Top Ben Carson Aides Resign
Jan-01-2016

The campaign manager of U.S. Republican Ben Carson's 2016 presidential run and other aides resigned on Thursday in a dispute over the direction of Carson's foundering campaign only a month before the nomination process begins in earnest.

Barry Bennett, who oversaw Carson's rapid rise to the top tier of Republican contenders and his equally precipitous fall, said he quit over differences with another top adviser to Carson, Armstrong Williams.

Things had "boiled over" with Williams, Bennett told Reuters, blaming him for a spate of negative press coverage Carson had received in recent weeks.

"For the past seven weeks, I've been doing nothing but putting out Armstrong Williams-started fires," Bennett said.

Carson's communications director, Doug Watts also resigned due to differences with Williams, Bennett said. Some 20 staff in total left, he said. Among them was deputy campaign manager Lisa Coen.

Carson's numbers in opinion polls have dropped ahead of the first contest - in the state of Iowa on Feb. 1 - for the Republican nomination in the Nov. 8 election.

He now places fourth in many national opinion polls after surging into the second slot behind the front-runner, real estate mogul Donald Trump, in the autumn.

Specifically, Bennett blamed Williams for an interview Carson gave last week to The Washington Post suggesting that the campaign was in disarray. "It's one of the stupidest things I've ever seen a candidate do," Bennett said.

He also charged Williams was behind a story in The New York Times that suggested Carson was out of his depth on foreign policy.

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