Monday, June 26, 2023

DeSantis Deemphasizing New Hampshire?

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...
  • Are Iowa Democrats creating a calendar headache for the national party? A closer look at the delegate selection plan from Democrats in the Hawkeye state being found noncompliant. Plus a glance at the decisions Idaho Republicans made over the weekend. All the details at FHQ Plus.
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In Invisible Primary: Visible today...
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There are still six plus months until the likely New Hampshire primary, so FHQ will not make a mountain out of this molehill. But it is interesting that Team DeSantis has pulled back a bit in New Hampshire in recent weeks. It is not a withdrawal. This is no skipping story. But at the same time, it is not necessarily a strategic blunder for DeSantis to potentially deemphasize the Granite state in his pursuit of the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. 

The early calendar is not about delegates, but New Hampshire offers the fewest delegates of the four early states and allocates them proportionally with a 10 percent qualifying threshold. That is a low bar for a handful of candidates to possibly clear and divvy up a few more than 20 delegates. DeSantis will likely need a win early, but it could be that libertarian-leaning New Hampshire is not the best fit for the culture warrior role DeSantis appears to be filling. It would not necessarily be a bad move not to go all in in such a state. There may be wins and the delegates to be had elsewhere. 

No, New Hampshire will not be a state to skip. If the battle turns into one over delegates in the long run, then it may be a state where someone like DeSantis takes what he can get and moves on to better opportunities in other states. That is not a skip, folks. DeSantis and company will be in the Granite state. The coming weeks and months will tell us whether he will be all in there or not. 


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Amy Walter had a good one late last week at Cook Political Report about 2024 not being 2016 on the Republican side. FHQ weighed in on the subject when DeSantis jumped into the race. But Walter adds some solid detail on Trump's positioning now versus then.


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Yes, super PACs are raising and spending a lot of money in the 2024 presidential race. Sure, they are, in some cases, pushing the legal limits on what they can do. But the super PAC era is very much an evolutionary one. And it remains an open question whether those entities can be as efficient and effective as traditional campaigns in some of those duties. That stands out as the primary hypothesis that will be tested this cycle on the presidential level where super PACs are concerned. Can they be as effective? Will they be as effective?


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From around the invisible primary...

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On this date...
...in 2019, Democratic presidential candidates gathered for the first of two consecutive nights of debates in Miami, the initial primary debates of the 2020 cycle. 

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