North Carolina sock manufacturing magnate Bill Millis wasn’t even into politics until 2013, when he saw Carson’s famous speech at the National Prayer Breakfast. As The Wall Street Journal’s Reid J. Epstein reports, Millis was moved to reach out to Carson, and they developed a close relationship. Millis was one of three members of the Carson campaign board, and he raised $400,000 for Carson in September alone. But Millis just quit.
Millis disagreed with the way campaign staffers ousted a longtime Carson ally, Terry Giles, in October. Giles has known Carson since 1994, and hired most of the campaign leadership. Giles “spent the summer developing policy white papers,” but they’ve never seen the light of day. Meanwhile, Carson’s poll numbers have steadily dropped since he revealed how little he knows about foreign policy. Millis emailed Carson about Giles’s firing, but Carson didn’t reply. So Millis is done. But despite the office politics, Carson is still Millis’s favorite candidate.