Jeff Roe resigned Saturday night. He was the chief strategist for Never Back Down, the super PAC supporting Ron DeSantis. This is a huge development, especially close to the Iowa caucus.

To be honest, I’m shaking my head as I’m reading about this. Roe resigned over remarks published in the Washington Post. Rumors have been flying for weeks about the turmoil in the campaign. There have been staff firings and hiring that add to the sense of chaos behind the scenes. Roe resigned late Saturday night over what he says are false statements published by WaPo.

Since the day before Thanksgiving, the pro-DeSantis super PAC, which is called Never Back Down, has seen the resignation of one chief executive and one board chairman; the firing of a second chief executive, along with two other top officials; and now the late-night quitting of Mr. Roe. All have come after intense infighting and finger-pointing as Mr. DeSantis has slipped in the polls.

“I can’t believe it ended this way,” Mr. Roe wrote in a statement he posted on X on Saturday night. The news of Mr. Roe’s resignation was first reported by The Washington Post.

His decision to quit followed comments from the new chairman of the super PAC’s board, Scott Wagner, a DeSantis loyalist and appointee in Florida. Mr. Wagner had explained to The Washington Post why the previous chief executive and two others — all of whom had worked for Mr. Roe — had been fired.

I can’t believe it ended this way. I’m so proud to have worked alongside these men and women at NBD 24/7 the past nine months to save the country. Good luck the next 28 days and a wake up. I’m so sorry I can’t be there with you. pic.twitter.com/Rh4oQQ1tAE

— Jeff Roe (@jeffroe) December 17, 2023

Roe’s biggest beef seems to be with Wagner. He accused Roe’s team of “mismanagement and conduct issues” and unauthorized leaks. After that remark was published, WaPo reported that a lawyer for those employees contacted Wagner. He revised his statement. “I cannot in good conscience stay affiliated with Never Back Down given the statements 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.”

On Saturday, a top official at Never Back Down elaborated on the firings in a statement that for the first time publicly suggested their rationale. “Following mismanagement and conduct issues, including numerous unauthorized leaks containing false information, senior officials were terminated,” said Never Back Down chairman Scott Wagner. “We don’t have time to indulge false narratives from those with ulterior motives.”

The Post asked employees for a response. A lawyer for the employees then contacted Wagner claiming his assertions were categorically false and he revised his statement, replacing the first sentence with: “Following some opinions regarding mismanagement and conduct issues, including some who believed there appeared to be numerous unauthorized leaks containing false information, NBD and some senior officials parted ways. ”

The pieces on this latest development behind the scenes with the DeSantis campaign are not the kinds of stories that inspire confidence in going forward. The Washington Post piece goes through a month-by-month timeline. The DeSantis campaign had everything going for it when he entered the Republican primary. It had an abundance of money, top experienced campaign personnel, and primary voter enthusiasm. What started so promising is now in tatters.

What happened? I’m not giving up on DeSantis yet. I want to see what happens in Iowa. The ground game in Iowa is the strong suit of the DeSantis campaign, and they have Jeff Roe to thank for that. That is Roe’s wheelhouse. The Super PAC model for winning elections is fading.

Five other senior officials have left Never Back Down since late November. Three officials with Roe’s firm were fired, and the board chairman and the founding chief executive both resigned, amid internal concerns about legal compliance. A verbal conflict from inside the group’s Atlanta offices became public, as did DeSantis’s misgivings about the outside group’s leadership. The governor and his campaign staff have been frustrated by reporting on the drama around Never Back Down and critical of the group’s ad strategy, with DeSantis’s second campaign manager, James Uthmeier, publicly instructing donors to give elsewhere for TV ads.

It looks like DeSantis wants to depend on his inner circle out of Tallahassee and not outside management. That’s understandable, especially if the Super PAC team was bringing unnecessary drama to the campaign with leaks to the press.

“The professionals are out and DeSantis wants to go into the home stretch with his closest confidants,” said one person familiar with the effort who was not directly involved with either camp. The person added that people in DeSantis’s inner circle want to “go into the final fight with people who are close to [Uthmeier] and closer to the governor.”

Never Back Down is still full of campaign veterans, with Phil Cox — a longtime adviser to DeSantis — rejoining as a senior adviser and others taking on heightened roles. Campaign officials and attorneys have repeatedly said they have adhered to campaign finance laws and have said it is normal for a candidate’s supporters and loyalists to run independent organizations supporting them.

As I said, it’s not exactly inspiring a lot of confidence that DeSantis can pull off a major upset in the primary race. I think once the indictments began coming out and the double system of justice was so clearly exposed, there was no way that primary voters would abandon Trump for the next generation of leadership. Trump needs more than the base, though, and that may be a problem going forward, especially if he begins to be convicted on some of the charges against him.