Why DeSantis Attacks Haley

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...

• Some Missouri Republicans keep advancing a bogus rationale to justify the 2022 elimination of the presidential primary in the Show-Me state. And FHQ keeps getting irritated by it. Venting... All the details at FHQ Plus.

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In Invisible Primary: Visible today...

On its surface, the latest fusillade from DeSantis-affiliated super PAC Never Back Down against Nikki Haley seems to fit into the now-conventional narrative of a fight for second place in the Republican presidential nomination race behind former President Donald Trump. 

It comes from a branch of the consolidation theory of the race. That, if only the race narrowed to Trump and an alternative, then that alternative, whomever he or she may be, could finally overtake Trump. Mathematically, that makes some sense. Some sense, but it has made less and less sense over time as Trump has expanded his lead in the polls nationally and on the state level. After all, if Trump is pulling in more than a half of support in surveys, much less votes during primary season next year, then it is going to take more than just a one-on-one with the former president for an alternative topple him. It is going to take something else. In other words, it continues to be consolidation theory but with a side of magical thinking. 

However, the DeSantis case is a bit different than it may be for other would-be second placers. And the explanation may be simpler for why the Florida governor and company are going after Haley (and putting off focusing on Trump for a hypothetical one-on-one). And it has everything to do with the trajectory of the DeSantis campaign. It is not so much that DeSantis has lost or is about to cede second place to Haley. Rather, it is about how he has lost second place (if he has lost it). As DeSantis' fortunes have declined, it is Trump who has gained the most. And one does not win back former supporters who have drifted over into the Trump column by attacking Trump. 

The campaign may not win them back by fighting Nikki Haley either. But overall, the move stands less a chance of success by directly taking on Trump now.¹ 

That said, this is another case of Trump benefiting from opposing campaigns putting off the inevitable. Short-term motivations outweigh long-term considerations.

...

From around the invisible primary...

• Iowa focus: DeSantis has some company in the "all in in Iowa" category. The campaign of South Carolina Senator Tim Scott has now also begun to redirect money and staff to the first-in-the-nation caucuses in the Hawkeye state. 
• Debates: Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's campaign has indicated that he has qualified for the November 8 debate in Miami. North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum has met the donor threshold, but continues to fall short of the polling criteria. 
• New Hampshire entrants: Both Donald Trump and Mike Pence filed in Concord on Monday to appear on ballot in the as yet unscheduled primary in the Granite state.
• Quiet winnowing: If a candidate is winnowed from the field and no one is there to see it, has that candidate really been winnowed? FHQ does not know. What is known is that businessman Perry Johnson has suspended his presidential campaign. Yeah, that is winnowing.
• Staff primary: Staffers in the Florida governor's office keep leaving their jobs and finding their way into roles with the DeSantis campaign. 
• Blast from the past: Trump's expanded lead has made this a bit less of a thing, but calibrating Trump 2024 to Trump 2020 and/or Trump 2016 is still a thing if attempting to assess where his current campaign is now. Tending the grassroots in New Hampshire in 2023 appears to be ahead of where it was in 2015. But support is not nearly as consolidated behind him as it was in 2019.
• Consolidation theory, South Carolina edition: The editorial board at the Charleston Post & Courier called on hometown candidate Tim Scott to withdraw and clear the way for Nikki Haley to challenge Trump in the state and nomination race.

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¹ Note also that DeSantis has upped the attacks on Trump lately. But the overall effort is not exclusively homed in on Trump.

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Recent posts:

There is no path to the Democratic nomination that goes through New Hampshire

It is tough to move the Pennsylvania presidential primary

Is confusion inevitable in the Nevada Republican Party primary/caucus situation?

Follow FHQ on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon and Post or subscribe by Email. Oh, and now find us on Threads: (@fhq.plus) and Bluesky (fhq@bsky.social).

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

There is no path to the Democratic nomination that goes through 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...

• The Democratic presidential field may expand to include another candidate with a New Hampshire focus, but the story for Democrats in Granite state is not finished. The impasse between the state party and the DNC continues over the primary and there are a few ways forward in the fight from here. All the details at FHQ Plus.

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In Invisible Primary: Visible today...

There is no path to the Democratic presidential nomination that goes through the New Hampshire primary in 2024. And any wrong-turn detour that works its way across the Granite state is highly unlikely to embarrass the president and alter the outcome.

So why are the handful of D-listers trying their hands at challenging President Joe Biden trekking to New Hampshire (or keeping the phone lines to well-positioned Democrats in the state warm)?

Mainly, it is because it is the only play they have got. But that did not prevent Politico from trotting out the well-worn embarrassment angle in their latest on the rising Phillips 2024 campaign:

Should Phillips go through with announcing, he will need to quickly get himself on the ballot in key states. He’s already missed the deadline to appear on the ballot in Nevada, the second presidential nominating state for Democrats. South Carolina, the first nominating state in the new calendar, has a balloting deadline of Nov. 10. 

But Phillips may opt to skip the new calendar, focusing instead on New Hampshire, which is expected to hold its own unsanctioned primary after losing its first-in-the-nation status. A strong showing there would not net Phillips substantial delegates but it could prove a major embarrassment for Biden.

FHQ has discussed this before, so I will not rehash it all for the umpteenth time. But the gist is this: Biden will not be on the New Hampshire primary ballot when the unsanctioned contest is held (likely) on January 23. One cannot be embarrassed if one is not on the ballot. And how would one measure a "strong showing" under those circumstances? Winning? It would have to be winning because losing to an unorganized write-in for Biden would be embarrassing for the competition (not to mention New Hampshire Democrats) and not the president. 

Fine, but there is an organized write-in effort, right? 

Sure, there is that. But even the write-in campaign is being put together by folks who are openly mad at the president for advocating for the early calendar change. In other words, there are people working against a random candidate winning and further embarrassing New Hampshire Democrats. And that is not an environment in which it is any easier to score a "strong showing" by the competition. All sides are disadvantaged and not in the same ways. No, that will not stop some from trying to score the outcome, but the bottom line is that non-Bidens are fighting for a "strong showing" in a beauty contest primary with no delegates on the line. 

That is a springboard to what? A collapsing Biden candidacy? A subsequent meteoric rise for the winner? Both? The entry of new candidates? 

The goals in this are very strange. But again, there just are not that many openings in the process for prospective candidates not named Biden. If there were, then the field would have expanded long ago. But it has not.

...and not because the DNC put the South Carolina primary first. 

...

From around the invisible primary...

• Speaking of Biden challengers, Cenk Uygur met the first obstacle in his quest to unseat the president: being denied a spot on the Nevada presidential primary ballot. 
• Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie filed for the New Hampshire primary in Corcord on Thursday. Tim Scott, the junior senator from South Carolina, follows suit today. 
• In the travel primary, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis continues his campaigning in South Carolina for a second straight day.
• And in the endorsement primary, the two US senators from Florida are staying on the sidelines for now in a presidential race that features two from the Sunshine state in contention.

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Recent posts:

It is tough to move the Pennsylvania presidential primary

Is confusion inevitable in the Nevada Republican Party primary/caucus situation?

In Nevada, a choice between a symbolic win and delegates

Follow FHQ on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon and Post or subscribe by Email. Oh, and find us on Threads: @fhq.plus.

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

It is tough to move the Pennsylvania presidential primary

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...

• The DNC has quietly had a pretty interesting conversation about ranked choice voting in the presidential nomination process this cycle. Not much is going to change on the surface for 2024 -- RCV will have the same basic footprint as in 2020 -- but there have been some important changes under the hood that bring the practice more in line with DNC rules. All the details at FHQ Plus.
• I included the wrong link to the DNCRBC meeting recap yesterday. You can find that deep dive here if you missed it.

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In Invisible Primary: Visible today...

Despite a flurry of legislative activity over the last month and a half, an inter-chamber impasse played a role in derailing the effort to shift the presidential primary in the Keystone state up to an earlier and potentially more influential date. 

It is not a new story. It is not even really a partisan story. Yes, Republicans control the Pennsylvania state Senate and Democrats have the narrowest of majorities in the lower chamber. However, Democrats in the Senate largely supported the effort to move the primary from the fourth Tuesday in April to the third Tuesday in March (March 19). House Democrats countered with a bill that would have shifted the primary to April 2, in line with primaries in several other regional/neighboring states.

But part of the impetus behind the change in the first place was to fix the conflict the presidential primary had with the observance of Passover. The Senate version did that and the House version did too. However, the latter legislation would have had the primary butting up against Easter weekend. And as consideration of the primary move stretched into the fall, election administrators across Pennsylvania got antsy about their preparations for the next election cycle after the current one ends. And that does not even mention some of the other elections-related riders that made it into the House-amended version of the Senate bill when it originally came before the body earlier in October. 

Basically, the effort got mired in the legislative process. And even though the House struck the entirety of the previous version of the Senate-passed bill, replacing it with only one provision calling for the primary to shift up a week to April 16 to clear the Passover conflict (and passing it), the Senate does not seem inclined to take up the measure. 

It is too late. 

Look, there was a lot involved in this Pennsylvania process this year. There is not just one explanation for why the primary in the commonwealth will once again be scheduled for the fourth Tuesday in April. But it is worth noting that Pennsylvania has nearly always held down that position on the presidential primary calendar. Only twice has the primary strayed from that spot. And both the 1984 and 2000 primaries were only marginally earlier in April. 

Why? 

Unlike other states in the immediate aftermath of the Democratic Party rules changes that ushered in reforms to the nomination system, the reaction in Pennsylvania was more muted. Ahead of 1972, the state already had a primary well-enough in advance of a summer national convention. In other words, a presidential primary to allocate and select delegates could easily be consolidated with that spring primary. And it was. 

But in other states, especially those with late summer and early fall primaries for other offices, that was not an option. Decision makers in those states had to either uproot that primary and schedule it alongside a new presidential primary or create and fund a separate presidential primary election. Many took the latter route and normalized the expenditure in the state budget. 

Back in Pennsylvania, the consolidated primary left decision makers there in much the same dilemma as those early post-reform actors in other states anytime a push to reschedule the presidential primary in the Keystone state arose. Only, more often than not, the thinking in Pennsylvania was not to create and fund a separate election but to move everything up to an earlier date, dates that would place the filing process in the previous year and conflict with the conclusion of the previous off-year elections. 

That is why Pennsylvania barely moved the two times since 1972 that the primary date has been changed. That, in turn, has meant that a separate primary never got normalized nor did the practice of revisiting the date on a regular basis. Very simply, the concept was foreign to legislators in the state. It still is: 

[Rep. Arvind] Venkat also said moving the presidential primary on a year-by-year basis could be subject to the whim of the party in control of the legislature depending on whether it would be beneficial.

“The only pathway forward if we are going to move our primary is to change the election code on a permanent basis,” Venkat said.

So yes, many of the above stories about partisan squabbles or inter-chamber impasses or poison pill riders or election administrator pushback will get woven into the narrative on this non-move. But there is an institutional story too. The consolidated primary -- one that has nearly always been where it is -- is almost set in stone and there has not been much appetite to change that over the years. There has been some. It almost always comes up in the years before a presidential election year, but it also almost always goes nowhere. 

...and fast. The hurdles are too steep.

...

From around the invisible primary...

• The Post and Courier has a rundown of the two South Carolinians' third quarter fundraising. Both Haley and Scott have plenty in the coffers for the time being, but Haley saw the trajectory of her efforts increase more during the last three months as compared to Scott. 
• Trump leads the way in the money primary in Oklahoma, raising more than three times his nearest competitor in the Sooner state since the beginning of 2022.
• It is too bad this South Carolina candidate visit tracker has not been updated recently. I like those things and I'll flag this one from The Post and Courier here. 
• Vivek Ramaswamy filed for the New Hampshire primary in Concord today. 
• Florida Governor Ron DeSantis launched the Veterans for DeSantis Coalition today and will have its first formal even in Anderson, South Carolina on Thursday, October 19.

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Recent posts:

Is confusion inevitable in the Nevada Republican Party primary/caucus situation?

In Nevada, a choice between a symbolic win and delegates

The incentives of chasing delegates in California's Republican primary

Follow FHQ on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon and Post or subscribe by Email. Oh, and find us on Threads: @fhq.plus.

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

Is confusion inevitable in the Nevada Republican Party primary/caucus situation?

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...

• A belated look at the recent DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting. Yes, Iowa and New Hampshire stole the headlines -- and for good reason -- but there was some other interesting stuff that transpired in St. Louis. Some thoughts on Iowa, New Hampshire and all the rest: All the details at FHQ Plus.

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In Invisible Primary: Visible today...

In the wake of the filing deadlines passing for both the Nevada presidential primary and the Republican caucuses in the Silver state over the previous two days, Natasha Korecki of NBC News had a piece up about the confusion the two contests may create for Nevada Republican voters next year. 

It is not the first time the notion of voter confusion has arisen in the context of the double dip elections taking place in Nevada in 2024. But it does raise some questions. Why are Nevada voters different from other voters who have encountered similar two-pronged processes like this in past cycles? Why (or maybe how) is the Nevada primary and caucus situation different from states that have had both previously? Is any of this primary/caucus conundrum in the Silver state unique at all? 

First of all, FHQ is of a mind that Nevada voters are not substantively different from voters in, say, Nebraska or Washington. Both had Democratic caucuses for allocating delegates and a state-run beauty contest primary as recently as 2016. Voters did not appear to be anymore confused than usual at the process in either case. Sure, more folks showed up to participate in the primaries than the caucuses, but that is not a new feature of the caucus/convention process. They are low turnout affairs by nature (if not design). 

Yet, one difference between those two sets of contests from 2016 and the Nevada situation in 2024 is their timing, or rather the time between the two events. Nebraska and Washington Democrats had March caucuses before May beauty contest primaries. That two months buffer (and the sequencing!) was different than what will take place in Nevada next February. Only two days will separate the state-run beauty contest primary on February 6 from the Republican party-run caucuses on February 8. And the binding contest will follow the beauty contest. So maybe that is a little different. 

But still, confusion? Texas Democrats did not seem to be muddling through the Texas two-step all those years. For much of the post-reform era Democrats in the Lone Star state held a primary and caucuses on the same day. The primary allocated about two-thirds of the delegates while the post-primary caucuses allocated the remainder later in the evening. [Incidentally, while the Texas two-step died on the Democratic side starting with the 2016 cycle, Republicans in the state have revived it and will use it again in 2024.] Voters seemed to make it through that process. Delegates were allocated. And all of it happened with no buffer between the two contests. 

But the real difference between Nevada in 2024 and some other earlier similar examples is that there will be interesting cross-pressures in the Silver state next year. Some debate-qualifying candidates will be urging Nevadans (at least to some extent) to participate in the primary for which they already have a ballot in the mail. Others, and it is most of the big-name candidates, will be trying to get out the vote in the caucuses two days later. 

That is different than previous examples. Both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders were on the primary and caucus ballots in Nebraska and Washington. Barack Obama and Clinton were both participants in both phases of the Texas two-step in March 2008. None of those candidates were working against another group of candidates who were only vying for delegates or attention in one or the other of the two contests in a given double dip state. 

What this Nevada Republican situation is akin to is like what happened in the Michigan Democratic primary in 2008. Under rules new to the DNC that cycle, candidates were not supposed to campaign in states like Michigan (or Florida for that matter) that held unsanctioned primaries earlier than allowed by the national parties. But some Democratic candidates -- Obama and John Edwards among others -- went a step further and removed their names from the January 15 ballot in the Great Lakes state. Clinton did not. The former group asked their supporters to vote for "uncommitted" in the primary in the hopes of swinging some delegates in any subsequent fight, but that Obama and Edwards were not on the ballot had some impact on turnout. 

And it is likely that the split filings across contests will have some impact on turnout in the Nevada beauty contest primary. But that dampening effect and any felt by the primary being a beauty contest may be masked to some extent by the convenience of voting by mail on a ballot provided to all registrants. Even without that masking effect, the turnout is very likely to be higher, if not much higher, in the primary than in the caucus. And participation in the primary may even be a drag on later caucus participation. 

That may or may not also be by design. 

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From around the invisible primary...

• In the money primary, Nikki Haley scored a coup in winning the support of Florida-based investor, Keith Rabois, who shifted from backing DeSantis to the former UN ambassador.
• Big donors in Tennessee remain on the sidelines, but Donald Trump tops the field in money raised in the Volunteer state followed by South Carolina Senator Tim Scott.
• There are only so many statewide endorsements to go around in Iowa and one of the big ones, Attorney General Brenna Bird. has thrown her support behind former President Trump.
• TIM PAC, the super PAC supporting the White House bid by Senator Scott nixed its $40 million ad buy in three early states.
• Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN) may still be entertaining a challenge to President Biden for the Democratic nomination, but he appears to be focused on the same unsanctioned contest that Robert Kennedy Jr. was eyeing, New Hampshire. Yeah, the one where the president will not be on the ballot. He has already missed the filing deadline in Nevada.

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Recent posts:

In Nevada, a choice between a symbolic win and delegates

The incentives of chasing delegates in California's Republican primary

The 14th amendment and presidential primary ballot eligibility

Follow FHQ on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon and Post or subscribe by Email. Oh, and find us on Threads: @fhq.plus.

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

In Nevada, a choice between a symbolic win and delegates

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...

• Over the weekend, The New York Times had yet another "Trump is working his connections in state parties to affect the delegate rules" stories. The article and others of its ilk keep falling into the same trap in considering the depth of Team Trump's efforts without contextualizing either it or the lacking outreach from other campaigns. It was not all bad, but we go over the good, the bad and the ugly from the piece. All the details at FHQ Plus.

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In Invisible Primary: Visible today...

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Today is the filing deadline in Nevada for the state's newly established presidential primary. It comes a day after filing closed for the Republican caucuses in the Silver state. 

Since the Nevada Republican Party is prohibiting candidates who file in the primary to also file in the caucuses, the nearly overlapping filing deadlines offered a split screen comparison of sorts. Some candidates -- Mike Pence and Tim Scott -- opted for the primary while others -- Donald Trump, Doug Burgum, Chris Christie, Vivek Ramaswamy and Ron DeSantis -- have filed in the caucuses. 

[It is not clear that Nikki Haley filed or not in the caucuses, but if the former UN ambassador has not yet filed in the caucuses, then the primary will be the only remaining option.]

The choice confronting the campaigns is one between a symbolic win in the primary two days before the Nevada Republican caucuses or of claiming some share of a small pool of delegates on the line in the February 8 caucuses. That the campaigns standing behind known quantities like the former vice president and a current US senator from South Carolina (one with significant financial backing) opted to forgo even a small share of delegates suggests something about the state of their campaigns and their thinking about how Nevada fits into the broader 2024 Republican presidential nomination process. 

For starters, the qualifying threshold for delegates in the Nevada caucuses is relatively low. "All candidates who receive the percentage of vote required for one or more delegates" qualify under the standing rules of the Nevada Republican Party. The state party suggests that is roughly 4.5 percent.¹ And all things considered, that is a pretty low bar. 

Yet, Pence and Scott have taken a pass on any of those delegates by filing in the beauty contest state-run primary. That strongly suggests that both campaigns view the odds of succeeding in the caucuses as long and/or that, even set so low, the qualifying threshold is too high. There are also alternative ways of looking at either of those. The odds can be seen as long because the rules put in place for the caucuses by the state party appear to advantage Donald Trump. As for the delegate threshold, it may be less that the bar is too high and more that the payoff is so low in the Silver state. After all, there are just 26 delegates at stake that will be divided among the qualifying candidates. 

Through that lens, the gamble may be worth it to Pence and Scott. A win in a statewide primary -- even a beauty contest -- with likely more participants than the caucuses later in the week may grab some attention. That may be worth something. But what exactly that something equates to is harder to pin down and likely destined to quickly dissipate. The effects may not wear off before the caucuses two days later, but will certainly trail off well in advance of the next contest, the South Carolina Republican primary on February 24. 

Is that worth more than taking some small share of 26 total delegates in Nevada? 

In the very short term (next February), maybe. But long term, probably not. At some point candidates are going to have to start treating the race for the Republican presidential nomination as a process to keep delegates away from Trump. Delegates, after all, are the currency of the process in the end. And whether a campaign views Nevada as a lock for Trump or not, it is probably a mistake to cede any delegates. 

However, it is worth pointing out that the Nevada Republican caucuses of 2024 are not some Harkin-in-Iowa-1992 scenario. Pence and Scott may have opted out of the Silver state contest where candidates are vying for delegates, but others have filed for the caucuses. And that may be enough to trim some delegates from Trump's total in the state. There is no winner-take-all trigger, so there is only so much that the former president can run up the score on the rest of the field. 

Still, proportional states are where the field has to collectively dent Trump's haul.

...

From around the invisible primary...

• In the filing primary, Tim Scott filed in South Carolina today ahead of the deadline there at the end of the month. And DeSantis opted for the Nevada caucuses on the last day of filing.
• The AP has a go at a Trump-bolsters-his-campaign-in-Iowa story. Folks are making the obvious comparisons to Trump's 2015-16 efforts in Iowa, but here is another: this slow build feels a bit like the pace of the Romney operation the Hawkeye state in 2011. There are differences, of course. Iowa was never really a good fit for Romney in the 2012 cycle. That is not exactly the case for Trump in the state in 2023. But polling suggests a weaker Trump advantage there than nationally. And while Trump 2023 may be emphasizing Iowa differently, he has not exactly pushed all of his chips into the Iowa-or-bust pot. ...because he does not have to. 
• Over in the money primary, Q3 reports continue to be released. President Biden and the DNC jointed posted a $71 million figure for the period ending on September 30. North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum raised $3 million in July-September. Former Vice President Pence raked in $3.3 million for the quarter but debt accrued to this point is starting to be a drag.

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¹ There is some wiggle room on that figure based on the full language of the rule, but that is a story for a separate post. Plus, how NVGOP interprets its own rules matters in this context regardless of any variation in interpretation of the qualifying threshold.

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Recent posts:

The incentives of chasing delegates in California's Republican primary

The 14th amendment and presidential primary ballot eligibility

About that debate last night...

Follow FHQ on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon and Post or subscribe by Email. Oh, and find us on Threads: @fhq.plus.

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

The incentives of chasing delegates in California's Republican primary

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...

• October 1 is less than a month away now, and there are still a few missing pieces on the 2024 presidential primary calendar that have yet to fall into place. An update on a few of those pieces: All the details 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...

...

A new LA Times/UC Berkeley poll of Republicans in the Golden state demonstrates again the tricky spot the delegate jewel that is the California presidential primary will likely always be in with an earlier-than-most contest. 

As Seema Mehta notes, at 55 percent support, former President Donald Trump would be in line to rake in each and every one of the 169 delegates at stake in the state on Super Tuesday next year. Under the new rules the California Republican Party adopted in July, a bare majority statewide for any candidate in the March 5 primary would trip the winner-take-all trigger. That Trump is already over that mark may have a chilling effect on other candidate activity in the Golden state. Never Back Down, the super PAC aligned with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, has, for example, already ceased door knocking/canvassing in the state. Additionally, California, the most populous state in the country, is unmercifully expensive to campaign and advertise in. Yes, a lot of voters are concentrated in areas, but it is across a number of areas throughout the state. That adds up quickly.

All of that points to candidates potentially steering clear of the California or strategically approaching it with a light touch in the near term. 

Only, to cede 169 delegates to a frontrunner candidate is to come as close to waving a white flag of surrender in presidential nomination politics as there is. If anything, opposition candidates almost have to throw some resources into California. Trump is not that far beyond the majority mark in this or any other poll in the state and the adopted California Republican delegate rules for 2024 are enticing in their own right. With no qualifying threshold, the number of delegates all non-Trumps would collectively receive would be maximized as long as Trump does not hit 50 percent. 

But to do that means to crack the code of dragging the former president below the majority mark between now and early March. And that may best be achieved not by sinking money into California but instead investing in contests that precede Super Tuesday. The delegate incentives are there, but the costs are prohibitive in-state. 

...

Speaking of that California poll, almost half (47 percent) of all respondents across partisan affiliations showed some interest in a third party option in the general election. With Labor Day apparently marking the unofficial kickoff to the 2024 campaign season and a public reluctant to accept a likely 2020 rematch in the presidential election, there is likely to be interest in the idea of a third party candidate. That has been clear.

But are any of the likely alternatives -- Joe Manchin, Cornell West, Larry Hogan, fill in the blank -- going to capture the imaginations of folks who are receptive to an alternative? That transition from idea to identity is always key and the reality rarely matches up to the idealized notions survey respondents may have. So yes, some folks of all partisan stripes may entertain alternatives at the prospect of a Biden-Trump general election, but partisans are very likely to come home in the end. The bigger question in all of this may be whether more folks drift into the third party column or stay home in November 2024. 

...

From around the invisible primary...

• In the endorsement primary, the campaign of Vivek Ramaswamy rolled out endorsements from 200 New Hampshirites. It is not a who's who of Granite state politics that is going to draw headlines at the national level, but it represents enough of a coalition of supporters to make note of and to count as a fairly robust grassroots effort in New Hampshire.
• In the money primary, DeSantis has seen some leakage of some of his biggest financial backers from his statewide runs. 
• In the travel primary, Ramaswamy is in Iowa this week, Pence appears in New Hampshire today to speak against populism in the Republican Party and Trump will trek to the Hawkeye state for some rivalry football this weekend. 

--

Recent posts:

The 14th amendment and presidential primary ballot eligibility

About that debate last night...

Yes, Donald Trump is ahead in the delegate battle. That has not changed.

Follow FHQ on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon and Post or subscribe by Email. Oh, and find us on Threads: @fhq.plus.

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

The 14th amendment and presidential primary ballot eligibility

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...

• Add Missouri Democrats to the 2024 presidential primary calendar. Democrats in the Show-Me state finally released a draft delegate selection plan with proposed details of their process for 2024. That and delegate allocation will look different for Massachusetts and Montana Republicans than it has in past cycles. All the details 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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Discussion about former President Donald Trump and his eligibility under the 14th amendment given the events of January 6, 2021, have been en vogue during August, set off first by a pair of conservative scholars associated with the Federalist Society and then reignited in recent days by Michael Luttig and Lawrence Tribe, writing at The Atlantic. FHQ has kept most of it at arm's length, choosing to focus instead on the evolving state-level delegate allocation rules on the Republican side. Mainly that is a function of the whole thing being compartmentalized in my head as a general election question.  

But then came questions about and lawsuits pertaining to Trump's eligibility for presidential primary ballots. There have been questions raised in first-in-the-nation New Hampshire and in Arizona and lawsuits filed or threatened in the Granite state and Michigan as well. But in FHQ's eye, those actions face a much steeper climb to success in the courts. And that is not to suggest that the case for Trump's eligibility on the general election ballots across the country are a slam dunk. [David Frum is probably right.] But those general election access challenges would be a cleaner proposition than the comparative legal thicket challengers would wade into with respect to primary ballot eligibility. That is probably why Baude and Paulsen, the conservative scholars who started all of this, did not dwell on the primaries but in a handful of passing references in 120 plus pages. 

The primary side of the equation is messy (or messier) for a few reasons. First of all, a primary is an election for a nomination and not an office. Does the 14th amendment address eligibility for nominations? Yes, a primary is a step toward an office, but it does not solely hand someone said office if a candidate wins it. Furthermore, presidential primaries are different than primaries for other offices. The winner of a presidential primary will not necessarily appear on the general election ballot. Ted Cruz, for example, won the 2016 Texas Republican presidential primary but was not on the ballot on the presidential line in the Lone Star state in the November general election. When Cruz won his Senate primary in 2018, he was on the general election ballot.

And then there is the whole issue of primaries -- well, nominations -- being the business of political parties, entities that have certain free association rights under the first amendment. Sure, that veers into questions of political parties opting into state-run (and subsidized) primary elections, a complication that arises in other contexts. The linkage to a state sponsored election may serve to weaken the argument against primary eligibility. 

All of this merely scratches the surface. There are probably other complexities in addition to those above, but each and every one of those would be added to list above and on top of the ones that will be raised in any challenge to Trump's eligibility to appear on the general election ballot should it come to that. The primary questions are just messier, but that does not mean that someone more litigious than I will not wander down that path. In fact, they already have. But they have quite the legal minefield to get through.

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A new survey of the Republican presidential nomination race in Utah from Deseret News offers an interesting hypothetical in terms of delegate allocation in the Beehive state next year. First, the results from the poll:

So Trump is ahead but by a narrower margin than in some other states. How would the delegate allocation look in this situation? 

Before FHQ answers that, I should note that the Utah Republican Party adopted rules in June 2023 that carried over the allocation rules from 2020. Yes, the party will use a caucus system rather than the state-run primary option in 2024, but the basic allocation scheme is the same. No one has a majority in this poll, and thus no candidate trips the winner-take-all trigger. Two candidates -- Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis -- hit the 15 percent qualifying threshold called for in the Utah rules and would be entitled to a proportional share of the 40 delegates at stake in Utah. 

But there is a catch. Under Utah Republican Party rules, if three or more candidates clear the 15 percent hurdle statewide, then they are entitled a proportional share of the delegates based on the qualified vote, the combined vote of just those over 15 percent. If, however, two or fewer candidates win 15 percent statewide in the caucuses on Super Tuesday, then the threshold is dropped altogether. All of the candidates who could mathematically round up to a full delegate would claim a share. That would take delegates away from Trump and DeSantis under the results above (assuming there was a universal 15 percent qualifying threshold that applied in all cases except when one candidate wins a majority). 

Yes, there are still 13 percent who are undecided in this survey and Super Tuesday is a long way off. But this is one of those rules quirks that bears watching. [Yeah, there are a lot of them in the Republican process.]

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From around the invisible primary...

• In the money primary, Donald Trump has not had any difficulty raising funds following his indictment in Fulton County. 
• Nikki Haley has not done too poorly in that department either since the first debate in Milwaukee. DeSantis either. 
• Ron DeSantis will make three fundraising stops in Pennsylvania next week. He will trek to the San Antonio area next month on a similar mission.
• Miami Mayor Francis Suarez became the first announced candidate to be winnowed from the Republican presidential field after just a little more than two months in the race. He moved from effectively winnowed after failing to make the stage at the first debate to actually winnowed in short order. 
• It probably will not be the filing deadlines that get Glenn Youngkin or any other would-be late entrant into the Republican presidential nomination race. It will be that and organizing for delegate candidates and debate qualification (and preparation) and lining up staff for a national and state-level campaign. Youngkin does seem to have financial backing at the ready, but money can only get a prospective presidential candidate so far (see Bloomberg, Michael circa 2020). 
• In the travel primary, Nikki Haley will be back in New Hampshire next week for a town hall. 
• Doug Burgum is out of the veepstakes.
• In the endorsement primary, DeSantis received endorsements from officials in 20 states following the first debate, including folks from Iowa and Colorado.

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Recent posts:

About that debate last night...

Yes, Donald Trump is ahead in the delegate battle. That has not changed.

A Winner-Take-All Primary in New Hampshire?

Follow FHQ on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon and Post or subscribe by Email. Oh, and find us on Threads: @fhq.plus.

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

About that debate last night...

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...

• It is kind of obvious why non-Trumps would go after legacy winner-take-all triggers in state-level delegate allocation rules. At least on some level. However, there is a longer term strategic consideration in that push that is not getting a lot of daylight in Trump rolls/crumbles binary that exists around the race for the Republican presidential nomination right now. How about a quick look at that? All the details 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...

...

The first Republican presidential primary debate of the 2024 season was a bit like a multi-vehicle accident in a coastal community at the height of a hurricane. There is the bigger problem surrounding those involved in the crash -- flooding, flying debris, downed power lines, the hurricane basically -- but everyone ends up pointing fingers and assigning blame for the pile-up. In Milwaukee last night, the eight candidates participating may have entered with some sense of a need to attack the frontrunner, but quickly got bogged down in the heat of the moment, in the need to forcefully respond to any perceived slight or mention that would provide some opening to talk. ...or jab. 

Call it a threat proximity hypothesis. The threats were in the room last night. They were not Donald Trump (even if some of the candidates saw some need to try to bring the former president down a notch). And that is part of why the pre-debate narrative about the potential gamble Trump was making in skipping the debate rapidly morphed into how that gamble -- if it even was a gamble -- paid off. 

Trump won the debate last night. 

However, others acquitted themselves well. Vivek Ramaswamy got attention -- both good and bad -- and that will likely buoy his support in polling of the race in the near term. It was a Trumpian performance the Ohio entrepreneur turned in. Attacking and being attacked -- constantly -- kept Ramaswamy front of mind throughout the two hour debate. That gobbled up time that might have gone to another candidate. And Ramaswamy definitely gobbled up time. It is the sort of thing, especially for a largely unknown candidate on the national stage for the first time, that can fuel a surge during the discovery phase of a possible discovery-scrutiny-decline sequence. 

However, there are reasons why any surge in support for Ramaswamy may be limited. First, there is that whole Trump in Georgia thing at the Fulton County jail today. Remember that? More importantly, remember that whole thing about Trump scheduling his surrender in the elections interference case in the Peach state to clip the wings on any momentum candidates may take from the debate? That is still a thing. Few may have thought going into the Milwaukee showdown that Ramaswamy would be that candidate, but here we are. So the whiplash back to the Trump 24/7 news cycle may dampen any big Ramaswamy gain. 

Second, FHQ does not want to go down a lanes lane, but Trump and Ramaswamy occupy a similar space within this field of candidates and among the Republican primary electorate. Ramaswamy may tick up, but it likely will not be at Trump's expense. There may be some "Trump without the baggage" support that has drifted back over to the former president as DeSantis has declined in recent months and may be in play. But it could be just as, if not more, likely that a Ramaswamy push more firmly into the double digits comes from those who may be second guessing the staying power of the Florida governor. 

And speaking of DeSantis, his debate was not bad per se, but it was a lot like playing prevent defense without the requisite big lead. Clearly the strategy was to do no harm (or do no further harm) in the absence of a barrage of attacks. And he did not really do any harm. However, that is a strategy that is limited in its capacity to right the ship. With the two of them center stage, DeSantis and Ramaswamy may have been two ships passing in the Milwaukee night. 

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FHQ does not want to go back in time too far, but some late summer family time kept me from commenting on the recent NYT op-ed from New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu on the state of the Republican race for president, pre-debate. My knee-jerk reaction reading it was that the call for also-rans -- those who do not make the first two debates -- to drop out of the race was overkill. In other words, the thought was that those candidates have already been effectively winnowed or will be. But rather than treat Sununu's comments as an excuse to link back to something already written here at FHQ, it may be better to elevate another concept. 

Sununu was basically creating -- or adding to the existing -- winnowing pressure on those also-ran candidates and those who squeezed onto the first debate stage. His is not the only voice or the only source of that pressure, but it is an example of that pressure that in a non-Trump cycle may manifest itself more quietly in the background as low polling numbers or poor fundraising or any number of other back channel communications that collectively serve as the writing on the wall, more or less. In 2024, with Trump seeking a third straight nomination, these signals -- the winnowing pressure -- is a bit more overt. Instead, this race gets op-eds like Sununu's or aggressive debate qualification criteria like the RNC has used thus far. And together they represent (officially or not) a more public pressure campaign on candidates to put up or shut up than one might otherwise witness in a non-Trump cycle. 

It is not that these things do not happen in a "normal" cycle. It is just that they do not tend to happen quite this early. 

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Yes, I just talked about that CNN delegate story yesterday, but has anyone figured out this section of that story yet?

"The savvy of Trump’s delegate operation this time around is a stark change from 2016, when the then-first time presidential candidate often complained that the delegate system in the Republican primary was rigged against him. He pointed to the victories and resulting delegate hauls of Ted Cruz, ultimately Trump’s main rival in the 2016 primary. For instance, when Cruz won his home state of Texas in the primary the senator got all 34 delegates with that victory.Trump advisers have studied Cruz’s strategy, so this time around they can ensure the lion’s share of all delegates go to him."

That whole bit about Texas is mind-numbingly off base. Anyway, I break that down some over at FHQ Plus.

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Recent posts:

Yes, Donald Trump is ahead in the delegate battle. That has not changed.

A Winner-Take-All Primary in New Hampshire?

Effectively Winnowed

Follow FHQ on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon and Post or subscribe by Email. Oh, and find us on Threads: @fhq.plus.

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

Yes, Donald Trump is ahead in the delegate battle. That has not changed.

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...

• Earlier this month Utah Republicans informed the state that the party would opt out of the state-run presidential primary and conduct caucuses on Super Tuesday instead. There has been some primary-to-caucus movement this cycle, but it has been muted and the maneuver by Beehive state Republicans is not exactly like the rest. All the details 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...

...

FHQ appreciated the delegate story from CNN yesterday, but honestly, I cannot really tell what contribution it is making. The general story is that in the race for delegates in the Republican nomination process, former President Donald Trump is ahead. He is ahead in influencing the setting of what the Trump campaign considers to be favorable delegate rules. [They certainly are rules that benefit frontrunners, assuming said frontrunner hits some particular benchmarks in the voting across the country during parts of the first six months of 2024.] That, in turn, should give Trump a leg up when delegates are actually allocated. Or in the worst case scenario -- again, from the Trump campaign perspective -- insulate the former president to some degree should an insurgent (or insurgents) rise, prolonging the race for the nomination. 

But most of the tale that the folks at CNN tell is one covered throughout 2023 in reporting at other national outlets. In fact, it ends on essentially the same "rigging/Ken Cuccinelli" note that a Politico story from earlier in August detailed. There is not a lot of news here. However, that is not to say that there is none. 

It has been clear for much of the year that both Trump and the campaign apparatus around him have been working his connections with state parties built during the course of his presidency. That network is stronger in some areas of the country than others, but it is an area of strength that one would expect for a former president. Trump should be ahead in these efforts and he is. Actually, it would be a much bigger story if he was not. But the story beyond Trump is perhaps what is more interesting and it is twofold.

First, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and his campaign continue to appear to be the only other entity putting up much of a fight on the delegate front. But the DeSantis effort is different as CNN describes: 

The pro-DeSantis super PAC Never Back Down is running much of DeSantis’ political campaign from the outside. Many state parties only allow the campaigns themselves in the room for crucial talks, forcing Never Back Down to operate from a distance. DeSantis allies did not immediately respond to questions from CNN about this dynamic.

It is being run through its affiliated super PAC, Never Back Down. And that conduit to state parties is far less efficient, meaning that the DeSantis push to chip away at Trump's advantage here is being done on some level with one arm tied behind its back. That is another variation in the story of the Frankenstein's monster that the broader DeSantis campaign is attempting to assemble between its formal campaign and affiliated groups for 2024. Lobbying state party officials from afar is a tougher enterprise than doing so on a more intimate level as Trump has been doing for the last two cycles. 

The second thing is that if other campaigns outside of Trump and DeSantis are waging a delegate fight, then they are doing so very quietly. To be clear, it is still early to be organizing for any looming delegate battle next year. Those strategies may still be forming even in the top campaigns. One should actually expect those plans to be somewhat dynamic in nature anyway given the constant influx of new events and new inputs. However, it is way too late to be jumping into the game of influencing state party officials to put rules in place that are, if not beneficial, then clearly do not advantage one other candidate over all of the rest. 

Moreover, that those efforts from everyone not named Trump or DeSantis have been so quiet remains a big story under the surface of this race. After all, the rules are not yet set in stone at the state level. And they will not be on the Republican side until October 1. If campaigns have not already been out there advocating for particular rules for delegate allocation and selection already as they have locked in in fits and starts over the summer, then that says a great deal about either 1) their comfort level with the rules as they are or 2) that they just do not have the manpower to adequately make a push at all. Either way, that is an important invisible primary story. 

BONUS: For more reactions to other aspects of the CNN delegates story, see FHQ Plus.

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Look, I love James Pindell. He and I have had some great conversations over the years about New Hampshire and the primary calendar. But I am going to continue to point out what I consider to be journalistic malpractice when I see it on the broader 2024 story about New Hampshire and the DNC's revamped early calendar. I understand the audience to which Pindell's recent New Hampshire Magazine piece was directed. Readers are primarily going to be made up of folks who want to see the presidential primary in the Granite state remain first. So throwing some blame at the feet of the national party makes sense. They changed the rules. New Hampshire has a state law. The national rules and the state law conflict. Impasse. That is fine. More to the point, it is true. However, it is only part of the equation.

Try as New Hampshirites might, defusing this situation does not completely revolve around the DNC and it caving, letting New Hampshire Democrats hold a contest wherever the secretary of state schedules it. The DNC is not the only one "in a pickle." New Hampshire Democrats are too. The state party has options it has ignored but could "fix" this situation. And most everyone else is ignoring those possibilities too. 

Secretary Scanlan is very likely to set the date of the New Hampshire presidential primary for January 23. That will conflict with DNC rules. And no one expects that contest not to happen. No one. That is not the question here and has not been since December. However, New Hampshire Democrats do not have to use the results of that contest to allocate delegates to the national convention. The state party could do that in some alternate party-run process that is conducted under conditions compliant with national party rules. Something in addition to a neutered, beauty contest Democratic primary on January 23. 

That the Democratic Party in the Granite state has not given one inch toward that possibility, doubling down on "live first or die," is unlikely to play well with the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee after September 1, the new deadline for New Hampshire Democrats to comply. That is the same attitude that got Democrats in both Florida and Michigan in hot water in 2007. It is also what led to fairly significant penalties from the national party being levied against both. The DNC may again try to find an off ramp for New Hampshire, but at some point, whether that is immediately after September 1 or not, Democrats there are either going to have to take that off ramp or prepare for severe delegate penalties. 

It is a two-way street and all too often folks in and out of the media are only looking in one direction on this story. Look at what the state party is not doing too. That will play a role in how the DNC reacts and how this all plays out. 

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From around the invisible primary...

• In the endorsement primary, Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy has endorsed Donald Trump.
• Over in the travel primary, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott was already going to address Rep. Jeff Duncan's Faith and Freedom BBQ early next week, but he is going to use that trip to the Upstate to do some other campaigning across the first-in-the-South state as well, making stops in Charleston, Lexington and Greenville along the way.
• Former Bristol County Sheriff Thomas Hodgson will head the Trump campaign's efforts in Massachusetts.
• It was not an endorsement, but Indiana Senator Mike Braun had some nice things to say about Vivek Ramaswamy. Neither Indiana senator has rushed to line up behind Trump so far, but Braun seems to be forging a middle road.
• Big Pennsylvania Republican donors have mainly stayed on the sidelines so far in the money primary, but those who have cut checks to this point have sent them to candidates not named Trump.
• Katie Britt, Alabama's junior senator, is on a bit of an island in the Yellowhammer state. Alabamians in the state's delegation to Washington have lined up behind the former president and that has placed some pressure on Britt to follow suit.

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Recent posts:

A Winner-Take-All Primary in New Hampshire?

Effectively Winnowed

A Self-Fulfilling Contested Convention?

Follow FHQ on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon and Post or subscribe by Email. Oh, and find us on Threads: @fhq.plus.

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