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Recently released internal figures from Ron DeSantis' presidential campaign suggest the Florida Republican governor could have more pressing issues to worry about than catching front-runner Donald Trump in the polls.
Axiom Strategies—a consulting firm under contract with the DeSantis campaign—this week released a series of internal documents on its website containing polling and opposition research about several of DeSantis' biggest opponents ahead of the first Republican presidential debate next week in Milwaukee.
The documents offered an unprecedented look into the mindset of the DeSantis campaign's strategy as it continues to struggle to gain momentum in the crowded Republican primary field. But it also revealed something else: The hype behind upstart candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is real.
In New Hampshire, a poll commissioned by the DeSantis-affiliated political action committee Never Back Down revealed that Ramaswamy has seen a 7-percentage-point rise in polling to 11 percent in the critical early voting state since July, while DeSantis—the preferred choice of more than one-quarter of New Hampshire voters in the spring—has since fallen to 16 percent.
While Ramaswamy was left unnamed by Axiom in Iowa polling, DeSantis is currently polling at 19 percent among Iowa voters, while the number of those voting for an "other" candidate sits at 20 percent. And in a since-deleted strategy memo for the upcoming debate, Axiom advisers told DeSantis to focus intently on attacking Ramaswamy onstage.
"Take a sledgehammer to Vivek Ramaswamy: 'Fake Vivek' Or 'Vivek the Fake,'" the memo read.
Newsweek reached out to Ramaswamy's campaign via email for comment, though he appeared to address the release in an interview on Fox News on Thursday afternoon.
"I think the GOP sometimes, when you have professional politicians, they use attacks on other candidates as a substitute for a message of their own," Ramaswamy said. "I think we have a choice between Super PAC puppets who are being propped up with prepped lines and millions of dollars to go with it versus, in my case an outsider. I think of myself as a patriot who speaks the truth."
Never Back Down later responded by calling Ramaswamy a "fraud" who had "attacked DeSantis nearly as much as Trump has."
"He's lying," they wrote on social media.
Recent polls, however, seem to support suggestions by his opponents and the press that the DeSantis campaign is in trouble.
An Emerson College poll on Tuesday showed DeSantis falling to third place in New Hampshire behind former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, whose first bid for the presidency in 2016 ended with a sixth-place finish in the Granite State.
Days before that, a national poll by Ramaswamy pollster Cygnal showed DeSantis with a slight deficit to Ramaswamy, while a July 24 poll from Fox Business showed DeSantis behind former U.N. Ambassador and South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley in her home state.
About the writer
Nick Reynolds is a senior politics reporter at Newsweek. A native of Central New York, he previously worked as a ... Read more