Top Aides Quit Carson Presidential Campaign

Carson was rivaling Trump for the lead in the Republican race in mid-October, but he has since fallen to 10 percent in the latest CNN/ORC poll, which ties him for a distant third place with Senator Marco Rubio, behind Trump and Senator Ted Cruz.

Barry Bennett works at the Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson’s headquarters in Alexan …

On Williams’ urging Carson to talk to reporters about campaign unrest, Bennett called it a “stupid move”.

“We’re going to certainly be altering some things in the campaign, and we will be talking about that quite publicly next week”, Carson told Fox Business Network’s Neil Cavuto on Tuesday.

Williams, in an interview with NBC News source, acknowledged the strain, saying, “I know they had issues with me”, referencing to Bennett & communications director Doug Watts, who additionally resigned.

Hours later, deputy campaign manager Lisa Coen also submitted her resignation. How’d it get into Carson’s head that his campaign team, rather than his own performance on the stump, needed an overhaul? “We are refining some operational practices and streamlining some staff assignments to more aptly match the tasks ahead”.

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.

“You have to surround yourself with good people”, Bennett said. However the inner tension was nothing new, as Williams’ role in Carson’s operation had long irritated his official marketing crusade employees.

“I spent the holidays hearing every day that I had lost my job”, Bennett said in an interview Thursday. I think Dr. Carson is beginning to make people understand that just because he’s been soft-spoken he is willing to show that he can be tough, he can be brutal, and he can if necessary, if you have to take people out and declare war on our enemies, he can do that.

Bennett was Carson’s campaign manager. “Armstrong had given him the talking points”.

As communications director, Watts’ final act was to announce that Carson had raised more than $23 million for the fourth fundraising quarter of the year, ending 2015 with more than 600,000 unique donors and at least 1 million individual contributions. “Why the hell did you say it then?” I bet we’ll be hearing something about that from Bennett and Watts now that they’ve parted ways with Carson and Williams. Was he sincerely trying to win and ended up being exploited by consultants who took advantage of an amateur with lots of goodwill they could cash in on?