Showing posts with label Vivek Ramaswamy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Vivek Ramaswamy. Show all posts

Monday, May 8, 2023

The Lessons of the 2016 Republican Presidential Nomination Process, Redux

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the goings on of the moment as 2024 approaches...

First, over at FHQ Plus...
If you haven't checked out FHQ Plus yet, then what are you waiting for? Subscribe below for free and consider a paid subscription to support FHQ's work and unlock the full site.


In Invisible Primary: Visible today...
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There are a couple of inter-related themes that FHQ has revisited in this space with respect to the 2024 invisible primary. One is attempting to assess where former President Trump is (in 2023) on a scale of Trump 2015 to Trump 2019. In other words, across an array of measures -- fundraising, endorsements, organization, etc. -- is the former president closer to where he was in 2015 as a first-time candidate or 2019, when he carried the advantages of incumbency and the Republican Party infrastructure behind him? 

The other theme focuses on lessons various actors involved in the Republican presidential nomination process have learned from and since the last competitive nomination cycle in 2016. One such lesson Team Trump has taken to heart is to not take the delegate selection portion of the process for granted. While they may have been out-hustled on that front in 2016, the Trump campaign of 2019-20 designed a set of rules at the national level and pushed for changes on the state level that would ward off challengers, yes, but maximize the number of delegates the president would win in the process on his way to claiming a second nomination as well. 

Fast forward four years and Trump no longer enjoys the trappings of the office of the presidency nor the direct backing of the Republican National Committee. But the lessons of 2016 have not been forgotten. Team Trump is using a network of connections forged during his time in the White House to potentially influence the state-level delegate selection rules for 2024 if not some of the future Republican delegates in 2024. Politico's Alex Isenstadt updated his March story with further details of Team Trump's outreach to state party leaders. And it is clear that, despite doubt about Trump's delegate rules acumen in opposing campaign networks, the former president is mindful of the shortcomings of the 2016 operation and tending to the relevant state-level players to avoid a repeat in 2024.

Isenstadt leads with the recent effort to woo Republicans from Louisiana. And that is an interesting test case. Yes, the Cruz campaign lapped Trump in delegate selection in the Pelican state after Trump won the primary there. But that was not unusual in 2016. The Cruz campaign was adept at exploiting the intricacies of the delegate rules to their advantage where available. However, the Trump reelection effort in 2019-20 cleaned up much of that. Louisiana Republicans, for example, greatly streamlined their process from 2016 for 2020. A later primary date in the 2020 cycle allowed the state party to use truly winner-take-all rules to allocate and bind all of the state's delegates to the winner of the primary. 

Now, there is a delegate rule story (or many more) in every state, but this Louisiana example is instructive. Team Trump likely wants the party to utilize rules that more closely resemble the 2020 rules with respect to allocation and binding rather than those of the 2016 plan. And they are doing that outreach not only to Louisiana Republicans but Republicans in state parties across the country. Importantly, according to Isestadt's reporting, all signs point toward the president not only having a head start in these efforts but that his campaign is the only one wooing state party actors at this time.

Together, all of this is important and worthy of continued tracking. Trump wants to maintain for 2024 as much of the baseline rules from 2020 as possible. 


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Team Trump is not the only one working those who will make decisions on the rules that will govern the 2024 Republican presidential nomination process on the state level. Vivek Ramaswamy was in Michigan this past weekend and he made the case for Michigan Republicans to conduct a primary next year rather than caucuses. Yeah, the state party will need a waiver from the RNC no matter what they decide.


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FHQ has raised Trump's standing with evangelicals in response to a number of stories that emphasize each side of a divide with his falling support among the group on one side to his continued good standing there on the other. Seth Masket has a good one that mostly falls into that latter category, casting Trump's relationship with white evangelicals as transactional and that, because Trump delivered for them during his time in the White House, he remains in good shape with that particular demographic. Good piece.


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On this date...
...in 1984, former Vice President Walter Mondale won the Maryland and North Carolina primaries while Sen. Gary Hart's narrow victories in Indiana and Ohio kept his campaign alive for the 1984 Democratic presidential nomination.

...in 1987, Gary Hart dropped out of the 1988 Democratic presidential race (for the first time that cycle) after reports of an extramarital affair surfaced.

...in 2012, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney was three for three against nominal competition in the Indiana, North Carolina and West Virginia primaries as he closed in on securing the delegates necessary to claim the Republican nomination.



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Posted by Josh Putnam at 10:00 AM 0 comments
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Monday, May 1, 2023

Invisible Primary: Visible -- New Hampshirites Are Not Surprisingly Defending the New Hampshire Primary

Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the goings on of the moment as 2024 approaches...

First, over at FHQ Plus...
If you haven't checked out FHQ Plus yet, then what are you waiting for? Subscribe below for free and consider a paid subscription to support FHQ's work and unlock the full site.


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President Biden announced his reelection bid last week and that has set off an inevitable chain reaction, one that focuses on the president's path to renomination and possible reelection. And the renomination portion leads to the calendar decisions the Democratic National Committee has made for the 2024 cycle. There, the emphasis has once again returned to the potential, if not obstacle, then headache the demotion of the New Hampshire Democratic presidential primary in the calendar order will have on Biden in both phases of the 2024 electoral process win the Granite state. 

Understandably, that has once again brought the defenders of the first-in-the-nation primary in the Granite state back out to "warn" the president (and anyone else) about the mistake Biden is making in not only shunting New Hampshire back in the process, but in possibly keeping his name off the ballot in a likely rogue primary there. Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D) took to the airwaves on Sunday in the midst of the renewed chatter about the DNC-New Hampshire standoff over the primary to discuss the possible negative impacts the president's decisions may have:
“It’s unfortunate, because I think it has an impact [on] the independent voters who are very important in New Hampshire, and who are going to be very important to any reelection of the next president,” Shaheen said. “And it also has an impact on Democrats up and down the ticket.” 
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“The fact that we would now discount their [independents'] participation, I think, is unfortunate,” said Shaheen, who is not up for reelection until 2026. “And again, I think it has implications for Democrats in the state — hopefully not for the general election, but we don’t know that yet.”
Independent voters are important in New Hampshire politics. They offer a bit of an unknown in the presidential primary process there as well because registered independents can pick which of the Democratic or Republican primaries they want to participate in. And while the calendar decisions may impact independents in New Hampshire, they are unlikely to be any more or less affected by it -- or activated by it -- than Democrats or Republicans in the Granite state in 2024. All New Hampshirites, regardless of any registration affiliation, are likely to be upset to some degree about the change, but that is less likely to impact the primary than the general election.  

The reason for that has been made clear over the years. Independents tend to go where the action is in the New Hampshire presidential primary. And in 2024, the action will be on the Republican side. Look at 2012. President Barack Obama won around 49,000 votes in winning the New Hampshire primary as an incumbent. That was roughly 80 percent of the vote the 2012 primary. By comparison, John Edwards won around the same number of votes in the 2008 New Hampshire primary, but that was only worth a third place finish at about 16 percent of the vote. That was part of a significant (but typical) drop off in turnout from a 2008 to 2012 when an incumbent president was running largely unopposed. Turnout was back up in 2016 when the Democratic nomination was again active. 

The pattern holds on the Republican side. From competitive 2016 to uncompetitive 2020, Republican turnout dropped by a total approaching 50 percent. 

So, there may be some independents who show up to cast a vote of protest in the likely rogue Democratic primary in New Hampshire next January, but most will be far more likely to venture over into the Republican process instead. And that is a different, albeit not completely unrelated, story from how New Hampshire voters may behave in a general election. But even Shaheen concedes she does not know the impact there. 

None of this is out of the ordinary. New Hampshirites have often turned to blackmail over the years when the first-in-the-nation primary has been threatened. And it has been threatened anew for 2024 and in a different way than it has in the post-reform era. However, independents may be further down the list of blackmail items that can be used, successfully or otherwise, as the standoff with the national party continues. The simple truth of the matter is that New Hampshire was narrowly decided in 2020 and any small change could tip the balance the other way in 2024. That was just as much the case before the calendar decisions were made as it is now that New Hampshire Democrats are scrambling for a way out of the impasse.


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Of course, Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) has been running for 2024 for quite some time because he has been doing the sorts of things that prospective and actual candidates for the White House do for quite some time. That was true before last month when South Carolina's junior senator announced his exploratory committee for the presidency and it will continue to be the case as his major announcement on May 22 approaches: 
“It is time to take the Faith in America tour not just on the road, not just to an exploratory committee,” the South Carolina Republican told the crowd of about 150 people, a comment which received a standing ovation. “It is time to make a final step. We are going to have a major announcement. You are going to want to be there.”
This can be said about Scott thus far: He has done a good job teasing out these various announcements to keep his name in the news.


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Vivek Ramaswamy picked up some South Carolina endorsements during his bus tour of the Palmetto state last week, including a pair of state legislators from the Low Country. FITSNews is the only outlet reporting that, but one of the state representatives, Matt Leber, seems to have indirectly confirmed the endorsement by retweeting the story. No, that is hardly a groundswell of support, but the thing worth eyeing here is that Ramaswamy continues to basically build a White House run from scratch. It will be a campaign that builds more from the bottom up rather than the top down as, say, Trump is doing in the endorsement primary. Ramaswamy may or may not catch on in 2023-24, but his is a grassroots build out and state legislative and local endorsements are part of that, a valuable part. He takes the bus tour to New Hampshire this week, where Ramaswamy already counts one fairly big state legislative endorsement from the deputy majority leader of the state house, Fred Doucette.


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Harry Enten at CNN picked up on a parallel point to one FHQ made last week. But instead of focusing on the different ways in which similar polling numbers for Biden and Trump can be read differently, he turned toward the similar positioning of Ron DeSantis and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. And similar though the poll positions of the two may be, how those numbers are being interpreted for both is very different. Good piece from Harry.


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On this date...
...in 1976, former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter and former California Governor Ronald Reagan (R) won big in the Texas primary. Louisiana Democrats caucused as well.

...in 1979, George H.W. Bush announced his bid for the 1980 Republican presidential nomination.

...in 1984, former Vice President Walter Mondale (D) won the Tennessee presidential primary while Jesse Jackson took the primary in the nation's capital.



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Posted by Josh Putnam at 10:00 AM 0 comments
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Tuesday, March 21, 2023

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Pence's Predicament

Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the goings on of the moment as 2024 approaches...

McCay Coppins at The Atlantic peeks into some recent focus groups looking at Pence 2024:
Organized by the political consultant Sarah Longwell, the groups consisted of Republican voters who supported Donald Trump in both 2016 and 2020. The participants were all over the country—suburban Atlanta, rural Illinois, San Diego—and they varied in their current opinions of Trump. In some cases, Longwell filtered for voters who should be in Pence’s target demographic. One group consisted entirely of two-time Trump voters who didn’t want him to run again; another was made up of conservative evangelicals, who might presumably appreciate Pence’s roots in the religious right.
Look, one should never put too much trust in focus groups -- especially a handful of them at one snapshot in time -- but when they are chosen to test a candidate out with groups that should be favorable to the candidate, well, the results should be okay. These were not. And they confirm some priors for those who may be skeptical of a Pence run for the 2024 Republican nomination. It is revealing, then, even if not generalizable (pending future data). The association with Trump and the perceived failings of Pence to act in accordance with the former president's wishes on January 6 is to Pence what imminent death syndrome was to characters in that old Mr. Show bit. It puts him in an awkward position. And that is not the place to be with Republican primary voters at this time. 


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Donald Trump will likely be an interesting test of a number of hypotheses as the invisible primary continues and ultimately yields to primary season next year. Among those hypotheses will be whether actions and not words carry the day for Republican primary voters. FHQ is quick to preach actions during the invisible primary, but when rubber meets road and voters are pulling (or not pulling) the lever for Trump in 2024, the actions of four years in the White House may mean less. In the context of abortion, more happened on the former president's watch than under any Republican administration, yet Trump's comments about how the issue hurt Republicans in the 2022 midterms, not to mention his general avoidance of the issue, weigh on the minds of evangelicals in and outside of Iowa. But that segment of those caucusing early next year in the first contest in Iowa will not be insignificant. Nor, however, are they monolithic.


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FHQ has not said much about announced Republican presidential candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy, and that probably says a lot. However, in the month since the entrepreneur formally declared, he has raised nearly $500,000 from 10,000 donors, many of them first-timers, across all 50 states. That is nothing to sneeze at, but by comparison, Trump hauled in ten times as much at the tail end of 2024, and DeSantis is sitting on a fortune left over from his gubernatorial reelection bid last year (in addition to what he continues to bring in). Former UN ambassador Nikki Haley has yet to report any figures. Longshot though he may be, Ramaswamy demonstrates how effective the online fundraising infrastructure combined with a steady stream media hits can be. 


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On this date...
...in 1972, Edmund Muskie won the Democratic primary in Illinois, the Maine senator's final primary win of the cycle. Muskie also won the earlier New Hampshire primary.

...in 2019, SB 445 was signed into law, moving the Arkansas presidential primary back to March.

...in 2020, New York cancelled its Republican presidential primary after President Trump was the only candidate to qualify.
Posted by Josh Putnam at 10:00 AM 0 comments
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