America First Action, the pro-Trump super PAC spearheading the effort to re-elect the president, is in the middle of a minor leadership crisis with major consequences. Trump allies tell Politico they need the group to raise between $300 and $400 million for the next election, but there’s currently nobody at the helm to charm conservative millionaires and billionaires into opening their checkbooks. Former Pence aide Nick Ayers, the “exhaustingly charming” Republican wunderkind who turned down the chance to be the White House chief of staff last year, had been expected to take a senior leadership role. Instead, Politico reports, the well-connected 36-year-old is reportedly still at home in Georgia, spending time with his wife and triplets, “quail hunting,” and presumably mulling his own political aspirations. (In his home state it is no secret that Ayers has been considered a potential candidate for governor.)

Why Ayers has yet to step up remains something of a mystery, though Politico notes he recently sat down with several Trump advisors at white-shoe law firm Jones Day to reportedly discuss how running a super PAC might restrict his ability to communicate with the White House. “I would love for Nick to do it,” Doug Deason, an America First Action finance committee member, said. “He could be great if he did, but he’s told people he wants to think about it for a while.”

Without Ayers, the super PAC search appears to have grown more dire. Politico reports that America First Action had a list of about two dozen potential candidates, including New England Patriots owner Bob Kraft and deep-pocketed donor Kelly Craft. Another name that has been floated is New York Jets owner Woody Johnson. (League owners and Republican donors, it would seem, tend to run in the same social circles.) But Craft and Johnson are already working for the Trump administration—Craft was just nominated to replace Nikki Haley as U.N. ambassador, and Johnson is currently serving as ambassador to the United Kingdom. Bob Kraft, meanwhile, was charged last week for soliciting prostitution at the Orchids of Asia Day Spa in Jupiter, Florida. (Kraft has pleaded not guilty to the charges.)

Without a leader, Trump campaign officials have started to fret. The super PAC, which only pulled in $75 million of its $100 million goal during the midterm elections, was presumed to be the fundraising juggernaut at the center of Trump’s re-election. But to match the small-donor energy super-charging the Democratic resistance—Bernie Sanders, for instance, raised $10 million in less than a week—they’ll need competent, well-connected leadership to get GOP mega-donors to empty their pockets. “They're not technically equipped [for 2020] until they get a chairman in place. It's not going to be as effective as it has been until they get a chair,” Deason told Politico. “Once they do that, they'll be back in the groove. It just helps to have that key person in charge . . . [but] It doesn't seem like they have any hot prospects right now.”

Donor money wasn’t so important the last time around, when Trump muscled his way through the 2016 Republican primary, and on to the presidency, with one of the smallest budgets in that cycle. Then, he was an insurgent candidate surfing a tidal wave of free media. Three years later, Trump doesn’t have the element of surprise, nor will he be treated by the media as a bemusing curiosity. His outsider image has been eroded by a constant stream of corruption scandals; his campaign promises to voters have died embarrassing deaths in Congress; the decade-long economic expansion may be reaching an end; and Robert Mueller is about to hand over his final report. Among those Republican elites who make money from money, some may reasonably be wondering if they’ve wrung as much financial benefit as they can from the Trump Bump and should now hedge their bets. Whoever takes charge of America First Action, then, will have to be more than just a skilled marketer—they’ll have to be a bona fide magician.

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