Invisible Primary: Visible -- Did Glenn Youngkin Run for 2024?

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

First, over at FHQ Plus...

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Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) seemed to pass on a 2024 presidential bid in response to a question on Monday, May 1. 

Wall Street Journal editor-at-large Gerard Baker asked Youngkin on Monday at a “Governing America” conversation with the Milken Institute: “Are you going to be dusting off that fleece jacket and getting out on the presidential campaign trail later this year? 

“No ... I’m going to be working in Virginia this year,” Youngkin said.

This is not exactly news. Youngkin has stated numerous times that his focus is on Virginia and the state legislative elections in the Old Dominion later this year. The new element yesterday was the no. Yes, some are picking up on that "this year" that was appended to the no, but that makes this more of a Sherman-ish rather than Shermanesque statement. It may provide an out next year, but the cold, hard truth of the matter is that if Youngkin is not entering the race this year, then he is not going to get in next year (or is unlikely to do so successfully anyway). Things can certainly change between now and then. However, it is perhaps fantastical (at this time) that Trump would collapse and all the other challengers to him for the Republican nomination would fall flat, opening the door to a white knight to come to the rescue. Again, that is fantasy, but a fantasy that is entertained by some every four years when the US goes through the exercise that is the presidential nomination process. There may be something of a repeat of 2012's discover-scrutiny-decline phenomenon in the 2024 Republican presidential nomination race, as Seth Masket notes, but getting a discovery surge to take off in 2024 during the primaries is just a tall order. 

"This year" effectively means "I'm not running."

Yet, the fact that Youngkin is out(-ish) does raise a question. Did the Virginia governor run for 2024? That is a tough question to answer. Clearly, Youngkin traveled, but it was not to, shall we say, calendar-specific locales like DeSantis or Pompeo or Haley have done. Nor did he, as the governor noted in his response to Baker at Milken, put out a book as DeSantis and Pompeo have done. However, the travel that he did do -- to New York, to Texas etc. -- was often to meet with big donors. Clearly there was some testing of the waters -- on both sides -- in those meetings. It was enough that those same donors questioned whether or not Youngkin was even into the idea of running at all. 

Did Youngkin run? Again, that is tough to discern. He did some things that prospective presidential candidates do, but fell well short of what some of those who have entered or look to be entering the 2024 race have done. And that is a good example of the conceptual squishiness of the notion of running for 2024 but not running in 2024. Where does one draw the line? Are interactions between a possible candidate and donors enough? Because outside of that, all that is really out there is some constant chatter about a Republican who won an off-year gubernatorial election in a blue state making a reasonable presidential candidate and folks asking said Republican about whether he is running or not. 

Youngkin is simply not a clear case.

UPDATE: Apparently Team Youngkin is trying to push the door back open on 2024. But yeah, see above.

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Okay. Here is another line from that Richmond Times-Dispatch story on Youngkin:

As for wiggle room, Youngkin said he would not embark on a presidential campaign “this year.” But the Republican Iowa caucuses are Feb. 5, 2024.

Nope. The Republican Iowa caucuses are still not scheduled for February 5, 2024. They never have been. If anything, Youngkin has even less "wiggle room." The caucuses are likely to be in early to mid-January next year. 

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Speaking of early primaries, there is no date for the Georgia presidential primary. It will not be on February 13 as the Democratic National Committee may want, but Greg Bluestein at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution looks at the options Secretary Brad Raffensperger (R) has before him in terms of where he may schedule the primary for next year. 

A pre-Super Tuesday option could make a lot of sense:

Georgia can hold a single primary for both parties as early as March 1 under RNC rules. Any earlier than that and Republicans in the Peach state would be vulnerable to the RNC super penalty for timing violations. That would knock the Georgia delegation to the Milwaukee convention down to just twelve delegates. 

Democrats' efforts to push the primary up to the February 13 position prescribed in the new DNC rules are likely to be futile given those penalties. And now that Michigan has passed legislation to move into its February 27 spot -- not to mention that the DNC has now also adopted its rules -- flipping Georgia and Michigan in the order seems out of the question. 

However, if the DNC is serious about nudging the Georgia primary into the pre-window and it does not mind a Michigan-and-then-Georgia pairing to close the pre-window, then perhaps the Georgia primary could fit into the space between the Michigan primary on February 27 and Super Tuesday on March 5.

Saturday, March 2 would work.

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On this date...

...in 1972, Sen. Scoop Jackson (D-WA) withdrew from the race for the 1972 Democratic presidential nomination on the same day as primaries in Alabama, Indiana, Ohio and Washington, DC. Jackson won just once, in his home state of Washington.

...in 2000, Bush and Gore swept through late season primaries in Indiana, North Carolina and Washington, DC.

...in 2012, Newt Gingrich suspended his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.

...in 2019, Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet (D) announced his bid for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. 

...in 2020, Kansas Democrats concluded their party-run presidential primary.

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Recent posts:

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#InvisiblePrimary: Visible -- Hawley and Shermanesque/Sherman-ish Statements

"'No, I'm not running,' Hawley told Insider in a brief hallway interview on Tuesday at the US Capitol before ducking into an elevator. He didn't elaborate."

Not exactly, Shermanesque. #InvisiblePrimary #GOP24https://t.co/k4VK7hfyJh

— Josh Putnam (@FHQ) January 27, 2021

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Yesterday, Business Insider ran with a scoop that Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) had briefly answered that he was not running for president in 2024. Now, on the surface that is both a splashy comment and scoop from someone who had since the 2020 election neither been shy about his 2024 intentions nor inactive on what one might call the invisible primary front. And even if neither of those are exactly true, Hawley's name has been bandied about in 2024 chatter and his actions -- particularly around the electoral vote tabulation in a joint session of Congress -- have been interpreted through a 2024 invisible primary lens as an attempted play at the Trump end of the Republican Party spectrum.

But here is the thing: This is not Hawley's first time saying no to a 2024 run. CNN asked him that question back in November 2020. His response? "I'm not."

Neither blunt denial, however, is all that Shermanesque. "No, I'm not running," and "I'm not" are not definitive declinations. Both leave the door wide open to, if not a change of heart, then to simply saying something along the lines of "I wasn't running then, but I am now," later on down the line. The trick for the Shermanesque statement is always whether one can effectively add "yet" to the end of the turndown response.

Compare "No, I'm not running," with Sherman's "I will not accept if nominated and will not serve if elected." A "yet" can be added to the former but is much harder to tack onto the latter. Hawley, then, was not Shermanesque in either his November or January responses. 

But was he Sherman-ish? 

That is a different question spurred by a variation on the Shermanesque statement that gained some notoriety around the time of the 2018 midterms when the candidate side of the 2020 invisible primary was beginning to heat up. It was around that time that both Beto O'Rourke (D-TX) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) responded to 2020 questions with answers that looked like some variation on, "I intend to serve the full six years of my [Senate] term." Now, obviously, in O'Rourke's case that was rendered moot when he lost the election to Texas' incumbent, junior senator, Ted Cruz (R). But when he said it -- before the election -- serving the full Senate term was still at stake. 

But for Gillibrand, the statement, before and after the 2018 midterms, was not a clear denial. However, it, on the one hand, kind of painted her into a corner, but on the other, kept the door open to at least "exploring" a run for the 2020 Democratic nomination. The lengths of that exploration can be wide ranging. In her case, Gillibrand ran for 2020 -- and with a formal entry -- up until August 2019. But she never ran in 2020.

The key in the Sherman-ish statement is that "painting oneself into the corner" bit. It is not a definitive "no," but it does potentially set up roadblocks to entry later. No one wants to start a campaign off by having to answer "why did you change your mind/why are you abandoning your word and/or constituents to run?" questions (not that that is any serious obstacle).

The true measure of running or not running is less what the prospective candidates say and more about what they do. Follow those actions and one will get a much better sense of what is happening in the invisible primary. 

In Hawley's case, the statements have been neither Shermanesque nor Sherman-ish, but his actions have maybe pointed elsewhere. Yes, that includes his very public position-taking on the electoral college tabulation. But it also includes things like out-of state fundraisers (like the one that got canceled in Florida in the wake of the events of January 6).

Recent posts: 

A Presidential Primary in Lieu of Caucuses in Nevada?

Iowa, Democrats and 2024

The 2020 Electoral College Spectrum