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...
- At least one state representative has given voice to some contingency planning in New Hampshire to circumvent any issues that may arise in the calendar back-and-forth with Iowa. Is it at all necessary? All the details at FHQ Plus.
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In Invisible Primary: Visible today...
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It has been a unique cycle for Republicans and the endorsement primary. There is no real precedent for a former and defeated president returning to run for a third nomination and a second term, not in the post-reform era anyway. But not surprisingly, Donald Trump's presence has had an impact on how elected officials have endorsed in the 2024 Republican presidential nomination race. First, the former president has the most high profile endorsements of any of those vying for the nomination. However, the support is far from unified as it was when Trump ran for reelection as president four years ago. Still, Trump enjoys a frontrunner's support based on the endorsement metric.
Although, again, that backing is not unified. And while other candidates have won endorsements of their own, Trump being in the race has frozen some elected officials, creating a melange of non-endorsements, unendorsements and pre-endorsements that have not been typical in past competitive nomination cycles in either party.
And Trump has upped the ante in the endorsement primary among the non-endorsement crowd of late, carving out a small group of folks who have remained on the sidelines but whom the former president clearly views as should-be endorsements. The arm twisting first went public last week when Trump questioned Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds' loyalty for remaining neutral in a contest that will kick off in her state next January. Now the list has expanded to include Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the former press secretary under Trump turned governor of Arkansas. She, too, has withheld her endorsement to this point and has subsequently drawn the ire of the former president for not backing him.
This is a new development. There may be behind-the-scenes cajoling between a presidential candidate and a potential endorsement under normal circumstances, but this is a very different form of public arm-twisting in an attempt to extract an endorsement. It is not exactly breaking a norm, but it is not something that is common either. And it serves as an extension of Trump's atypical return from defeat to run a third time, another series of perceived political transactions for the former president.
[Perhaps Montana Representative Matt Rosendale is on this list as well, albeit in a more indirect way.]
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The latest survey on the presidential primary in the Granite state has been released by the University of New Hampshire. On the Republican side, Trump (37 percent) and DeSantis (23 percent) are the only two candidates above 10 percent and thus, are the only two who would qualify for delegates if the poll represented the results of the primary. The former president's support flagged some from the last UNH survey in April but he maintains a relative high floor of support.
Among Democrats, Joe Biden (70 percent) is the only declared candidate north of the 15 percent qualifying threshold for delegates in the Granite state. But there are questions over whether the president will even be on the ballot for the primary if Democrats in the state opt to go rogue. Two-thirds of Biden supporters in the poll indicated that they would write the president's name in.
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I talked with Lou Jacobson for a piece at Politifact about the changes to the 2024 primary calendar and the dwindling number of unknowns related to it.
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From around the invisible primary...
- Trust in the Mission PAC, a super PAC aligned with South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, has ponied up $40 million for traditional and digital ads to run into next January in, ahem, three of the first four states to vote in the nomination race next year.
- North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum has gift-carded his way past the 40,000 donor threshold to appear on stage at the first Republican presidential primary debate next month.
- In the travel primary, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis will make a return trip to Super Tuesday Utah later this week, a visit that will include a press conference from the state Capitol in addition to some private events.
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On this date...
...in 1984, former Vice President Walter Mondale put forth New York Rep. Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate and accepted the Democratic presidential nomination.
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