Monday, April 10, 2023

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Three Tales of Would-Be 2024 Republican Candidates

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

Paul Steinhauser writing at Fox News updates the situation with Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC):
"'This next week will provide clarity to how he’s thinking about 2024,' a Republican operative in Scott’s political orbit, who asked to remain anonymous to speak more freely, told Fox News."
Scott's itinerary over the coming week? 

April 12 in Iowa, April 13 in New Hampshire and April 14-15 in South Carolina. There just are not that many lines to read between here. A four day swing through the first three contests of the Republican presidential nomination process during an Easter recess says a lot about Scott's intentions. But then again, the travel primary is not the only area where Scott has been doing the sorts of things that aspiring presidential candidates do. 


...
Speaking of trips to South Carolina, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) has been coaxed into visiting the Palmetto state early next week by backer and state Sen. Josh Kimbrell. It will be the governor's first trek to the home of the first-in-the-South presidential primary. One visit will be unlikely to cool the DeSantis-is-skipping-the-early-states narrative much, but as the most delegate-rich state among the first four on the calendar and the only one that allocates delegates in a winner-take-most fashion before March, South Carolina is a valuable piece of the delegate puzzle, whether part of a "long-haul strategy" or not.


...
USA Today's Francesca Chambers profiled New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu (R), another potential candidate who has garnered some 2024 buzz. 
“'I don't believe in getting on stage to blow people up,' Sununu said. 'But if getting on the stage can help me direct the conversation back to those Republican fundamentals that we can all agree on, and I can get a lot of people excited, well, then there's value in doing that.' 

"Sununu said his mission after the midterm elections was, initially, to help the GOP become more likable and develop a better message. Election losses in 2022 demonstrated a need for the party to field strong candidates who appeal to independents and younger voters, he said."
There has been a considerable amount of the talk about 2024 resembling 2016, but much of it has applied to candidate strategy to winnow the field in order to take Trump down. A lot of that has missed the mark, failing to adequately account for the differences between 2015 and now. But here, Sununu sounds an awful lot like another candidate who ran in 2016, John Kasich. Affable guy focused on the issues is a strategy, but it is one that did not work in 2016 and does not, at least not at this time anyway, seem to have much of a home in the politics of the Republican Party. Again, that may change, but it does not seem to offer a viable path to the nomination. 

And unlike Kasich in 2016, Sununu may not have a path through his home state. New Hampshire certainly offers fewer delegates (and none that are allocated winner-take-all as in Ohio).


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Over at FHQ Plus...
  • Democratic draft delegate selection plans continue to be released and they continue to reveal elements of the 2024 process to come. Yes, that affects the Democratic process, but when it comes to hints about the timing of state-run primaries, that affects Republicans as well. 
If you haven't checked out FHQ Plus yet, then what are you waiting for? Subscribe below.


...
On this date...
...in 1984, Walter Mondale (D) took a sizable plurality win in the Pennsylvania primary, but he would only eclipse that total in two additional states (of five more wins) down the stretch. 

...in 2012, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum (R) suspended his campaign for the Republican nomination, effectively sealing an overall win for Mitt Romney.

...in 2020, Joe Biden (D) won in Alaska as Democrats in the Last Frontier completed their vote-by-mail party-run primary in the thick of a pandemic-affected primary season. 



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See more on our political/electoral consulting venture at FHQ Strategies. 

Sunday, April 9, 2023

Sunday Series: Iowa and New Hampshire Are Super Unlikely to Hold February Contests. Here is why.

It has been a pretty bad stretch this last little bit. 

Mentions of the 2024 presidential primary calendar have increasingly peppered articles, op-eds and other news items in recent weeks. And why would they not? 2024 is approaching. The process is heading into the thick of candidate announcement season. Things are heating up as the invisible primary progresses and becomes more visible. 

But there is a problem. These calendar blurbs keep getting it wrong. 

It started with Karl Rove writing in the Wall Street Journal a few weeks back. He correctly noted that Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary have no dates yet, but then he moved on to South Carolina. "Democrats are trying to shift the primary there from Feb. 24 to Feb. 3." The South Carolina primary is not scheduled for February 24. It was never scheduled for February 24. February 24 does happen to be on the last Saturday in February, the day on which South Carolina Democrats held their 2020 presidential primary. But the state parties in the Palmetto state set the dates of the primaries. It is not set in state law. In other words, there is no state law with a specific date that carries over from the previous cycle. It resets to nothing -- there is no date -- every cycle. 

Then it was Richard Winger at Ballot Access News who picked up on the South Carolina theme. But in his case, it was talk of the Republican process in the typically first-in-the-South primary state. And again, the date quoted for the South Carolina contest in a post that has subsequently been edited was February 24. As with the South Carolina Democratic presidential primary, the contest on the Republican side has and has had no date. The Republican Party will make that decision later this year sometime, likely at a point when the decision makers within the party can insure that the primary will be first-in-the-South and/or third in the calendar order as called for in Republican National Committee (RNC) rules. 

And now this last week, the indictment against Donald Trump in Manhattan led to another series of 2024 primary calendar mentions in the context of the potential overlap between any trial there and presidential primary season next year. Some said a January trial would happen a month before the Iowa caucuses. Others said Iowa and New Hampshire will conduct delegate selection events in early February. Another was more specific than that, suggesting that the Iowa caucuses are set for February 5 and the New Hampshire primary for February 13

Not a one of those descriptions is correct. None of them. There are no dates for any of those contests. Not Iowa. Not New Hampshire. Not South Carolina (Republicans). And just a cursory dig into any of those supposed dates -- February 5, February 13 and February 24 -- leads to one place: The Green Papers

Look, I love The Green Papers. The value of that storehouse of information built by Richard and Tony is immeasurable. I still cannot believe my dumb luck in stumbling on the page in 1999 working on an undergraduate paper in George Rabinowitz's US national elections class. I frequently cite The Green Papers here at FHQ. Heck, their site is perpetually linked in the right sidebar. I would not do that unless I trusted the information they provide. 

However, I take issue with how The Green Papers deals with the dynamism of the evolving presidential primary calendar every cycle. It is a philosophical difference. The Green Papers is willing to carry over dates from the previous cycle, whether there are actual dates for contests set by state law or not. And FHQ is very simply unwilling to suspend our disbelief and "presume" that the Iowa caucuses, for example, will fall on Monday, February 5, 2024. 

Well, actually, FHQ is unwilling to do that now. But in January 2021, when FHQ posted its first iteration of the 2024 presidential primary calendar, it made sense to slot Iowa into a February 5 slot. And if Iowa could be tentatively penciled in there on the calendar, then the remaining three early states could easily be shifted into similarly tentative spots all before Super Tuesday on March 5. That is what the initial FHQ calendar showed. 

But the information environment around those tentative early state dates did not hold for long. And it did not hold because six months into 2021, Democrats in unified control of state government in Nevada established a state-run presidential primary in the Silver state. Not only did decision makers in Nevada shift from caucuses to a primary, but in the process they staked a claim on a first Tuesday in February calendar position that broke with the previous conception of the early calendar order. Theirs was a move to make a case to be first in the order, or to set the stage to make a case to be first in the order. 

Yet, at that early stage of the invisible primary in mid-2021, not even the national parties had set their rules for the 2024 cycle. Although, at that point, a Nevada presidential primary set for Tuesday, February 6 meant that Iowa and New Hampshire (and South Carolina on the Republican side) would have to conduct contests before the first Tuesday in February to protect their traditional positions. That was known in June 2021 when that Nevada presidential primary bill was signed into law.

In other words, it was clear then that a February 6 Nevada presidential primary meant that Iowa, New Hampshire and possibly South Carolina Republicans would not fall on February 5, February 13 and February 24, respectively. That view was further buttressed a year ago this month when the RNC adopted its rules for the 2024 cycle, rules that once again protected the early positions of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina. Granted, there was still uncertainty at that point in April 2022. The Democratic National Committee (DNC) had not yet set its calendar rules for 2024, but serious talk of an early calendar shuffle had already begun, talk in which Nevada's position prominently figured. And even if national Democrats signed off on an earlier Nevada primary, Silver state Republicans could still opt out and hold caucuses at a later date. 

But at that point, in the late spring of 2022, a Nevada Democratic primary on February 6 still would have meant that February 13 -- a week later -- would be off the table as an option for New Hampshire, given the state law in the Granite state and how decision makers in the office of the secretary of state have behaved, despite national party rules, in the past. And as New Hampshire goes, so too does Iowa often go. February 5, then, likely would not have been an option for Iowa Republicans. 

Of course, any real discussion of February 5 Iowa caucuses or a February 13 New Hampshire primary died, or started to officially die, on December 1, 2022 when President Biden sent a letter to the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee (DNCRBC) on the eve of its meeting to decide on the states that would get waivers to hold early presidential nominating contests in 2024. The information environment around the 2024 presidential primary calendar again shifted. The votes at the December 2, 2022 DNCRBC meeting and the February 4, 2023 DNC meeting solidified the decision to schedule the South Carolina Democratic primary on February 3. Most uncertainty that had existed about the Democratic calendar was extinguished that day. The question then was not whether Iowa and New Hampshire would settle for February 5 and February 13 slots respectively. Instead, the question was how far ahead of the South Carolina Democratic primary the two traditionally first states would jump. 

At this point in the 2024 cycle, the Iowa caucuses are not set for February 5. They are not "presumably," to adopt the tag used by The Green Papers, set for February 5. The same is true for the New Hampshire primary and February 13. Those dates are wrong. They serve no purpose other than to obliquely suggest that those were the dates of the Iowa and New Hampshire contests in the last cycle. And when folks miss that oblique reference and run with the wrong dates, they are misinforming their readers. 

It is and has always been FHQ's mission to better inform people about this complicated process. We can do better than presuming dates from the last cycle carry over to the current one. They do in a great many cases, in instances where there is a state law or state party rule that clearly defines a date for any given delegate selection event. And there are laws in both Iowa and New Hampshire that dictate, and have dictated, where the contests in those states will end up. Those laws are specific as to the position, if not the date, of those contests, seven days prior to another primary in New Hampshire (as has been the interpretation) and eight days before another contest in Iowa. If actors in the Hawkeye and Granite states do what they usually do (or what they have signaled in 2023 that they will do in 2024), then both contests will fall some time in January 2024. How far into January depends on whether Nevada Republicans opt into or out of the February 6 presidential primary

Again, I am interested in better informing readers. This is not about trying to drag The Green Papers and drive traffic from there to here. There is room for both, and I stand by 99 percent of what Richard and Tony do over there. But we approach the calendar's evolution differently. And those differences matter. They matter when wrong information starts to filter into the broader conversations about the 2024 presidential nomination process. And February 5 (Iowa) and February 13 (New Hampshire) -- not to mention February 24 (Nevada and/or South Carolina) -- are wrong. Those are not the dates of those contests and will not be barring an unprecedented cave on the part of the president and the DNC on the Democratic calendar. The odds of that are long, perhaps not as long as Marianne Williamson or Robert Kennedy Jr. becoming the Democratic presidential nominee in 2024, but really, really long. 

Iowa and New Hampshire may not end up where FHQ has them placed now either. The information environment could change again! But it is a near certainty that those contests will not be in early February given what we know now. If push comes to shove and one does not know how to describe it, then just say that Iowa and New Hampshire will be early next year. No, that may not be as specific as some want, but it is accurate at this time. 


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See more on our political/electoral consulting venture at FHQ Strategies. 

Saturday, April 8, 2023

From FHQ Plus: Drama Introduced into Effort to Move Idaho Presidential Primary

The following is cross-posted from FHQ Plus, FHQ's new subscription service. Come check the rest out and consider a paid subscription to support our work. 

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The 2023 state legislative session drags on in Idaho. Gem state lawmakers had targeted last Friday, March 24, as the date on which the body would adjourn. But last Friday came and went and the work has continued well into this week. 

One bill that was a part of that unfinished business was S 1186, the trailer bill to legislation that now sits on the desk of Governor Brad Little (R), having already passed both chambers of the legislature. Together, H 138 and S 1186 were intended to eliminate the separate presidential primary in March and consolidate the election with the primaries for other offices in May. Actually, the House bill was intended to do all of that on its own. But despite the stated intent, all H 138 ever did was strike the presidential primary language from state code. It never built back the statutory infrastructure to add the presidential line to the May primary ballot. S 1186 was the patch for those omissions.

Only, that patch ran into trouble in committee on the House side on Thursday, March 30. Again, H138 is on the governor’s desk. It overwhelmingly passed both chambers with bipartisan support, and S 1186 had cleared the state Senate as well. All that seemingly stood in the way of the intended elimination and consolidation was a quick committee hearing and another presumably lopsided vote in favor of the trailer bill. 

But then came Thursday’s House State Affairs Committee consideration of the measure. The hearing itself covered familiar ground. Sponsors (and the secretary of state) touted the more than $2 million savings consolidating the elections would have while those tightly associated with the state Republican Party cried foul for not being consulted about the potential change ahead of time (before its winter meeting earlier this year).

And it was during that Republican Party backlash to the legislation that the hearing got interesting. Idaho Republican Party Chair Dorothy Moon spoke in opposition to the bill, saying that, if anything, the state party would prefer to move the primary up even further on the calendar than the second Tuesday in March rather than back to May. She went on to say that she and the party would like to have been given the chance to work with the Republican National Committee to move the primary to February; to make Idaho the “Iowa of the West.”

Put a pin in that for a second. That is a storyline in and of itself, but there was another twist. 

All the witnesses who lined up to testify spoke, and it then looked as if the committee was going to move quickly to vote on S 1186 and presumably push it to the floor. Again, the three floor votes that each of these two bills had faced ended with bipartisan passage. The assumption, then, was that State Affairs was going to move this to the House floor for final consideration. Instead, this happened:

State Affairs Committee Chair Brent Crane (R-13th, Nampa): “Senate bill 1186 is properly before the committee."

Silence. [Crane glances around with a slight, knowing grin on his face.]

Chair Crane: “Senate bill 1186 dies for lack of a motion.”

From the Democratic side of the dais: “Uh.”

Chair Crane: “Already made my decision.”

So, with that S 1186 died in committee. 

Now, that could mean a lot of things moving forward. But what it means in the near term is that Governor Little has a decision to make about H 138. If he signs the measure into law, then the March presidential primary is eliminated, but has no home alongside the May primary. If, however, he vetos the House bill, then everything with the presidential primary stays the same as it has been in Idaho for the last two cycles. 

Maintaining the status quo on the March primary may hinge on how much the governor values the cost savings of eliminating the stand-alone presidential primary. If he prioritizes that roughly $2 million savings, then Little may very well sign the bill or allow it to become law without his signature. 

But that means there would be no Idaho presidential primary in 2024, at least not without further action in a special legislative session. It could be that consideration in that setting may occur after enough time that the state Republican Party has had a chance to consult with the RNC about their February primary idea. Granted, that proposal would be dead on arrival with the national party. The RNC set the early calendar in the rules it adopted in April 2022, and Idaho was not among the states given a carve-out to hold February or earlier primaries or caucuses. Additionally, Idaho Republicans would face the national party’s stiff super penalty if it opted to thumb its nose at the rules and conduct a February contest.

That may or may not be enough to deter the Idaho state legislature from going along with an unsanctioned (by the RNC), state-funded presidential primary in February or even raising the presidential primary issue again in a special session. But the Idaho Republican Party may forge ahead without the primary, whether a state-funded option is available or not. 

Gem state Republicans may choose to hold caucuses instead. And, like West Virginia, Idaho fits into this sort of sweet spot with respect to the RNC super penalty. Yes, the penalty would eliminate all but 12 delegates if Idaho broke the timing rules. But there are only 30 Idaho delegates to begin with. Yes, that is a penalty and one that is greater than the old 50 percent reduction that the RNC employed in the 2012 cycle. Yet, it may not be enough to keep Idaho Republicans from forcing the issue and attempting to become the “Iowa of the West.”

And honestly, that may be a good thing for the overall Republican primary calendar for 2024. The Democratic calendar — with South Carolina at the top on February 3 — is likely to push the early Republican states into January, leaving a barren expanse with no contests for all or much of February until Super Tuesday on March 5. A February Idaho caucus and/or a Michigan primary (with waiver) may help fill in that gap.

However, all of that remains to play out. First thing’s first: Governor Little has a decision to make on H 138. And it is a bigger decision than one might expect for a seemingly simple presidential primary bill.

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NOTE: It was reported this past week upon the Idaho legislature adjourning sine die that Governor Little signed H 138 into law. That eliminates the stand-alone March presidential primary in the Gem state, but bigger questions remain about where the Idaho delegate selection events for both parties end up on the 2024 presidential primary calendar.

Friday, April 7, 2023

Invisible Primary: Visible -- The Long-Haul Strategy of Team DeSantis

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

Henry Gomez and Matt Dixon over at NBC had a nice look at the emerging delegate strategy of the budding DeSantis campaign. A few reactions...
  1. Before I even clicked on the link, my first thought was, "Yeah, Jeff Roe was brought onto the staff at the super PAC and Ken Cuccinelli is running the show over there. This will be a delegate strategy story." It was. Both were involved in the Cruz delegate operation in 2016. Put a pin in that.
  2. Folks linking to this piece keep interpreting it as a "skipping" story. As in, this DeSantis strategy entails skipping Iowa, New Hampshire and the other early states. I did not read it that way. This strikes me as a strategy not unlike that of the former president's. It is a strategy built on the notion that the 2024 Republican presidential nomination race could go on for a while next year. Donald Trump is well-positioned to go the distance. And Ron DeSantis is demonstrating that he at least potentially has the resources, financial and otherwise, to do the same. This behavior is less about skipping those early states than thinking about the full primary calendar. Look, a lot of the 2016 Republican candidates traveled widely in 2015, and not just to the earliest states. There was this whole discussion about whether the SEC primary was working. Working, that is, in the sense that the collective movement of southern states to Super Tuesday would draw candidate attention to the region. Visits occurred to the South and elsewhere, but none of them skipped Iowa, New Hampshire or any of the other early states. Well, some of the candidates did. They skipped the later early states after withdrawing. DeSantis may pepper other states with visits, but keep an eye on him and others as Iowa and New Hampshire approach. They will not be skipping either. 
  3. The most interesting part of the article was this peek into the thinking from inside Team DeSantis. “One thing that we have looked at is that Trump can be beat on the delegate portion of all this. He has never been good at that.” That is straight out of the Cruz playbook from 2016. And it made sense in 2016. In 2023-24? Eh, maybe. Maybe not. This can be filed into that category of "Where is Trump this cycle? Closer to 2015 or 2019?" Trump will have for 2024 some institutional advantages within the party at the state level that he did not have in 2015. He definitely had that in 2019 and worked that to his advantage in the 2020 delegate game. Those connections still exist. But are they as strong? That is the question. And that matters for who fills the delegate slots that are allocated to candidates based on the results of primaries and caucuses across the country. Will those folks selected to fill those allocated slots be as firmly in Trump's corner or can other campaigns potentially exploit the divorce between the allocation and selection processes in the Republican nomination in the way that Cruz did in 2016? RNC rules may make that more difficult for challengers to Trump in 2024. This is the story. Focus on that.

...
Anything you can do, I can do better. DeSantis scored a congressional endorsement this week and the Trump campaign then conveniently rolled out an endorsement from a member of Congress from right in DeSantis' backyard. Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) threw his support behind Donald Trump.


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Yeah, those head-to-head Republican primary poll results keep popping up. This time it was a one-on-one between Trump and DeSantis in Iowa (with parallel numbers for a wider race as well). On the one hand, these head-to-heads are make believe. They capture a race that does not exist and very likely will not exist when voting commences in 2024. There will be more candidates in the race, at least initially, than merely Trump and DeSantis. But the supposed value added is to demonstrate that Trump is more vulnerable in a one-on-one race. That is another hypothesis that finds its roots in 2016 and may or may not have been true then anymore than it is now. 

The assumption nestled in all of this, of course, is that DeSantis has the best shot to take down Trump (but can only do so if the others get out of the way). But that is only a partial test. It only gets part of the way toward an answer because it only consistently tests one alternative against Trump. How do the other candidates do head-to-head with Trump? Better or worse than in a multi-candidate race? Clearly, the retort here is likely to be that other candidates are not tested against Trump because they are in single digits in the multi-candidate polls. Fair, but why trust the multi-candidate polls in that case and not for measuring how DeSantis is doing against Trump? 

The head-to-heads only offer spin opportunities for the campaigns. They certainly do not tell us much about how voters and the field will react once votes are actually cast in a multi-candidate race in the early states next year and voters in subsequent states begin to process that information. That picture will develop and change.


...
Over at FHQ Plus...
  • Thursday was a busy day for presidential primary bill movement across the country. There were a variety of changes in Idaho, Maryland and Missouri.
If you haven't checked out FHQ Plus yet, then what are you waiting for? Subscribe below.


...
On this date...
...in 1984, former Vice President Walter Mondale won the Wisconsin Democratic caucuses, days after Gary Hart claimed victory in the beauty contest primary. [The caucuses were used to allocate delegates.]

...in 1988, Senator Paul Simon (D-IL) withdrew from the Democratic nomination race, just a few weeks after his lone win in his home state primary. 

...in 1992, Bill Clinton took the Wisconsin primary, and President George H.W. Bush swept primaries in Kansas, Minnesota and Wisconsin. 
[As a fun aside, a representative from the Kansas secretary of state's office recently testifying before a committee about the presidential primary bill in the Sunflower state noted that the state held a rare presidential primary in 1992. That was a function of a request, he said, from Bob Dole to ensure that delegates went to the president and not potentially Pat Buchanan in a caucus.]

...in 2015, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) entered the race for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. 

...in 2020, former Vice President Joe Biden won the delayed and then not delayed Wisconsin primary.


Thursday, April 6, 2023

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Biden Gets Another Challenger

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

Robert Kennedy Jr., who has for some time signaled that a nomination bid was possible, made it official on Wednesday, April 5. Like Marianne Williamson, Kennedy is likely to run a New Hampshire-or-bust strategy in his push for the Democratic presidential nomination. That is sure to add some additional asterisks to the New Hampshire primary. The Granite state is one of the few places that President Biden is extremely unlikely -- although Democrats in the state still harbor hope that he will change his mind -- to be on the ballot. But Kennedy may face an uphill climb even in a state where an unorganized write-in campaign for the president is the main opposition. Independents will be drawn into the much more competitive Republican race in the Granite state and the Democrats remaining may stay home (or cast their lot with Williamson) rather than pull the lever for someone who has taken stances against vaccines and who was encouraged to run by Steve Bannon. That is not a combination that is likely to be successful among Democratic primary voters nationally or even in a state where Biden is uniquely unpopular because of his calendar shuffle


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All had been quiet on the fundraising front from former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley since she entered the Republican nomination race. But the dawning of a new fundraising quarter brought news of what she had raised during a truncated first quarter in which Haley had announced. The data? $11 million from 70,000 donors across all 50 states, 67,000 of whom had given less than $200. That is not a bad dispersion and hints at some grassroots support to start for the former South Carolina governor. However, never to be outdone in the money primary, the Trump campaign announced that it had pulled in over $12 million in the time since the news of the Manhattan indictment broke late last week. So much for the Haley campaign having raised more in its first six weeks in the race than Trump had in the first month and a half after his announcement in November. The second quarter numbers may be a truer barometer of Haley's staying power than this first hint. With other indictments looming, Trump may be able to continue to circle the fundraising wagons. ...and even chase DeSantis donors.


...
In the endorsement primary, Ron DeSantis claimed his second congressional endorsement. This time from Thomas Massie (R-KY). The two more or less came into the House together after the 2012 elections, although Massie got a bit of a head start, assuming office at the end of 2012 to complete the tail end of his predecessor's term. Massie joins Texas Republican, Chip Roy, as the two House members who have lined up behind DeSantis so far. ... Vivek Ramaswamy scored a coup in winning the support of former Trump state co-chair and state Rep. Fred Doucette in New Hampshire. Look, Trump is the former president and counts the former state party chair as his point man in the Granite state, but this sort of jump to another candidate, especially from someone who had been along for the Trump ride as a leader in both 2016 and 2020, is noteworthy.


...
Over at FHQ Plus...
  • Hawaii appears poised to become the last state with unified Democratic control to establish a presidential primary election. Hurdles remain, but the last active 2023 bill to bring a primary to the Aloha state passed another test yesterday.
If you haven't checked out FHQ Plus yet, then what are you waiting for? Subscribe below.


...
On this date...
...in 1976, President Gerald Ford swept the Republican primaries in both New York and Wisconsin. On the Democratic side, the results were more mixed. Scoop Jackson won the last of his four 1976 victories in New York while Jimmy Carter took the Wisconsin primary, narrowly squeaking by Mo Udall in a Dewey Defeats Truman moment.


Wednesday, April 5, 2023

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Doug Burgum Ducks Presidential Questions Back Home

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

The spotlight may be shining brightly somewhere else and on another well-known 2024 Republican presidential aspirant, but that does not mean that the invisible primary is not developing elsewhere. North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum (R) faced questions from the local press on Tuesday, April 4 and did well to mostly avoid questions about his recent trip to Iowa. That may be an invisible primary marker on its own. But the governor's spokesperson confirmed that the trip was not on the state plane and thus not official state business nor on the state dime. Read what one will into that, but together they are all actions indicative of exploring a run. 

...and the governor's evasion was neither Shermanesque nor Sherman-ish.


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The travel primary sees Nikki Haley hold an event back home in the midlands of South Carolina on Thursday. Ron DeSantis heads to (early 2024 state?) Michigan tomorrow as well. And Mike Pompeo attempted to further burnish his foreign policy credibility with a trip to Ukraine on Tuesday.


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Endorsement primary... A Tim Scott run for the Republican presidential nomination may or may not take off before or during 2024, but the junior senator from South Carolina may be a (potential) candidate who can rival Donald Trump in the chase for endorsements in the US Senate. Several of Scott's Republican colleagues have been openly encouraging or have spoken with him about a run for the White House in private. No, that is not an endorsement now, and it may not be in the future, but it is a possible well of support should Scott ultimately throw his hat in the ring. That is an important signal to some within the Republican primary electorate. 


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Over at FHQ Plus...
  • Well, maybe that effort to bring back the presidential primary in Kansas was not dead after all. The state House returned on Tuesday to reconsider and pass legislation that would resurrect the state-run primary in the Sunflower state. For once, the primary argument won out, but this is a discussion that keeps coming up in Kansas every four years. Why? FHQ Plus looks into that a bit.
If you haven't checked out FHQ Plus yet, then what are you waiting for? Subscribe below.


...
On this date...
...in 1980, President Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan won the Louisiana primary in their respective nomination races. 

...in 1988, two other eventual nominees, Michael Dukakis and George H.W. Bush, claimed victory in the Wisconsin primary. 

...in 2016, the Wisconsin primary broke against both frontrunners, handing both Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz mid-primary season wins that temporarily shook up both races.

Tuesday, April 4, 2023

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Tim Scott Staffs Up

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

The essential Caitlyn Byrd at the Charleston Post and Courier has the latest on the moves a Tim Scott-aligned super PAC has made in the staff primary. Opportunity Matters Fund Action has brought on both Matt Moore and Mark Knoop, a pair with deep ties in the Palmetto state. Moore, the one-time South Carolina Republican Party chair is a big get for Scott in a cycle in which South Carolina operatives have some tough choices to make with two home-state candidates in the running at the presidential level. Knoop was most recently a part of current Governor Henry McMaster's (R-SC) reelection effort in 2022.

Both hires say something about Scott's positioning in a Republican presidential nomination race. Yes, there is the Scott against (former governor) Nikki Haley angle, and these hires definitely say something about that battle within the state. However, that both operatives have South Carolina ties does raise some questions. First, is the field of Republican candidates so deep that Scott is left to choose from among those campaign hands closest at hand in South Carolina? Second, what do the hires suggest about the strategy of a Scott campaign? It is likely South Carolina or bust to start for Scott at the very least, so putting some to a lot of eggs in that basket is almost essential. And South Carolina is a big piece in the early calendar. Unlike the other three states, Palmetto state Republicans do not allocate their delegates in a proportional manner. They use a hybrid system that is likely to give the winner of the primary a pretty healthy net delegate advantage coming out of the most delegate-rich state on the early calendar. 

But these hires probably say more about strategy than they do about any "dregs" Scott has been left to sift through to staff a presidential campaign. Moore and Knoop are not dregs. 


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Donald Trump has been able to raise more than $7 million since the Manhattan indictment came down late last week, but the former president is not the only candidate (or likely candidate) with ample resources in the money primary. Never Back Down, the super PAC backing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has raked in north of $30 million in a little less than a month. Money is not everything, but these are staggering sums that give both men a leg up on the competition for the Republican nomination. And that is what the press releases about these totals are intended to signal to every other candidate: Think twice about getting in. Resistance is futile. Despite the signals, those who are running or considering a run, do not seem to have been deterred. Not yet, at least. 


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A few polling quick hits (maybe against my better judgment):
  • A new St. Anselm's poll of the Republican primary race in New Hampshire had Trump leading DeSantis, 42 percent to 29 percent. Governor Chris Sununu (R-NH), who is also considering a bid, was the only other candidate in double digits at 14 percent. That would be enough to get Sununu in the delegate count -- New Hampshire Republicans use the 10 percent qualifying threshold called for in state law -- but is hardly the kind of support that a home-state candidate would like to tout. It certainly is not the kind of support that would keep other candidates away from New Hampshire over the next nine plus months. Sununu, at this point, is no Tom Harkin and Iowa 1992. 
  • Gov. DeSantis Holds Slight Lead Over Donald Trump Among Florida Voters. Without even looking at the numbers, Florida is set to hold a presidential primary on March 19. Two weeks after Super Tuesday. Likely two months after New Hampshire. Those events, not to mention the remainder of the invisible primary, will have A LOT to say about the situation in the Sunshine state in 2024. But sure, one Florida candidate has a small advantage over another Florida candidate in one poll eleven and a half months before a contest that is on few voters' radars. 
  • Trump has ‘commanding lead’ over DeSantis in Massachusetts Republican primary poll conducted after indictment. I mean, see above, but with one caveat: Trump can be two things at once. Yes, the former president more than doubles the support DeSantis received in that survey. But he also falls short of majority support. It is the latter that will have much more to say about "commanding" leads next year. Majority support triggers winner-take-all allocations in a lot of states in the Republican process. Massachusetts included (as of this writing). 


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Over at FHQ Plus...
  • If Democrats in the Kansas House were unified like their co-partisans in the state Senate, then the Sunflower state would likely be headed for a state-run presidential primary for 2024. Instead, they split (with most in the Democratic House leadership against), and the bill to bring back the primary died.
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On this date...
...in 1972, George McGovern (D-SD) won the Wisconsin primary and former New York Mayor John Lindsay withdrew from the Democratic presidential race. 

...in 1988, George H.W. Bush won the Colorado Republican caucuses. 

...in 2000, both Al Gore and George W. Bush swept the Pennsylvania and Wisconsin primaries (in nomination races each had already clinched).

...in 2011, President Barack Obama announced he was seeking the Democratic nomination and running for reelection. [No, Biden still have not done likewise.]



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See more on our political/electoral consulting venture at FHQ Strategies. 

Monday, April 3, 2023

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Texas as Trump's Firewall?

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

Texas may provide Donald Trump with some added insurance once voting begins in next year's primary. Just last week, FHQ pointed in the direction of endorsements the former president already has in the Lone Star state. But John L. Dorman at Business Insider took it a step further over the weekend, suggesting that Texas could offer a delegate advantage for Trump in 2024. Maybe! If Trump remains the frontrunner in the Republican process when Super Tuesday rolls around next year, then a win in Texas would certainly pad the stats a bit and give the former president a fairly decent net delegate advantage coming out of the state's primary. 

But is Texas any more of a firewall on Super Tuesday than, say, (even more delegate-rich) California? The electorates in the two states are different, but so are the delegate allocation rules. And Texas Republicans did not use the same rules in 2020 that they used in 2016. And that quirky 2020 system may not have the immediate benefit that the 2016 rules did for Ted Cruz, the example cited by Dorman. California Republicans, on the other hand pooled their delegates in 2020, meaning that the statewide results -- and not also the congressional district results -- are the only ones that matter. If Trump hits it right, then he could win all of California's delegates (if he wins a majority). The process is a long way from getting to that point -- obviously -- but that is a big potential payday in the 2024 delegate count. Rules matter. Pay attention to how they develop in the coming months. 


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Asa Hutchinson is in. The former Arkansas governor (pre-)announced his intentions to seek the Republican presidential nomination over the weekend, becoming the third candidate with experience in elective office (and more conventional attributes) to join the race. Say what you will about the odds facing Hutchinson, but he is approaching a run differently than most anyone else is. Seth Masket has more. [Always read Seth!]


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Texas Governor Greg Abbott now has a presidential filing with the Federal Election Commission. But when an organization is called "Greg Abbott President Campaign," it does not exactly scream professional. The date of the filing may also tell us something about the purpose. 


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When FHQ sees "Dates of 2024 Presidential Primaries Uncertain in Twelve States" we jump at the chance to click. And look, I have read and thoroughly enjoyed what Richard Winger has done at Ballot Access News for years. But I disagree with the way things were characterized in his piece over the weekend.
"In Connecticut, Idaho, Kansas, Maryland, Missouri, New York, Ohio, Oregon, and Pennsylvania, the date can’t be known yet because the legislature is considering bills to change the date and the results are unpredictable at this time." [emphasis FHQ's]
Actually, we can know the dates of the presidential primaries in those states. They are clearly laid out in state law in each instance. Until those laws are changed, those are the dates of the primaries. The fate of those bills may be unpredictable, but the dates -- both the current ones and their alternatives -- are known. 

And do not get me started on this idea that the South Carolina Republican presidential primary is scheduled for February 24. It is not. It is not on January 27 either, but behavior on the state level in past cycles suggests January is closer to where the primary will end up in 2024. It beats simply carrying over a date from a previous cycle and "presuming" that will be the date (especially when there is no state law setting it for that point on the calendar).


...
Over at FHQ Plus... 
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...
On this date...
...in 1976, Democrats in Kansas and Virginia held caucuses. While Jimmy Carter "won" both, uncommitted delegates won more slots.

...in 1984, Walter Mondale won the New York primary as Gary Hart was winning a meaningless primary in Wisconsin. [Democrats in the Badger state held caucuses to allocate delegates a few days later to avoid participating in an open presidential primary.]

...in 2012, Romney swept Republican primaries in Maryland, Washington, DC and Wisconsin as President Obama clinched the Democratic nomination. 

...in 2016, the Cruz campaign outworked Donald Trump to claim more delegates from the North Dakota Republican state convention. 



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See more on our political/electoral consulting venture at FHQ Strategies. 

Friday, March 31, 2023

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Donald Trump has been indicted

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

There may be a bit of a slow-speed white Bronco chase feel to all the coverage, but it cannot go without mention that former President Donald Trump has been indicted by a Manhattan grand jury. Still, FHQ would like to take an opportunity to echo something that the Cook Political Report's Amy Walter said in reaction to the news:
We do not know. That will not mean that folks will not rush to fill the void and speculate. They will. But we should all be mindful of the unprecedented nature of all of this. Presidents who lose reelection have not tended to try for a third time in the modern era. Trump is. Former presidents do not often get indicted. Trump is the first. We are all testing this hypothesis as this thing develops. Folks on both sides of the aisle are reacting in what can be called expected ways. That helps to advance this some. What elites say in response to this event matters. Those are signals to rank and file partisans that may impact public opinion on the matter down the line. But this has also moved from hypothetical to real. Survey respondents will now be asked to react to a real indictment and not a hypothetical one. That may influence the sort of read we may get from those polls when they inevitably make it into the political bloodstream in the coming days.

But what we know now is that Trump is signaling that he is going to keep on keepin' on with respect to 2024, and Republicans for the most part are rallying behind him. 


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There are a lot of elected Republicans in the state of Texas. That is a lot of potential endorsements to go around in the 2024 Republican invisible primary. Trump has gotten the jump on the rest of the field in the Lone Star state in the endorsement primary. It is not a 2019 head start, but it ain't 2015 either. That is yet another datapoint in the Trump 2023 is ahead of Trump 2015 but behind Trump 2019 story. All of those markers are going to end up somewhere between one of the two -- 2015 or 2019 -- poles, but where they all land matters. The closer Trump is to his 2019 version, the better the former president's odds of ultimately claiming the 2024 Republican presidential nomination will be.


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New Hampshire is back in the news. Remember New Hampshire? That first-in-the-nation presidential primary state? Well, the General Court in the Granite state considered a couple of measures on Thursday. FHQ has discussed both earlier this year. A constitutional amendment to further cement New Hampshire's position on the presidential primary calendar and a bill to force the national parties to seat delegates chosen as a reflection of that primary. Both passed the state Senate on Thursday, March 30, the former with bipartisan support and the latter on a party-line vote with Republicans for and Democrats against. 

And that all makes sense. New Hampshire Democrats are willing to signal their support for the the state's continued first-in-the-nation status in the proposed amendment. That is just good politics at home and that has much has been true since December when the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee initially adopted President Biden's proposed early calendar rules. But they were less willing to go along with a bill that would dig their hole deeper with the Democratic National Committee. New Hampshire may be able to outlast the national parties on calendar positioning, but it is another matter altogether to dictate to a party how to allocate, much less seat, delegates to their national convention. That is something that is unlikely to hold up in the courts. That is a party decision and the national convention is the ultimate decision maker in the process. ...no matter what any state law says. 

A tip of the cap to Dante Scala for the heads up on this one.


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On this date...
...in 1984, the Kentucky Democratic caucuses were held.

...in 1992, Jerry Brown won the Vermont caucuses.

...in 2012, President Barack Obama won the Arizona caucuses.