Report: Carson eyeing shake-up of campaign

by Cheryl Segal - 12/23/15 4:01 PM ET

GOP presidential candidate Ben Carson is planning a major campaign shake-up amid his long slide in the polls, according to multiple media reports.

{mosads}Carson told both The Washington Post and The Associated Press that “everything is on the table” and criticized some of his top aides amid his polling as well as questions on his spending.

“I’m looking at every aspect of the campaign right now. Everything is on the table, every job is on the table. And we’re going to analyze it very carefully. … It’s not perfect and we’re going to work on it,” he told The Post.

“I want to see more efficiency in terms of the way money is utilized,” the retired neurosurgeon added. The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that the campaign had spent more than it had raised in October.

It’s unclear whether his campaign manager, Barry Bennett, will remain in that position. He only told The Post that changes could come as soon as tomorrow, and The Associated Press specifically noted that its interview came without Bennett’s knowledge.

The Post added that Carson has started interviewing for senior staff positions and that salary cuts for current staff are likely.

Once a GOP front-runner, the first to briefly unseat Donald Trump at the top of national polls, Carson has dropped back to Earth as the shift toward foreign policy left the former neurosurgeon behind.

Over the past few months, a foreign policy aide bashed Carson’s grasp of the issue in a New York Times story and fell back on reading a long summary of conflicts in the Middle East during a speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition, where he mispronounced the name of a Palestinian group.

Tags Donald Trump