Top DeSantis adviser has charted a lucrative path in GOP
Last year, the political consultant now leading a super PAC dedicated to helping Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in a soon-to-be-announced presidential bid was hunting for investment in his booming company, Axiom Strategies.
To convince investors they should give him $25 million, Axiom founder Jeff Roe presented a startling statistic about how his firm makes money, according to a copy of a 36-page investor prospectus obtained by The Washington Post.
"Share of wallet: Axiom now captures at least 63% of every dollar spent by its campaigns, versus less than 10% as just GC," the presentation reads, using an acronym for general consultant. Axiom told potential investors that it's able to vacuum up a larger share of the money spent by its political clients than other firms because it offers more comprehensive services and urges campaigns to use the firm as a one-stop shop.
In the 2022 cycle, Roe told investors his firm, which also has corporate clients, had taken in $196 million in net revenue, while earning more than $22 million as profit after depreciation and taxes. By 2024, he said those numbers would climb to $250 million and about $36 million in profit.
The scale of that revenue - which both allies and detractors consider staggering within the Washington consulting class — underscores the extent to which Roe has rapidly become a major player in the Republican political consulting world, guiding the campaigns of thousands of candidates in recent years, raking in hundreds of millions of dollars and building a lengthy list of clients.
It's a drastic change in fortune for a political consultant who a decade ago mainly worked on local races.
Roe's success has come even as he has recently posted a mixed win-loss record for federal candidates: In 2022, about 30 percent of the 54 congressional candidates who reported paying Axiom in filings with the Federal Election Commission won their races, according to a Washington Post analysis. Several of those candidates were dropped by Axiom as clients. Those who lost included high-profile Senate candidates such as Adam Laxalt in Nevada, Jim Lamon in Arizona, Josh Mandel in Ohio and David McCormick in Pennsylvania. Axiom worked on the winning Senate race of Eric Schmitt in Missouri.
For his part, Roe says his company's record is much rosier when state and local races, as well as outside spending vehicles, are included in the tally, citing 748 wins and 322 losses in the 2022 election cycle. Presented with The Post's analysis, Axiom said its broader umbrella of companies had 118 congressional clients in the 2022 cycle — meaning at least one of those companies performed a service for the client — and that 76 of those clients won.
Roe is aggressive and brash, people who have met with him say, and gives an impressive presentation about the range of services that Axiom can offer. He also has close connections with the influential Club for Growth, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and major Republican donors.
Some past clients complain privately that Roe's firm was underwhelming, but most declined to speak on the record because they said they feared angering him.
A 52-year-old Missouri native, Roe is expected to be a central figure in DeSantis's 2024 political apparatus and was named earlier this year to lead Never Back Down, the pro-DeSantis super PAC that has already attacked former president Donald Trump in slashing TV ads and secured some endorsements for DeSantis.
A spokesman for DeSantis declined to comment on Roe.
In recent years, Roe bought or formed at least 17 additional companies that perform a range of political consulting services, according to emails, internal financial records, text messages and interviews with more than 25 Republicans, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal internal details. The firm also has a corporate operation that provides most of its revenue, including big names like Comcast and the PGA Tour, according to internal documents.
"He's an incredibly talented businessman," said David McIntosh, who runs the sizable Club for Growth conservative group and has regularly done business with Roe. ". . . I don't think there is anyone who parallels the structure Jeff has put together."
Even by the standards of the wealthy environs he now occupies, Roe has been overt about embracing the trappings of his financial success, according to people who know him. He flies in a private plane he purchased, informally known as "Axiom Air," people familiar with the aircraft say. He splits his time between Houston, Lake Tahoe and, in the home state of the governor he wants to help make president, in Bonita Springs near Naples, where he purchased a beach house for $3.5 million last year. He was pictured at the Kentucky Derby this year wearing a large gold plastic chain with a "$" sign around his neck, a photo he says he took as part of a bet with friends at the race.
Roe declined to comment in detail for this story, but said through a spokesman: "I'm incredibly proud of the men and women that have built a great company that will be here for generations electing Republicans that love America."
In the Axiom prospectus, Roe said his firm is working behind the scenes to target the party's top donors and up-and-coming leaders to secure new business, along with creating an academy for a new generation of campaign consultants. The document also says Roe has launched a project called "Freemont" to quietly shape the Republican Party's leadership in an effort to benefit Axiom financially.
"The six major committees (RNC, NRSC, NRCC, RGA, RAGA, RSLC) spent over $1.7B in 2020," the prospectus says. "The chairs and senior staff make vendor decisions. Freemont is a project to help elect chairs and place senior staff that are friendly to Axiom."
Roe and his firm often encourage clients to use companies within their corporate umbrella for polling, mailings, ground operations and other campaign necessities, people who have met with him say.
For example, Kelly Craft, a Republican who ran for governor in Kentucky, used at least six different Roe firms for her race, paying them more than $7 million total — or about 70 percent of her campaign expenditures, campaign filings show. Most of that money was spent on buying advertisements. DeSantis and Cruz, a close friend of Roe, both endorsed Craft. She lost in Tuesday's primary, securing 17 percent of the vote and coming in third.
At times, Axiom has worked with clients to secure candidate endorsements from political groups that are also paying Axiom for consulting, blurring the lines between his customers. In one 2019 email reviewed by The Post, an Axiom executive promised a prospective client that Axiom can keep Club for Growth from opposing them. Roe has privately touted his ties to the group and his relationship with McIntosh, multiple people who have met with him say.
"Club for Growth waiting to hear what we do," the email to the prospective client said. "I can keep them out . . ."
McIntosh said the Club for Growth did not make decisions based on Axiom's clients — and that they didn't agree with some of Roe's clients.
"I have a great deal of respect for Jeff, but sometimes his clients are not Club for Growth types. I don't know why they would say that. They know the Club makes its own decisions. We have a vetting process, we go through and interview all the candidates," McIntosh said.
Axiom has also capitalized on Roe's close ties with Cruz, whose failed 2016 presidential campaign he ran, to attract clients, according to emails and people who have spoken to Roe and his team. Cruz has often endorsed candidates that are represented by Roe. Standing up the DeSantis operation, Roe has relied heavily on former Cruz staffers.
In the 2019 pitch to a prospective client, one of Roe's top lieutenants promised extensive access to Cruz's campaign data if Axiom was paid to buy advertising for the race — and take a 3 percent cut of the ad buy.
The offer included "all modeled data that Cruz team did in 2016. Meaning we can look at Cruz voters and voters of other Prez candidates to develop custom universes, especially though the Cruz modeled data to pick off conservatives," the email read, also promising fundraising lists.
One of Roe's companies has an ownership in Cruz's lists, people familiar with the matter said.
A Roe adviser sent The Post a spreadsheet saying that in 2022 Cruz had endorsed 14 Axiom clients and four candidates who were running against Axiom clients. Among those Cruz endorsed: Yesli Vega in Virginia, Deborah Flora in Colorado, Amanda Adkins in Kansas and Eric Burlison in Missouri.
"Sen. Cruz and Jeff are close personal friends, and he believes Jeff is the most ferociously effective operative in politics today," Cruz spokesman Darin Miller said in a statement. "Sen. Cruz's approach to endorsements is to support the strongest conservative who can win. In the last cycle, Cruz endorsed 47 candidates, the vast majority of whom had no connection at all to Axiom — and in 4 instances, Cruz endorsed against the Axiom client."
The firm touts more than 170 corporate clients and more than 1,200 clients in general, according to the prospectus obtained by The Post. In the prospectus, the firm lists current and former corporate clients such as Comcast, American Airlines, Las Vegas Sands, the PGA Tour, Accenture, Boeing, Delta Air Lines and Enterprise, while the firm lists some of its top political clients as U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, DeSantis, Cruz, the Republican congressional committees and the Club for Growth, which has praised DeSantis and criticized Trump.
The prospectus says at least three of these corporate clients pay more than $10 million a year each.
Axiom's political clients have grown steadily over the last eight years. In the 2016 cycle, about 40 committees reported paying the firm in federal filings, which don't capture the full extent of Axiom's work in state and local races or the clientele of its affiliated companies. Two years later, Axiom's clients doubled, the filings show. And since 2020, the number of committees reporting payments to the firm in federal filings has hovered around 90 per election cycle.
Axiom's political earnings more than doubled between the 2016 election and the 2022 contest, federal filings show.
In the 2022 cycle, it brought in about $20 million in payments reported to the federal regulator, not including the roughly $2 million that state records show Axiom made from Glenn Youngkin's 2021 campaign for Virginia governor, with additional payments made by the state GOP.
Youngkin's race in 2021 was a bright spot in a dim period for the Republican Party.
The campaign seized on a remark by Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe in a debate: "I don't think parents should be telling schools what they should teach." As Roe explained to Republicans shortly after the election, he had polling showing several groups of voters who had different reasons to disagree with Democrats on education, and McAuliffe's remark allowed Youngkin to consolidate them.
"Roe is a visionary in his view of the political consulting business," said Gary Maloney, a Republican researcher who has worked with Roe on multiple campaigns since 2017. "He is extremely calm under fire. He's also a good listener in that he will take other people's opinions and consider them before making a decision."
Through a spokesman, Youngkin declined to comment on Roe, who is no longer deeply involved in his orbit, people close to Youngkin say.
One Republican who wasn't happy with Youngkin's candidacy and eventual victory was Trump, according to four advisers. Trump complained that the Youngkin campaign was trying to diminish his influence and position the telegenic businessman as the new face of the GOP. Roe told others that he knew how to best manage Trump and to keep him out of Virginia, where Youngkin and his team feared Trump would hurt their chances, according to people with knowledge of his thinking.
After the campaign, Roe made a visit to Mar-a-Lago. In the meeting, Trump told Roe that the political consultant deserved more credit, according to people familiar with the meeting. Roe, in return, said Trump had kingmaker status in the party.
"You hire a lot of people and you make them famous," Roe told Trump, after praising him in Trump's office above the club's ballroom, the people said. "I'm already famous. You don't have to worry about that with me."
After Roe left, Trump began calling other advisers and asking: Should Roe run his 2024 campaign?
Trump weighed hiring the influential consultant for months but never went ahead with the idea, according to people familiar with internal discussions. Longtime GOP operatives Chris LaCivita and Jason Miller argued to Trump that Roe would be irresponsible with his money and donor money, and Trump hired LaCivita instead at Miller's urging. Both declined to comment through a spokesman. Roe has maintained he never directly sought employment with Trump.
In recent months, Roe told others he wanted to work for a 2024 candidate and met with 2024 hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy and separately discussed a bid with Youngkin.
Roe ended up working with DeSantis — angering the former president, four advisers said. At a donor event in Nashville last month, Trump raised Roe by name. "DeSanctus has this guy Jeff Roe," Trump said to crowd in a Four Seasons in Nashville, using one of his nicknames for the Florida governor. "He is good at taking money out of your wallet."
A Trump spokesman declined to comment on Roe.
Although Roe points to high-profile victories such as Youngkin's campaign, some former clients say they were disappointed in his firm's work.
James Craig, a former Detroit police chief, said he selected Roe to run his 2022 campaign for governor in Michigan largely based on Roe's work on Youngkin's race. Roe was impressive personally, he said. But he said he barely saw Roe afterward, only talking to him via video after the pitch meeting.
"Because he has a big corporation, his on-the-ground leadership wasn't all Jeff Roe's level," he said, describing his "lieutenants" as "average."
Later, Craig was kicked off the ballot over a signature-gathering issue. He said Axiom had employed another one of Roe's firms to do the work, which then hired subcontractors. He said he did not personally blame Roe.
"I don't want to disparage Roe, but I would hire a boutique firm," he said. "I wouldn't hire them again."
Earlier this year, Community Schools Initiative, a political action committee in Nevada, sued a grass-roots organizing firm formed by Axiom. It accused the firm, Vanguard Field Strategies, of fraud and breach of contract.
The complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in Nevada, alleged that Vanguard, "as an arm of Axiom led by Jeff Roe," received $2.2 million to collect signatures for a ballot initiative and promised a validity rate of 70 percent. In the end, the firm averaged a validity rate of just over 50 percent, according to the complaint, which asserted that the signatures included "obvious repeated names" and "obscenities as the middle name," and were delivered on pages that were burned and "smelled like 'bong water.'"
Roe and the other defendants asked the court to dismiss the complaint, arguing that the PAC lacked standing to bring the lawsuit and maintaining that Roe could not be held personally responsible for any of the alleged wrongdoing. Texas records show Axiom is the registered agent for a company registered, in turn, as the agent for Vanguard Field Strategies. The lawsuit is ongoing.
Eddie Greim, a lawyer for Roe, called the information in the lawsuit "unreliable." He added: "We look forward to successfully concluding this case."
The Washington Post's Alice Crites and Isaac Arnsdorf contributed to this report.