Carson downplays loss of top fundraiser

Ben Carson on Wednesday sought to downplay a report that one of his top fundraisers has quit over frustrations with the direction of the campaign.

The Wall Street Journal reported late Wednesday that Bill Millis, the wealthy heir to a North Carolina sock-manufacturing company, will leave his role as co-campaign chairman because he doesn’t believe his input is valued by senior campaign staff.

“I disagree with the campaign, but I’m hoping and praying that the concerns I have are wrong,” Millis told The Journal. “I’m one, and they are the masses. And they decided to move forward with the campaign as is.”

{mosads}Speaking at a brief press conference in Spartanburg, S.C., on Wednesday, Carson said he had not read the report, but that he was not concerned by Millis’s departure.

“People come and go, particularly when they feel that things aren’t being run the way they want them to be run,” Carson said.

“You’d have to talk to him to find out what exactly he wants to happen,” Carson added.

Millis, who claims to have raised more than $400,000 for the Carson campaign, said he still supports the retired neurosurgeon for president, but will no longer raise money for him or sit on the campaign’s board.

Carson campaign manager Barry Bennett told The Journal that Millis’s departure will have no impact.

“Mr. Millis is a member of the corporate board,” Bennett said. “Today, he resigned that position. He had no role in the campaign, and his departure will not alter the campaign in any way.”

Indeed, Carson is a fundraising juggernaut, with small-dollar donors flooding his campaign with cash. Carson has easily been the biggest fundraiser in the GOP field this cycle.

But Millis’s exit comes at a tough time for Carson.

He has struggled to elucidate his foreign policy vision as the GOP debate has focused on national security in the wake of last month’s terror attacks in Paris.

Carson, who was once riding high with Donald Trump atop the polls, has fallen sharply in public opinion surveys in recent weeks.

Still, Millis is not a well-known or experienced political figure.

His primary issue with the campaign, according to The Wall Street Journal, seems to be its treatment of Terry Giles, the Texas attorney who led Carson’s presidential exploratory committee earlier this year.

Giles was similarly inexperienced in the world of politics, and was not offered a position within the campaign once Carson officially launched. Instead, Giles left to coordinate with two outside super-PACs, but his efforts fizzled, and he no longer works on behalf of Carson’s presidential efforts in any capacity.

“Just because I feel a certain way doesn’t mean I’m right,” Millis told The Journal. “I know that, not being a politician, I may be totally wrong and incorrect.”