Top Ben Carson Aides Quit Amid Campaign Turmoil
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| Ben Carson at his home in Upperco, Md., last week. Andrew Harnik/Associated Press |
Updated, 3:53 p.m. | Fresh upheaval engulfed Ben Carson’s troubled presidential campaign on New Year’s Eve as his campaign manager and spokesman both resigned abruptly.
The resignations of Barry Bennett, the campaign manager, and Doug Watts, his spokesman, came as they were about to be dismissed, the campaign said, and as Mr. Carson had been sliding in polls amid questions about his grasp of foreign policy and scrutiny of his own biographical narrative.
“Barry Bennett and I have resigned from the Carson campaign effective immediately,” Mr. Watts said in an email.
“We respect the candidate and we have enjoyed helping him go from far back in the field to top-tier status,” he added, pointing to how much money the campaign said Thursday that it had raised — about $23 million in the last three months.
The resignations come at a critical time for the campaign — just one month before the Feb. 1 caucuses in Iowa, where Mr. Carson had been hoping to rally evangelicals and other social conservative voters to victory in the first contest of the presidential race.
The shake-up had been coming for days, as the two top aides clashed over the direction of the campaign with Armstrong Williams, a conservative radio host and outside adviser to Mr. Carson.
“Dr. Carson is back in control,” Mr. Williams said in an interview before the news broke.
“This is what happens when there’s a sentiment shift,” Mr. Williams added. “It’s not easy letting go people that have been there.”
Mr. Carson had been scheduled to talk with the two aides beginning at 10:30 a.m. Thursday, Mr. Williams said. Sensing they were about to lose their jobs, they resigned, he said.
Just a week earlier, Mr. Carson had raised the specter of an overhaul of his campaign, saying last Wednesday, “Everything is on the table, every job is on the table.” Later that day he appeared to backtrack, saying in a statement, “My senior team remains in place with my full confidence.”
To oversee his campaign going forward, Mr. Carson picked Robert F. Dees, a retired Army general on the staff of Liberty University in Virginia. Mr. Dees recently told The Times in an interview that he had met Mr. Carson in February and that, to school the candidate in foreign policy, the two had “locked ourselves up in a hotel room a couple of different sessions and took walks around the world.”
The resignations and drama within the campaign came just two months after Mr. Carson was riding high in his presidential bid, having surged to the top of some polls in Iowa.
But then he faced scrutiny of elements of his personal story of redemption, and questions about his knowledge of foreign policy, particularly in the wake of the terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif., which thrust the issue of national security to the core of the presidential race. He saw his standing in the polls slide, as Senator Ted Cruz of Texas rose to lead some surveys of Iowa Republicans.
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