Ben Carson’s campaign manager, spokesman leave GOP campaign

Ben Carson’s campaign manager Barry Bennett and communications director Doug Watts stepped down from their posts with the presidential campaign, “effective immediately”.

Republican Ben Carson has jettisoned two key members of the staff from his stumbling campaign amid declining poll numbers and signs of internal strife.

Carson released a statement Thursday commending Bennett and Watts “for their efforts to help me share my vision for America”. However, Bennett states that Carson’s longtime business manager, Armstrong Williams, is the one that Carson takes direction, even though Williams does not have a formal role in the campaign.

The aides’ departures come after Carson stirred significant speculation about a staffing shakeup last week, telling the Associated Press “everything” was “on the table”.

But Williams played down his clashes with the top staffers in an interview with NPR and said that under the leadership of Bennett and Watts, Carson rose to almost topple Donald Trump in the polls. Carson, after his surge in the polls, was also the subject of weeks of negative media coverage that suggested that he exaggerated parts of his personal story.

On Williams urging Carson to talk to reporters about campaign unrest, Bennett called it a “stupid move”. “I’m not going to judge them for what I’ve seen over the long haul”.

“The entire team was left wondering if they had a job”, campaign manager Barry Bennett told The Hill of the shake-up talk.

The once-surging candidate who led the GOP field with 29 percent in November is now polling at 10 percent nationally and at 7 percent on Iowa, where the first presidential caucus will take place February 1. Can you wait until the end of the day, think it over?’ I just said, ‘No. He lost 14 points in Iowa since October.

“This allows Dr. Carson a fresh start”, Williams said.

Bob Dees, a foreign policy adviser to Carson, is now the campaign chairman. Having worked so hard on building up the fundraising operation and getting millions behind Dr. Carson so he’d be ready for 2016, I got pulled into this [expletive]. “San Bernardino happened. Somehow the narrative has been projected that if you’re soft-spoken and mild-mannered, there is no way you can deal with terrorism, with national security, that you’re not a strong person”.