Jeff Roe, top strategist for the star-crossed DeSantis Super PAC, is resigning
Jeff Roe, the chief strategist of the leading super PAC backing Gov. Ron DeSantis’ presidential bid, resigned Saturday evening, the latest and perhaps most significant departure from the group, which has been consumed by unrest in recent weeks.
Since the day before Thanksgiving, the pro-DeSantis super PAC called Never Back Down has seen the resignation of a CEO and a board chairman; firing a second CEO, along with two other top executives; and now the nightly departure of Mr. Roe. They have all come after intense infighting and finger-pointing as Mr. DeSantis has slumped in the polls.
“I can’t believe it ended this way,” Mr. Roe said wrote in a statement he posted Saturday evening on X. News of Mr. Roe’s resignation was first reported by The Washington Post.
His decision to quit followed comments from the super PAC’s new chairman of the board, Scott Wagner, a DeSantis loyalist and Florida appointee. Mr. Wagner had explained it The Washington Post why the previous CEO and two others – all of whom had worked for Mr Roe – had been fired.
Mr Wagner accused them of ‘mismanagement and behavioral problems’ and of ‘numerous unauthorized leaks’. The Post reported that an attorney for these employees contacted Mr. Wagner, who subsequently revised his statement to substantiate these allegations.
“I cannot in good conscience remain associated with Never Back Down given the statements made in The Washington Post,” Mr. Roe wrote in a statement. He said he still hoped Mr. DeSantis would be the next president and praised the Never Back Down team as “political warriors.”
Mr. Wagner did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday.
From the start, Never Back Down has been something of a Frankenstein’s monster in composition, with Mr. Roe and some of his top lieutenants forced to co-exist with a decision-making council made up mostly of old friends and loyalists of Mr. DeSantis. The arrangement has raised questions about how closely the campaign and super PAC have adhered to rules that prevent coordination.
Former President Donald J. Trump, who was in Las Vegas for a UFC match and who routinely mocked Mr. Roe in private, celebrated the departure in a post on his social media site Truth Social. “Jeff Roe is out – GAME OVER for DeSanctimonious,” he says wrote.
The future of the internal operations of Never Back Down, which raised more than $130 million in July, is unclear. Mr. Roe’s allies hold many of the group’s key positions, and his company, Axiom, helped lead early state efforts for the super PAC. It is unclear whether they will all remain in place.
Word that Mr. Roe would be leaving the super PAC began circulating shortly before 8 p.m. on Saturday. But Mr. Roe and several people associated with Never Back Down did not respond to multiple messages seeking confirmation. Mr. Roe eventually took his news to The Washington Post and posted it on X.
Mr. Roe had long ago aggravated Mr. DeSantis with unwanted headlines, including a New York Times story about a memo detailing the candidate’s debate strategy before the first primary debate that was posted on his company’s website and subsequently removed after The Times learned of it. The campaign found the memo’s existence embarrassing.
Later, in late August, Mr. Roe was secretly recorded at a meeting with donors pitching them for tens of millions of dollars, saying Mr. DeSantis must defeat Mr. Trump in the next 60 days.
The Trump campaign has seized on the “60 days” comment, referring to it as Mr. Roe’s “kiss of death” in an often cruel daily email. That 60-day period has expired, and Mr. DeSantis is still far behind the former president in the polls.
Never Back Down has been plagued by infighting for weeks, with senior employees resigning or being fired. Mr. DeSantis and his team were dissatisfied with the group’s activities, particularly its focus on television advertising, and had indicated that they wanted the group to contribute substantially to vote-getting.
Tensions reached a breaking point in November when another super PAC, Fight Right, was formed by a trio of DeSantis loyalists. Never Back Down’s board allocated $1 million to that group, and shortly thereafter the original CEO, Chris Jankowski, resigned, followed by the resignation of the board’s chairman, Adam Laxalt.
The person named as Mr. Jankowski’s replacement, Kristin Davison, was subsequently fired, along with two other top executives.
Mr. DeSantis has since met with potential donors for Fight Right, and his campaign manager wrote a memo embracing the group as the entity of choice to conduct political advertising. The new super PAC’s first ad attacked South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley by invoking previous comments she made about Hillary Clinton — a line of attack the campaign had just prominently featured in its own anti-Haley material .
Although Mr. DeSantis entered the race as Mr. Trump’s closest challenger, his campaign has sputtered in recent months. Ms. Haley has now matched or surpassed Mr. DeSantis in many early state polls.
The ongoing drama at the super PAC has infuriated some campaign workers, who see it as an unnecessary, constant distraction. The campaign itself was once the source of that drama, which involved mass layoffs and the rise to power of a campaign manager who had never worked on a campaign before.