Governor Ron DeSantis has already pissed off women voters in New Hampshire, insulted the residents of San Francisco, spread his sweat across the state of Oklahoma, and forgotten how to pronounce his own name in front of voters in South Carolina. All in all, his presidential campaign is going swimmingly. And now, he can add angering the GOP in Iowa to the point that they send you a humiliating cease-and-desist letter to his list of accomplishments.
DeSantis is in hot water with the Muscatine County Republican Party of Iowa for what they deem “unlawful and unethical” behavior by his super Pac, Never Back Down. According to a letter they sent to DeSantis’ campaign team, the Muscatine GOP is irate over how the Florida Republican is using his super PAC to canvass voters on the ground. Apparently, DeSantis has been bussing supporters in from out-of-state, handing them t-shirts, and having them attend rallies, speeches, and parades in an effort to convince on-the-fence voters that he has a groundswell of support in the state.
“He is the first presidential candidate that is going out and buying and paying for representation … he’s not building a grassroots organization,” Muscatine GOP Chair Daniel Freeman said. “And it could very well be that he uses Never Back Down because he can’t garner state support from individual residents in Iowa. Therein lies the problem. He is misleading the public of Iowa by sending busloads of people to a parade and they don’t even live in the area and in fact, most of them don’t even live in the state of Iowa.”
While it’s likely what DeSantis is doing doesn’t break any campaign laws, it does make his presidential bid look pitifully weak, which is why his team has responded by … blaming Donald Trump.
They’re running a flailing Iowa campaign,” the super PAC’s spokeswoman said. “Trump can’t fill an event. They can’t match us in endorsements. They haven’t even tried. They can’t and won’t organize. They’re not capturing people at events the way we are. They’re not as sophisticated and, frankly, they’re not as well-staffed as we are. They’ve failed at every operational level.”
Does it really count as “filling an event” if you have to pay people to come and act as if they like you though?
(Via RawStory)