This Photo Is Causing Panic at the Ron DeSantis Campaign

It wasn’t that long ago that internal murmurings from the presidential campaign of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis indicated a reset, of sorts, was afoot.

Since the buggy campaign launch on Twitter Spaces with Elon Musk back in May (the company now known as X), DeSantis has languished in the polls and languished in connecting with voters of early primary states.

As of the last couple of weeks, the “let Ron be Ron” crowd within the DeSantis campaign seemed to push their agenda forward scheduling the Florida Governor for numerous appearances around the state of Iowa. The goal was to hold multiple events and try to crack the ice with Iowa Republican caucus voters.

While several of DeSantis’ events were well-attended, several were not, leading to this photo being circulated over the weekend:

Some background on the image, courtesy of Newsweek:

Tim Miller, writer at media outlet The Bulwark, shared an image on X, formerly known as Twitter, of what appeared to be a sparse crowd at Spanky’s Livestock Auction on Saturday.

Since being shared on August 5, the post has been viewed more than 935,600 times on the social media platform.

The image showed a few dozen people sitting on benches at the auction, with most of the venue empty.

Miller did add a caveat in a follow-up tweet, which read: “Fwiw (for what it’s worth) DeSantis is doing a bunch of events this weekend, and not all have been this sparse.

“This is the reality when you reboot and have to do the grind it out, lots of small events Let Ron Be Ron deal.”

If this is the reboot, maybe it’s worth uninstalling the most recent update.

If you think our headline is somewhat overblowing the “panic” felt by the DeSantis team, have a glance at this recent Bloomberg article which speaks of a disorganized campaign with competing strategies that lacks a coherent message:

Ron DeSantis promised a reset of his presidential campaign. Many of his campaign staffers are still waiting.

Several aides believe the Republican candidate’s bid lacks a coherent strategy and message, according to people familiar with the campaign. The operation is disorganized, with different teams pursuing their own agendas, and little communication between groups, said the people familiar, who requested anonymity to discuss the campaign’s inner workings.

Even posting an official message on X, the platform formerly called Twitter, is rife with bureaucracy, according to people briefed on the communications strategy. The governor and his wife, Casey DeSantis, must personally approve many of the messages — a process that can take two days and can slow their ability to respond to campaign developments, they said.

Some at the highest rungs of the campaign leadership consider the operation flawed and worry they are watching the Florida governor’s chances of winning the GOP nomination slip away.

Whether it’s all completely true or not is somewhat immaterial to how the campaign appears to be functioning at the moment. There clearly is something off within DeSantis’ inner circle that seems unable to translate a huge victory in Florida into a competitive presidential bid against Donald Trump.

Perhaps the challenge, as it is with all “campaign resets,” is that you can’t reset the candidate themselves:

“The reset hasn’t exactly stopped him from making one unforced error after the other,” said Whit Ayres, a GOP pollster who worked on DeSantis’s successful 2018 gubernatorial race.

“His issue is he just has a hard time dealing with people. He does not trust anyone other than his wife, Casey. You get this feedback loop between the two of them that no one can be trusted,” added Ayres, who said he had not spoken to DeSantis since that race. “He doesn’t have anyone on his campaign team who has been involved with the top levels of any presidential campaign.”

DeSantis is a fighter on many fronts but he lacks the charm needed to bring people into his fold. Donald Trump has that charm, and so did former Presidents Obama, Bush, and Clinton. There was a connection that voters built in their minds and they wouldn’t let it go.

That connection isn’t being wired properly for DeSantis and his Florida record, which is impressive, isn’t going to pull his candidacy over the finish line.

While the DeSantis photo of a mostly-empty livestock auction site isn’t a campaign-ender, it’s more of a campaign alarm bell.

The problem is that the alarm bells have been going off at DeSantis headquarters for weeks already but no one seems to be able to fix the cause.