In early May, as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis prepared to run for president, about a dozen right-wing social media influencers gathered at his polling place for cocktails and a poolside buffet.
The guests all had large followings or successful podcasts and were already fans of the governor. But Mr. DeSantiss’s team wanted to turn them into a battalion of messaging surrogates who could compete with Donald J. Trump and his supporters engage online.
For some, however, the rally backfired because they didn’t want to damage their relationships with the governor or other Republican leaders, according to three attendees who spoke on condition of anonymity.
They said Mr. DeSantiss’s advisers were defensive when asked about campaign strategy and struggled to reach points beyond the vague notion of freedom. Some guests at the previously unreported meeting doubted the DeSantis camp knew what it was for.
Four months later, those concerns seem more than justified. Mr. DeSantiss’ hyper-online strategy, once seen as a potential strength, quickly became an obvious weakness in the presidential campaign, according to former staff members and influencers connected to the campaign, with a series of gaffes, Unforced errors and blown opportunities. Right commentators
Even after recent concerted efforts to reboot, the campaign has struggled to shake off a reputation for being lean and mean online, repeatedly insulting Trump supporters and alienating potential allies. Some of its most high-profile efforts, including videos using Nazi symbolism and homoerotic imagery, have turned off donors and diverted much-needed attention away from the candidate. And despite positioning itself as a social media-first campaign, it has been unable to stop the cascade of internet memes denigrating and ridiculing Mr. DeSantis.
Those missteps are hardly the only source of trouble for Mr. DeSantis, who is in second place in the polls. Like the rest of his rivals, the DeSantis campaign has often failed to deliver meaningful blows to Mr. Trump, who somehow only gains support when criticized.
But just as past presidential campaigns such as those of Bernie Sanders and Mr. Trump have become textbooks on the power of online hype, Mr. DeSantis’ proposal now highlights a different lesson for future presidential contenders: The failure of virtual competition can lead to a decline in domestic competition. Real life campaign
“The strategy was to be a newer and better version of the culture warrior,” said Republican strategist Rob Stutzman. But they did so to the exclusion of many traditional advertising messages.
The DeSantis campaign denied it was hurt by its online strategy, but said it would not rehash old stories.
“Our campaign is firing on all cylinders and is just focused on what’s ahead to make it to Donald Trump and Joe Biden,” campaign spokesman Andrew Romeo said.
Pudding fingers
The problem started immediately. When Mr. DeSantis launched his campaign in a live chat on Twitter, the servers crashed and hundreds of thousands of people logged out of the feed, and he was widely mocked.
When his campaign manager at the time, Jenna Peck, spoke about the failure at the meeting the next morning, he claimed, according to three of the attendees, former aides who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal for the debate. That launch was so popular that it broke the internet. Internal operations
Each recalled being stunned by this apparent disconnect: Senior staff members seemed convinced that an embarrassing disaster had somehow been a triumph.
Ms. Peck had little oversight of the campaigns’ online operations, which were run by a team called the War Room, according to three former aides. The team consisted of young and energetic staff, many fresh out of college, who spent their days scouring the Internet for compelling storylines, writing posts and dreaming up memes and videos that they hoped would go viral.
At the helm was Christina Pushaw, Mr. DeSantiss’ rapid response director. Ms. Pushaw is known for her highly online approach to communications, including a scorched-earth strategy with critics and the press. As press secretary to governors, he often posted screenshots of inquiries from mainstream news outlets on the Web rather than answering them, and once told followers that, to the long-time embarrassment of an Associated Press reporter, he temporarily banned from Twitter.
Long before her candidacy for president became official, Ms. Pushaw and several other Internet crews, often posting under the @DeSantisWarRoom handle, went after critics and attacked the old media while promoting the governor’s agenda in Florida.
At first, they conspicuously avoided mentioning Mr. Trump by name, and were taken by surprise when pro-Trump influencers flooded the Internet in March with posts claiming that Mr. DeSantis had once eaten chocolate pudding with his fingers. became .
The governor’s campaign dismissed it as liberal gossip, even as supporters of Mr. Trump Pudding fingers began chanting at campaign stops, and a pro-Trump super PAC aired a television ad that used images of hands scooping up chocolate pudding. Seven months later, #fingerpudding is still making the rounds on social media.
Joan Donovan, a researcher at Boston University who studies misinformation and has written a book on the role of memes in politics, said: “This episode seems like little more than childish bullying, but such moments can affect the perception of a candidate.” influence.
Ms. Donovan said the best, if not the only, way to deal with this kind of thing is to approach it with humor. This meme is called magic: the irony is that the more you try to remove it, the more of a problem it becomes.
DeSantis campaigns show muted responses it’s open season: Since then, the campaign hasn’t been able to quell memes mocking the governor for wiping his muzzle on voters, laughing hysterically and wearing a lift in his cowboy boots.
Pink Lightning bolt
Attempts to be aggressive proved even further than that. In June, War Room began creating very light-hearted videos full of internet jokes and offensive images that appeared to be aimed at a very young and very far-right audience.
One of the videos contained fake images of Mr. Trump hugging and kissing Anthony S. Fauci was to address it in response to the pandemic response of former US presidents. Many conservatives were offended and called the post dishonest and underhanded.
I was 55/45 for the Trump/DeSantis team, Poole, whose podcast has three million subscribers on multiple YouTube channels. Wrote In response to the video I am now 0% for DeSantis.
Another video of Mr. Trump being overly supportive of LGBT rights and trashing images of transgender people, photos of Mr. DeSantis with pink lightning coming out of his eyes and clips from the movie American Psycho.
A video was then released that included a Nazi Sonnenrad symbol with Mr. DeSantiss’ face on it.
Although many of the videos were first posted on third-party Twitter accounts, they were made in the war room, according to two former aides, as well as text messages reviewed by The New York Times. Drafts of the videos were shared in a large group chat on the encrypted messaging service Signal, where other employees could provide feedback and ideas about where and when to post them online. The existence of group chat was first reported by Semaphore.
As public outrage over Sonnenrad’s video grew, the anonymous account that posted it, Ron DeSantis Fancams, was deleted. The campaign, which was laying off more than three dozen staffers for financial reasons, took steps to rein in the war room, according to two former aides. And although the video was co-produced, a campaign aide who reposted it was fired.
Online controversy marred the rest of the campaign. In early August, aerospace tycoon Robert Bigelow, by far the largest contributor to Never Back Down, the pro-DeSantis super PAC, said he would stop donating, saying extremism can’t get you elected. Money from many other key backers of Mr. DeSantis has also disappeared, including from billionaire hedge fund manager Kenneth Griffin.
Terry Sullivan, a Republican political consultant who was Sen. Marco Rubio’s campaign manager in 2016, said the bizarre videos were a warning sign to donors that Mr. DeSantiss’ campaign was chaotic, undisciplined and chasing fringe voters. It is
Most high-dollar donors are businessmen, Mr. Sullivan said. No one wants to buy a burning house.
Counterproductive or annoying or both
Videos have not been the only problem. The campaign has worked to build a network of influencers and surrogates that can inject Mr. DeSantiss’ message into the online conversations and podcasts dominated by Mr. Trump’s supporters.
Mr. DeSantis won over many of those votes in his re-election campaign last year. But repeated attempts to recruit other influencers for his presidential campaign, including a poolside dinner in Tallahassee, failed.
Benny Johnson, a former journalist with nearly two million followers on X, Twitter’s new name, resisted the DeSantis team’s overtures and remained a staunch Trump supporter. Chaya Raichik, whose Libs of TikTok account has 2.6 million followers, was present at the Tallahassee dinner, according to two attendees, but has remained neutral.
Neither Mr. Johnson nor Ms. Rychick responded to requests for comment. Other influencers said they were dissuaded by the campaign’s combativeness and youth and were unwilling to let go of Mr. Trump, which seemed to be growing by the week.
Mike Davis, a conservative attorney with a large social media following, said the campaign appeared to be reduced to little more than a spat with the Trump camp. He said the campaign approached him about being a surrogate, but he declined and has since been silenced by its aggressive online tactics.
Its tactics, he said, are either counterproductive or offensive, or both.
DeSantis’ existing network of influencers presented challenges for the campaign. Online surrogates have repeatedly parroted Mr. DeSantis word for word talking points It’s emailed to them every day by the campaign, undermining the effort to present an image of broad, organic support.
For example, last month, three different accounts Posted almost simultaneously About Mr. Trump being booed at a college football game in Iowa. Bill Mitchell, a DeSantis supporter with a large following at X, said the identical posts were a coincidence.
He said he would talk to all team members as needed, but other than daily emails no specific direction was received.
Ending the meme wars
The campaign recently tried to change course. Under the direction of James Otmeyer, who replaced Ms. Peck as campaign manager in August, the campaign has shifted to a more traditional online strategy.
35-year-old Mr. Uthmayer said in an interview that I should have been born in another generation. I don’t even really know what meme wars are.
More recently, the campaign has more closely aligned its online messaging with the real-world rhetoric that Mr. DeSantis delivers in spades. The campaign is putting new oversight on its social media team and is scrutinizing posts on DeSantis’ war room account more closely, according to a person familiar with the campaign. It has also toned down the often belligerent tone of many of its influencers and staff, toned down its production of sensational videos, and shifted its eye for more traditional fare.
For example, a video released this week used clips from television interviews to show Nikki Haley, who is challenging Mr. DeSantis for second place in the Republican polls, making her way on allowing Palestinian refugees into the United States. has changed
Eric Erickson, an influential conservative radio host, said: “For a while, they seemed to me to be more interested in winning the daily Twitter battle than winning the overall political campaign. But now, he said, Mr. DeSantis finally looks like he’s running for president of the United States, not Twitter.
Rebecca Davis O’Brien The report helped
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