The end of the 2024 campaign by Florida GOP Governor Ron DeSantis for president — more specifically, the GOP’s presidential nomination for 2024 — may be nearing its end.
Never Back Down, a super PAC associated with the DeSantis run for president, is cancelling “all” of its advertising reservations for 2024 in Iowa and New Hampshire, AdImpact says. The states hold their presidential nominating contests generally early in the cycle — though Democrats have done some reshuffling lately, and results there are generally considered meaningful markers for the rest of the race.
“Pro-Ron DeSantis group Never Back Down is canceling all of its 2024 reservations in Iowa and New Hampshire. So far, we’ve tracked cancelations totaling $2.5M,” AdImpact said on X, formerly Twitter. The advertising organization was using an account on the platform called AdImpact Politics.
Never Back Down has seen extensive turnover, including the recent departure of a leading political figure named Jeff Roe. Though there are restrictions on direct cooperation, a spokesperson for the DeSantis campaign itself expressed general support for Never Back Down around the time of Roe’s exit… support that it doesn’t seem is working out. “We have full confidence in the NBD ground game and field operation, which is second to none,” Andrew Romeo from the DeSantis campaign said, per NBC.
The outlet also discussed a second super PAC backing DeSantis that could pick up some of the outreach slack. The accompanying organization is called Fight Right.
DeSantis originally posted promising numbers in polling from the GOP primary, but after an initial decline, he has simply not returned to those levels of support in surveys of Republicans. He even trails in polling done within his own state, though he won his current term by a large margin. Perhaps among the problems for DeSantis and other struggling GOP contenders for the presidency has been their curious resistance to consistently confronting Trump, against whom they’re all supposedly running. Contender Vivek Ramaswamy loudly supports him!
