is like a disposable piece of garbage.”
It’s not just staffers whom DeSantis has cycled through, but political consultants who ran his four campaigns. They include top D.C. political hands like BRAD HEROLD at Something Else, BARNEY KELLER at Jamestown & Associates, pollster TONY FABRIZIO and Trump’s top aide SUSIE WILES.Wiles now oversees Trump’s political operation.
Say this much for DeSantis: Whatever he’s doing has worked for him so far. In eight years, he’s risen from 34-year-old freshman congressman to governor of a powerhouse state and potential heir apparent to Trump as leader of the Republican Party.
But the leap from running for Congress or governor to seeking the presidency is obviously huge. And DeSantis, at least as it stands now, would not bring a band of loyal staffers to a grueling national campaign.
Rep. MATT GAETZ (R-Fla.), who led his gubernatorial transition, put it this way: “To date, he’s risen in part due to his willingness to bet on himself over the political-industrial complex.”
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