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.

...

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.

--

Recent posts:

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Biden Gets Another Challenger

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

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Tim Scott Staffs Up

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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. 

...

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.

--

Recent posts:

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

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Tim Scott Staffs Up

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

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

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.

...

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. 

...

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.

--

Recent posts:

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Tim Scott Staffs Up

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

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Donald Trump has been indicted

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

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. 

...

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. 

...

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). 

...

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.

If you haven't checked out FHQ Plus yet, then what are you waiting for? Subscribe below.

...

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.]

--

Recent posts:

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

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Donald Trump has been indicted

Introducing FHQ Plus

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

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. 

...

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!]

...

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. 

...

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... 

• Kansas and Missouri advanced presidential primary bills. 
• There was a new twist in the Idaho move to May late last week (as these stories go, this was one of the more interesting ones FHQ has seen over the years). 
• Also, Democrats are releasing draft delegate selection plans that are hinting at future calendar moves. 

If you haven't checked out FHQ Plus yet, then what are you waiting for? Subscribe below.

...

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. 

--

Recent posts:

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Donald Trump has been indicted

Introducing FHQ Plus

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Lessons Learned in 2016 and the 2024 Republican Nomination

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

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:

It’s ok to not know what this indictment of Trump means for 2024. How about we watch how people and the process react over the next few weeks? Naive I know. But, I can hope.

— Amy Walter (@amyewalter) March 31, 2023

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. 

...

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.

...

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.

...

On a personal note, FHQ Plus, FHQ's subscription service, launched today. Subscribe and come check it out! [See below]

...

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.

--

Recent posts:

Introducing FHQ Plus

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Lessons Learned in 2016 and the 2024 Republican Nomination

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Think, for just a sec, about those early presidential primary polls

Follow FHQ on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon and Post or subscribe by Email.

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

Introducing FHQ Plus

Last week marked the 16th anniversary of FHQ's initial post. It was modest by 2007 standards. Many things around here are. But it was the first step in the development of a site that has become a resource, a companion guide to presidential elections generally, but nominations and nominations rules in particular. As I have noted on similar occasions in the past, it all started as little more than an effort to gather and share anecdotal evidence of presidential primary movement for the 2008 cycle for dissertation research and transformed over time into a field guide of sorts. The mission became an effort to catalog and contextualize not only primary calendar changes within and in between cycles, but nominations rules changes as well, and to package all of that insanely complex maneuvering into something more easily digestible for everyone. 

Look, it is a niche. I know that. I have known that. This stuff can read like stereo instructions sometimes. And I have seen folks' eyes glaze over when I launch into it. Nevertheless, 16 years in, I have learned 1) that there is value out there in this resource and 2) that there is a cyclical nature to all of it. That glaze over the eyes gets a little thinner with regularity: every four years as the presidential nomination races heat up, this information -- the primary calendar, the rules, the impact each (and the changes to each) will have within states and collectively to the process on a national scale --  becomes more important. Well, it is always important, in truth. But it begins to rise in relative importance every cycle once the midterms pass. Traffic jumps a little and then a lot. Email requests increase a little and then a lot. Or in the case of the 2024 cycle, they jump a lot if the Democratic Party waits until after the midterms to fundamentally reshape its primary calendar. 

But that is the way it goes, or perhaps, the way it has gone. I work hard to create for and maintain this resource. It has been extremely important to me to freely share it all so that the information could get out there. So that it could benefit those who are looking to be better informed about the ins and outs of the presidential nomination process. As a political scientist, I continue to wear that teaching hat, and I continue to place a great deal of value on the notion that knowledge is power in the hands of citizens in a democracy. And that mean citizens of all stripes from those in campaigns, parties and media to those in the academy and everyone else just trying to make some sense of the complex systems that determine who the standard bearers for the major parties will be in presidential elections. 

FHQ remains committed to that value.

But the model will change for the first time after 16 years. FHQ -- frontloadinghq.com -- is not going anywhere. But today I am excited to launch FHQ Plus, a paid subscription arm of FHQ built on the Substack platform. If you have been a regular reader of or have casually happened upon FHQ over the years, then the concept will be similar at FHQ Plus. Those discussions of primary movement and delegate selection rules changes will be there. In-depth analyses and other musings to further contextualize those changes will be there. Reactions to news and other events that require more space than social media will allow will be there too. And so will some other enhancements that are made available on Substack. Twitter is not going anywhere, but there is obviously some uncertainty with how the platform is going to function in the future. The Substack chat function allows for some interesting connectivity among subscribers to FHQ Plus that may nurture important conversations. [And I'll be real, bots spamming the comments section on Blogger forced me to switch to moderating that; something to which I never took. I just did not have the bandwidth to deal with it.] And there are podcast possibilities as well. 

And no, that does not completely gut the original FHQ. Our flagship property, the presidential primary calendar will stay in place. Increasingly, links from the calendar will lead to FHQ Plus, but the base calendar will remain available to everyone. That same basic structure will hold for base delegate allocation rules pages when those are posted in the future. And I brought Invisible Primary: Visible back at the beginning of the month with this move in mind. It will continue to post every weekday in the mid-morning on FHQ and continue to deliver insights too big for social media and too small for a stand-alone post. And the vast majority of the FHQ archive will remain right where it is, available for everyone. Additionally, there are tentative plans to cross-post one item from FHQ Plus every week (probably on Saturdays) and a dedicated "column" (probably on Sundays).

Everything else moving forward will be published on FHQ Plus. I have wrestled with a pay model for a while now. Keen observers may recall that for a period during latter half of 2022 there were ads in various places around FHQ. Ultimately, I did not like the way that cluttered up the site. There was and is already a lot of material to take in at FHQ and ads only served as a distraction from that. A subscription model circumvents that distraction. 

The monthly subscription rate to FHQ Plus is initially set at five dollars ($5) or for the year, $30. In both cases, that is the lowest level allowed through Substack.

This is another aspect of this with which I wrestled. Five dollars will price some folks out. I get that. Others may feel like five dollars undervalues the FHQ experience. Folks who fall into that latter category -- those who place a higher value on FHQ Plus and its mission -- are free, welcome really, to give at a value that they feel is appropriate. Think of it as akin to how Radiohead distributed In Rainbows. It was a pay-what-you-want model with a nominal service charge -- what was it, 10¢? -- to use a debit or credit card and get the digital file for the album. FHQ Plus is the same. If you want, you can pay what you want under the Plus Founder (Suggested) option, where you can input a yearly price your choosing about $30. But the baseline charge will be five dollars a month or $30 a year. 

In the end, this is not Netflix. It is not Spotify. It is not whatever fill-in-the-blank other service you subscribe to. But FHQ Plus does fill a void, and in my estimation, an important one that arises for a lengthy period every four years. It is a niche service, and I am asking folks to chip a bit to help FHQ continue in its larger mission to fill that void.

Most importantly and in closing, I want to do something that I try to do every year when the anniversary of FHQ's launch rolls around, and still never really feels like enough. I want to say a very sincere thank you to everyone. Thank you to everyone for reading, whether from near the beginning or not until only recently. Thank you for the interactions and the comments here or on social media. They often led to posts or made existing ones better. Thank you to the long line of folks over the years -- you know who you are -- who have advocated for FHQ, who have promoted the site or its affiliated social media channels, and who have reached out privately to offer words of praise or a simple thank you. Those efforts, no matter the size, have meant the world to me. And I greatly appreciate them all. 

Thank you and welcome to FHQ Plus.

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Josh

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Recent posts:

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Lessons Learned in 2016 and the 2024 Republican Nomination

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Think, for just a sec, about those early presidential primary polls

Alaska Democrats Will Hold an April 6 Party-Run Presidential Primary

Follow FHQ on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon and Post or subscribe by Email.

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

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Lessons Learned in 2016 and the 2024 Republican Nomination

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

Tom Lobianco at Yahoo News had a piece up earlier this week that connected the dots on some of the recent hiring activity at Never Back Down, the super PAC aligned with the nascent Ron DeSantis bid for the Republican nomination. And as FHQ had pointed out a day earlier in Invisible Primary: Visible, many of the signals in those hires pointed toward past associations with, if not the 2016 Cruz campaign, then the Texas senator himself outside of that context. 

Now, Lobianco noted that the new assemblage of past Cruz-aligned staff would draw on their experiences in 2016 and apply that and lessons learned to the 2024 effort to take down Trump. And that elicited a series of quips that FHQ had seen made across social media in the context of the recent super PAC hiring spree. Basically, losers from 2016 are lining up a similar bid to lose to Trump again. And there is some truth to that. If a similar crew is mounting another similar campaign attempting to better build a similar coalition, then have any lessons really been learned? 

And while there may even be some truth to that notion, it is also, perhaps, a bit unfair. Former Cruz-aligned operatives like Jeff Roe or David Polyansky might well argue that they have (or will have) adapted to Trump for 2024, that neither the nascent campaign nor the potential coalition sought are completely similar to the conditions faced by the 2016 effort led by Ted Cruz. 

Yes, but here is the thing: Trump and his team are not the same either. Many things about Trump 2024 are similar to Trump 2016. The former president retains his uncanny ability to command attention, for example. And that similarity (and its importance) cannot be understated. But there are differences for Trump, for better and worse. Team Trump has also learned lessons from the 2016 experience. The reelection campaign in 2020, in fact, test drove rules changes (mainly on the state level that are still subject to change for 2024) that could very benefit the former president again as he seeks the 2024 nomination. That is something of a departure from the 2016 experience when novice candidate Trump was out-hustled on the rules in a number of states by some members of the very team now gathered behind DeSantis. But the issues involved in 2024 may cut the broader Republican primary electorate in new ways in this cycle than it did in 2015-16 as well. Trump's insistence on continually dipping into the well of grievance with respect to the 2020 election does not necessarily play well with everyone. It may with his core supporters. But it may not to the same degree with others who prioritize other issues in the current context. 

Look, while winning and losing in 2016 may tell us something about this Republican nomination race in 2023-24, it is obviously just one piece in a developing puzzle. The invisible primary marches on with evolving factors to keep an eye on.

...

John Harris makes the case for a Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) run for 2024. And it was perfectly timed for a perceived low point for DeSantis relative to Trump (and not necessarily the rest of the field). This is another staple in the rise and fall horserace coverage of presidential nominations: the profile of a potential white knight candidate. The 2012 Republican invisible primary saw a lot of this. There was a well-positioned frontrunner who had support from some factions of the party, but for whom there was also uncertainty about whether he could carry a run over the finish line to the nomination. That frontrunner saw a number of atypical challengers rise and fall around him as 2011 wore on. And there were traditionally qualified candidates who were mentioned in the same way then as Youngkin is now by Harris. Rick Perry was a savior candidate until he was not. Jeb Bush was mentioned a lot late in 2011, but nothing ever came of it. And it persisted into 2012 as well. There is still time for Youngkin to make the plunge, but there really is no substitute for slowly and methodically building up for what is a mammoth and lengthy undertaking. And there are signs that Youngkin is doing some of the things that prospective presidential candidates do, but also some signs that he is not totally sold on the idea of a run. 

...

Begun the ad wars have. Vivek Ramaswamy is up on Boston area TV -- that includes New Hampshire! -- with an initial ad buy. Ramaswamy does not have the name recognition that others have and is attempting to change that in the Granite state. New Hampshire may not (technically) be first in the Democratic presidential nomination process in 2024, but Republican candidates are still behaving as if it is an early state. And it is. 

...

On this date...

...in 1980, US Special Envoy Benjamin Fernandez (R-CA) pulled out of the race for the Republican nomination. [Yeah, I had to look that one up too.]

...in 2012, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) endorsed Mitt Romney's bid for the Republican nomination.

...in 2020, Kansas Democrats eliminated in-person voting in their party-run primary due to the coronavirus restrictions.

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Recent posts:

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Think, for just a sec, about those early presidential primary polls

Alaska Democrats Will Hold an April 6 Party-Run Presidential Primary

Invisible Primary: Visible -- South Carolina's Position in the Republican Nomination Process

Follow FHQ on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon and Post or subscribe by Email.

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

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Think, for just a sec, about those early presidential primary polls

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

FHQ has not weighed in on the polling that continues to be conducted on the 2024 Republican presidential nomination race. Honestly, it takes me three and a half years to get over crunching poll numbers for electoral college projections to want to dig into polling in any in-depth way anyway. But also, it is too early to divine much of anything from the polling that has been coming out in recent days. 

However, polling on that race is coming out frequently and regularly enough. Natalie Jackson offers some sage advice on those surveys over at National Journal:

I know better than to hope for widespread sanity in reporting on the horse race, but I’m still going to put out the plea. Please think critically about the numbers and arguments presented, whether you’re a reporter being fed numbers by a partisan pollster that is shopping them around or you’re a reader consuming what that reporter wrote up. There’s a reason some media outlets won’t report on private partisan polls: They’re usually being distributed for a specific purpose to drive a narrative that benefits their candidate. It’s manipulative, not informative.

It is not quite "ignore those polls!" in the Bernsteinian sense, but instead it is "wait a tick and think some about those polls before incorporating them in any way into one's thinking about the 2024 Republican race." Too true. If you have not already started, always read Natalie.

And as an aside, she is absolutely right about any two-way polls (something FHQ obliquely hinted at in the staff primary section of Monday's Invisible Primary: Visible). Those should not get anything other than a collective eyeroll from everyone. There is no two-way race!

...

Ron DeSantis (R-FL) is headed to the Super Tuesday state of Utah next month to keynote the Republican state convention in the Beehive state. And it appears that there is already evidence of some structural support for a DeSantis bid in the state. No, it is not necessarily coming from the state party -- although the keynote in front of the convention does not say nothing -- but instead, the interest is coming from the county party level. Taking a page out of Seth Masket's book, the Deseret News spoke with county Republican chairs in 22 of the 29 counties in Utah. Two-thirds of the chairs contacted indicated they were willing to support DeSantis while just fewer than half named Trump.

The former president struggled in Utah during the 2016 primaries when the state party conducted caucuses, losing bigly to Ted Cruz. But the state has subsequently switched to a primary and the signal of institutional support for DeSantis may or may not translate as easily -- even from the county level -- in that setting as opposed to caucuses. Utah is a sleeper contest to watch on Super Tuesday (...depending, of course, on how the early contests go, not to mention the remainder of the invisible primary).

...

The effort to establish a presidential primary in Kansas is a Republican-driven one, but it looks like the Democratic Party in the Sunflower state is supportive of the change (even if it is only for the 2024 cycle):

"The Kansas Democratic Party has expressed tentative support for a state-run primary. Newly-elected chair Jeanna Repass said it’s extremely expensive for the party to essentially conduct its own statewide election. She said if the party holds a caucus using a mail-in ballot, the printing and postage would cost upwards of $800,000. 

“'Initially, we view this favorably because of the undue financial burden this puts on the individual state parties to run a presidential primary,' Repass said."

And it is not just about the cost savings to the state party. The national party has had rules in place the last two cycles that have nudged state Democratic parties to use state-run primary options where available to increase participation in the nomination process. Already in 2023, state parties in Alaska and North Dakota -- traditional caucus states with no state-run primary option -- have signaled that they will once again opt for party-run primaries rather than lower turnout caucuses for 2024. Kansas Democrats did the same in 2020. So it was an open question when the presidential primary bill was introduced whether Sunflower state Democrats would jump at the state-run option. 

That question appears to have been answered. 

...

On this date...

...in 1988, Vice President George H.W. Bush ran away with the Connecticut primary, and on the Democratic side, Michael Dukakis took the primary in the Nutmeg state. Rep. Dick Gephardt (D-MO) withdrew from the Democratic nomination race after having previously won three contests including the Iowa caucuses.

...in 2016, Governor Scott Walker (R) endorsed Ted Cruz for the Republican presidential nomination, part of a late establishment push against a possible Donald Trump nomination.

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Recent posts:

Alaska Democrats Will Hold an April 6 Party-Run Presidential Primary

Invisible Primary: Visible -- South Carolina's Position in the Republican Nomination Process

North Dakota Democrats Aim for April 6 Party-Run Primary in 2024

Follow FHQ on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon and Post or subscribe by Email.

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

Alaska Democrats Will Hold an April 6 Party-Run Presidential Primary

A week ago, on Wednesday, March 22, 2023, the Alaska Democratic Party quietly released its initial draft delegate selection plan for the 2024 cycle. 

Read the rest at FHQ Plus.

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This change in Alaska has been added to FHQ's 2024 presidential primary calendar. 

Related:

3/22/23: Invisible Primary: Visible -- Where are all the delegate selection plans?

3/31/19: Alaska Democrats Plan on April 4 Party-Run Primary

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Recent posts:

Invisible Primary: Visible -- South Carolina's Position in the Republican Nomination Process

North Dakota Democrats Aim for April 6 Party-Run Primary in 2024

California Bill to Change Primary Date Amended

Follow FHQ on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon and Post or subscribe by Email.

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