Showing posts with label money primary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label money primary. Show all posts

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. 


...
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.


...
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. 


...
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.

Wednesday, March 15, 2023

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Republican Non-Endorsements

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

It is early yet in the Republican presidential nomination process. There are, after all, only two major contenders -- Donald Trump and Nikki Haley -- who have entered the race and who have held elective office (at a level that has conventionally seen success in presidential contests). Each already has a handful of endorsements as well. And that is another of those invisible primary metrics -- endorsement primary -- to eye as one assesses the degree to which Trump's institutional support has declined relative to his standing four years ago (or how much better it is than it was eight years ago). FHQ has already discussed this in terms of where the former president's organizational efforts stand, but it matters for endorsements too. 

And one sees this not only in endorsements, particularly in endorsement defections from Trump, but also in non-endorsements, as in elites and elected officials refusing to endorse Trump or anyone else at this early stage of the race. Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-NE) is new to the job, having been appointed to the post following the departure of Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE), so maybe the question is a natural inquiry for the Nebraska press. But the senator's response is noteworthy in that he passed on the opportunity to endorse. Then-Governor Ricketts, like many elected officials, was on Team Trump in 2020 as a campaign surrogate. But the two were at odds during the 2022 midterms both in and out of Nebraska. The president called Ricketts a RINO for supporting Governor Brian Kemp (R-GA) in his reelection bid in the Peach state, and Ricketts asked Trump not to intervene (and endorse) in the open Republican gubernatorial primary in Nebraska (advice the president refused to heed). 

And it matters for now that Ricketts also did not line up behind Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL), someone to whom members of his family have donated. Now, that may or may not hold as this race progresses (and DeSantis formally enters the contest). But the extent to which elected officials stay on the sidelines is important. Not endorsing Trump says something: that elite-level support has ebbed since 2020. But not endorsing anyone else might also suggest that those same elites cannot (or do not want to) coordinate against Trump in 2024. And that again says something about where Trump is on the 2015 or 2019 spectrum of strength in this evolving battle. These signals are important to assessing where the race stands.

This is also something that bears watching at the state party level as well. Ed Cox, the newly sworn in chair of the New York Republican Party reassumed his position atop the party and was quick to note that the NYGOP, like the national party, would remain neutral in the 2024 presidential nomination race. That is likely to be the case for state Republican parties across the country, but it is not a sure thing. That, too, tells one about the state of the Republican race and Trump's support in it. 


...
No, DeSantis is not in the race yet, but he continues to do the things that (prospective) presidential candidates do. This time it is a trip to New Hampshire for a big state party fundraising event.


...
Governor Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) continues to do things outside of the commonwealth. And every time he does, it draws presidential chatter. So it was with the latest news that Youngkin will head to Texas in April to meet with big money Republican donors. Youngkin, like all the other candidates or potential candidates not named Trump or DeSantis, is in the difficult position of having to assess his chances in a field where there is seemingly little oxygen. Youngkin can lay claim to being a Republican governor in a blue state, which is unique among the other possible aspirants. But like everyone else he has to hope for a DeSantis flop, a Trump implosion or for the Trump and DeSantis to pummel each other into oblivion such that the door is opened for someone else. And maybe one or some combination of those things happen. But the more immediate concern for Youngkin may be that he has to show those donors in Texas that he has that "fire in the belly," a marker he did not necessarily surpass with potential donors in New York recently.


...
Vice President Kamala Harris going to Iowa causes a raise of the eyebrow until one remembers that the Hawkeye state will not be the first state in the Democratic presidential nomination process in 2024.


...
On this date...
...in 1980, Senator Bob Dole withdrew, winless, from the Republican presidential nomination race.

...in 1988, Vice President Bush (R) and Senator Paul Simon (D) won the Illinois presidential primary. Simon kept all three of the big winners from Super Tuesday the week before at bay in his home state. 

...in 2004, Rev. Al Sharpton dropped out of the Democratic presidential nomination race.

...in 2016, Senator Marco Rubio (R) suspended his campaign after a lackluster showing in primaries, including his home state of Florida, at the opening of the winner-take-all window on the Republican nomination calendar.