DeSantis replaces campaign manager as he struggles to gain on Trump

Ron DeSantis is replacing his presidential campaign manager and making other changes to his senior staff after a rough stretch of layoffs, budget woes and struggles to make headway against former president Donald Trump, the front-runner for the Republican nomination.

James Uthmeier, DeSantis’s chief of staff in the Florida governor’s office, will replace Generra Peck, who oversaw DeSantis’s blowout reelection last fall but came under fire as the campaign shed more than a third of its staff amid a cash crunch. Allies have lamented what they call unforced errors — ranging from early overspending to sharing a meme video denounced as homophobic. And while some blame Trump’s indictments for rallying the GOP base to his side, others worry that DeSantis’s message is simply not potent enough or that he has gone too far to the right on social issues while trying to peel away Trump’s voters.