Campaign Woes: Beto O’Rourke Loses Two Key Advisers as His Popularity and Polling Numbers Continue to Fall

When it comes to the highs and lows of running a presidential campaign, Beto O’Rourke has experienced mostly lows over the last few weeks.

In spite of his impressive 1st quarter campaign fundraising haul, a number of his campaign rallies have been plagued by poor attendance numbers. He was also burned over the release of his 2017 tax returns, which showed a low percentage of charitable donations.

To make matters worse, he explained the numbers away at a later campaign rally by suggesting that him donating … himself and his time to running for president was a charitable donation to society, which caused more than a few chuckles in political circles.

He’s also lost ground with the mainstream media, who have turned to South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg as their new “go-to” candidate of the moment.

O’Rourke’s polling numbers are in the tank as well.

And just this weekend, we learned via Buzzfeed that two key advisers have left his campaign:

A top adviser to Beto O’Rourke, Becky Bond, has split with his campaign, an O’Rourke spokesperson confirmed.

Bond, a longtime progressive activist and organizer known for her work on O’Rourke’s 2018 Senate bid against Republican Ted Cruz, left the campaign along with her deputy Zack Malitz. Malitz worked closely with Bond on Sen. Bernie Sanders’ first presidential campaign in 2016.

[…]

Chris Evans, a spokesman for O’Rourke, did not address questions about the reasons for the departures or whether Bond and Malitz left voluntarily.

Evans said that Bond and Malitz, who worked for O’Rourke during the 2018 Senate race, only served as employees on a “temporary” one-month basis. Democratic operatives who have worked with Bond this year say she considered herself a central part of O’Rourke’s 2020 operation.

O’Rourke most recently campaigned in Virginia (last week). Today his campaign announced key hires for South Carolina.

No word yet on whether or not he has been invited or will appear in a future CNN presidential town hall as many of the other candidates have.

To be fair, he’s only been in the race for a little over a month – and for a good bit of that time his campaign was not well-organized and just getting its feet on the ground. But the negative publicity he’s received over the last couple of weeks and the loss of all that media love he used to get has to be a concern for the failed Senate nominee.

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—Sister Toldjah is a former liberal and a 15+ year veteran of blogging with an emphasis on media bias, social issues, and the culture wars. Read her Red State archives here. Connect with her on Twitter.–

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