‘Stupid pay-to-play’: With Kelly Craft’s crumbling, Ron DeSantis takes another political hit
Ron DeSantis’ political armor suffered another dent on Tuesday at the hands of Kentucky Republicans.
Daniel Cameron’s emphatic victory over Kelly Craft in the commonwealth’s GOP primary for governor handed the Florida governor a stinging proxy fight defeat vis-a-vis Donald Trump just weeks before he’s expected to officially present himself as a candidate for president.
Whereas Trump endorsed Cameron – the early front-runner – last June, DeSantis issued an eleventh hour blessing of Craft on Monday, even as the wealthy former U.N. ambassador faced a significant deficit in public polling.
Cameron cruised to victory – name-checking Trump in his primary night speech – while Craft finished in third place, 4 points behind Kentucky Agriculture Commissioner Ryan Quarles and a full 30 points behind the state’s attorney general. Cameron now faces Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear in November’s general election.
Trump used the opportunity to kick dirt into his expected competitor’s eye — whom he refers to as “Desanctimonious” — in a social media post congratulating Cameron on his win.
“(Cameron) had my Complete and Total Endorsement,” Trump wrote. “The Desanctimonious backed candidate came in a DISTANT third. Ron’s magic is GONE!”
Trump’s advisers and others explained DeSantis’ gamble as the most naked form of political transaction.
Craft used Axiom Strategies – helmed by national GOP operative Jeff Roe – as her political consultants, the same firm running a pro-DeSantis super PAC. Craft, a longtime GOP fundraiser and wife to billionaire coal baron Joe Craft, donated $10,000 to DeSantis’ 2022 re-election campaign.
“He’s subservient to his political consultants,” said Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, of DeSantis.
Jeremy Hughes, a Nevada-based Republican consultant, said it was an embarrassing miscalculation for both DeSantis and Craft’s consultants, who have also worked for Sen. Ted Cruz. Cruz backed Craft in the race, headlining two pre-election rallies in Kentucky alongside her.
“It was a totally stupid pay to play move by her consultants. Axiom ran Kelly’s campaign and are running Desantis’ super PAC. Ted Cruz has sold himself out to whatever Axiom tells him to do and Ron seems to be on the same path,” Hughes said. “And Kelly said she was voting for Trump, so that makes it even more embarrassing.”
Hughes later posted on Twitter that he regretted using the term “pay to play.”
Joe Craft, in a statement provided to the Herald-Leader on Thursday, pushed back on that characterization.
“Kelly and I have had friendships with Senator Ted Cruz and Governor Ron DeSantis that span decades. We knew them before we knew any consulting firms. Sen. Cruz and Gov. DeSantis independently offered their support for Kelly as a result of those long-standing friendships and to suggest otherwise is irresponsible and incorrect,” Joe Craft said.
Cruz backed Craft in the race, headlining two pre-election rallies in Kentucky alongside her.
Trump allies wasted little time wielding Tuesday night’s results against DeSantis, who recorded a robocall for Craft that was dispatched to voters on Monday.
“President Trump is the leader of the Republican Party. The results in Kentucky’s Republican gubernatorial primary tonight reaffirm that. Republican voters stand with President Trump not Ron DeSantis,” said Alex Pfeiffer, a spokesman for Trump’s super PAC, MAGA Inc. “Voters know that President Trump has their interests in mind when he endorses a candidate, not the interests of the consultant class.”
To be sure, a single endorsement – even a failed one – hardly defines a candidate. And presidential contenders regularly grant their support to a fleet of candidates across the country in order to nurture relationships and increase their visibility to voters in places they aren’t well-known.
But DeSantis has recently inserted into his stump speeches a Trump-directed jab about the “culture of losing that has infected our party in recent years.” And his seemingly thin relationship with Craft undercuts his supposed narrative of fearless political conqueror.
Axiom Strategies and Roe did not respond to inquiries, but a member of DeSantis’ political operation noted that DeSantis has known Kelly and Joe Craft “for a long time and was glad to support her, regardless of the odds.”
Craft, the top spender in the gubernatorial primary, paid Axiom or Jeff Roe-linked companies – including a media placement agency, a pollster, a research firm, a digital marketing agency, a ground game firm – nearly $7.5 million of its total $9.6 million spent as of May 1. Most of that came in installments totaling to $5.4 million to the media placement agency; the bulk of funds allocated to those agencies normally goes to television stations.
Cameron spent just $1 million on political advertisements, according to AdImpact, a national advertising tracking firm. Cameron was assisted by a separate Bluegrass Freedom Action PAC, which bolstered him with $2.6 million in spending. But even taken together, that total was significantly smaller than Craft’s arsenal.
Michael Frazier, a Kentucky GOP lobbyist and political consultant, laid the blame of the Craft campaign’s disappointing finish at the feet of Axiom Strategies for their messaging choices.
“If I were Kelly, I would have let go of Axiom Strategies in February. Her non-Kentucky team that ran her campaign had inconsistent messaging. While people in Kentucky knew Kelly Craft, they didn’t really know what she stood for,” Frazier said.
Frazier argued that Craft’s focus on ‘woke’ issues went “too far.” That message crescendoed with an ad featuring hyper-stylized, cartoonish “woke bureaucrats” literally parachuting into public schools and forcing them to use pronouns and recite their ‘CRTs,’ in reference to the debate over alleged Critical Race Theory in schools.
Kentucky Senate Majority Floor Leader Damon Thayer, R-Georgetown, said he found the timing of DeSantis’ last-minute endorsement of Craft to be “odd.”
“It came pretty late, and I’m sure Kelly wishes that would have happened a week ago,” Thayer said.
But even an earlier endorsement likely would not have made enough difference.
An Emerson College poll of 500 Republican primary voters in Kentucky from the weekend showing Cameron with a 15-point lead over Craft, underestimated his ultimate support.
The same survey found Trump with a colossal lead over DeSantis, 70% to 14% in a potential match-up.
Rep. Thomas Massie, an early endorser of DeSantis, said he saw a private poll in December that showed DeSantis ahead of Trump in Kentucky by 12 points, an indication of a massive momentum switch against DeSantis.
Cameron made a point of thanking Trump in his speech, taking an unsubtle swipe at DeSantis’ pre-presidential campaign messaging. “Let me just say, the Trump culture of winning is alive and well in Kentucky,” Cameron declared.
This story was originally published May 17, 2023 at 10:21 AM with the headline "‘Stupid pay-to-play’: With Kelly Craft’s crumbling, Ron DeSantis takes another political hit."
