For Trump, the More GOP Presidential Candidates the Better
By: Shane Goldmacher, Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman (nytimes)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Ron DeSantis entered the presidential race last week along with Tim Scott, with others to follow. For the former president, the more candidates the better.
Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida officially entered the presidential race last week, but he appears farther than ever from the one-on-one matchup that his allies believe he needs to wrest the nomination from former President Donald J. Trump.
Former Vice President Mike Pence is burrowing deeper into Iowa, crucial to his effort to dislodge the Republican front-runners, even before he has announced his bid. Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey is intensifying preparations for another campaign, with an expected focus on New Hampshire. And Republican donors and leadership on Capitol Hill are showing fresh interest in Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, who kicked off his campaign last week. Even candidates who have barely been mentioned are suddenly expressing interest in 2024.
The rapidly ballooning field, combined with Mr. Trump's seemingly unbreakable core of support, represents a grave threat to Mr. DeSantis, imperiling his ability to consolidate the non-Trump vote, and could mirror the dynamics that powered Mr. Trump's takeover of the party in 2016.
ImageRon DeSantis met with supporters in Manchester, N.H., this month. Along with Iowa, the state is crucial for the Florida governor.Credit...Sophie Park for The New York Times
It's a matter of math: Each new entrant threatens to steal a small piece of Mr. DeSantis's potential coalition — whether it be Mr. Pence with Iowa evangelicals or Mr. Scott with college-educated suburbanites. And these new candidates are unlikely to eat into Mr. Trump's votes. The former president's base — more than 30 percent of Republicans — remains strongly devoted to him.
"President Trump — he should go to the casino, he's a lucky guy," Dave Carney, a veteran Republican strategist based in New Hampshire, said of the former casino owner, Mr. Trump.
"It's a gigantic problem" for Mr. DeSantis, added Mr. Carney, who has worked on past presidential campaigns, because "whatever percentage they get makes it difficult for the second-place guy to win because there's just not the available vote."
Mr. Trump's advisers have almost gleefully greeted each successive entry as part of a divide-and-conquer strategy that his team has spoken about since 2021. And many of the candidates seem more comfortable throwing punches at Mr. DeSantis than at Mr. Trump.
The DeSantis campaign sees the landscape differently.
"We don't believe it's 2016 again," Ryan Tyson, a senior adviser to Mr. DeSantis, said in an interview.
And in a private briefing for donors this week, Mr. Tyson described a Republican electorate split into three parts: 35 percent as "only Trump" voters, 20 percent as "never Trump" and the remaining 45 percent as the DeSantis sweet spot.
Mr. Tyson told donors, in audio that was leaked and published online, that every entrant besides the two front-runners were isolated in the "never Trump" segment. "If your name is not Ron DeSantis or Donald Trump, you are splitting up this share of the electorate," he said.
In the months leading up to his campaign launch, Mr. DeSantis and his allies framed the 2024 primaries as a two-man race. But as he has stumbled in recent months, amid questions about his personality and political dexterity, rivals have become emboldened. And some have the cash to stay relevant deep into the primary calendar.
Mr. Scott entered the race with nearly $22 million on hand, and he raised $2 million more in his first day as a candidate. The wealthy, little-known governor of North Dakota, Doug Burgum, now sees a 2024 opening, filming ads recently to prepare for an imminent campaign, according to two people involved in the planning.
Vivek Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur, has invested $10 million of his own money in his campaign. Like Mr. DeSantis, Mr. Ramaswamy sells a similar anti-woke sentiment, but he does so with the charm of a natural communicator.
Mr. Trump has welcomed the non-DeSantis entrants to the race. In January, when Nikki Haley, who served as Mr. Trump's ambassador to the United Nations, called to tell him she planned to run, Mr. Trump did not rant about her disloyalty, as some had expected. He sounded unbothered, telling her to "do what you've got to do," according to two people briefed on their conversation.
And in the days leading up to Mr. Scott's announcement, Mr. Trump was watching Fox News in his Mar-a-Lago office when he said, "I like him. We're just going to say nice things about Tim," according to a person familiar with his private comments.
The conventional wisdom at the beginning of the year was that the field would be relatively small, perhaps as few as five people running. Republican anti-Trump donors were working to thin the herd to prevent a repeat of the divided field that guaranteed Mr. Trump's victory in 2016. Now, after Mr. DeSantis's early stumbles, there will likely be as many as 10 candidates competing for attention and vying for the debate stage.
For Mr. DeSantis, the squeeze was apparent on the day he entered the race.
In New Hampshire, Ms. Haley mocked him on Fox News as merely "copying Trump," down to his mannerisms. "If he's just going to be an echo of Trump, people will just vote for Trump," she said.
In Iowa, Mr. Pence sat down with the type of mainstream media outlets that Mr. DeSantis has shunned, including The Des Moines Register. Mr. Pence also met with Bob Vander Plaats, the same evangelical leader Mr. DeSantis had recently brought to Tallahassee for a private meal.
The split screen was a reminder that Mr. DeSantis is being pinched both ideologically and geographically, as the field expands.
Mr. Pence and Mr. Scott have made plain their plans to vie for influential evangelical voters in Iowa. In New Hampshire, both Mr. Christie, who focused his campaign on the state in 2016, and the state's sitting governor, Chris Sununu, a moderate who has left the door open to a run, threaten to siphon votes from Mr. DeSantis. And in South Carolina, he will be sandwiched between two home-state candidates, the former governor Ms. Haley and Mr. Scott.
Many Republicans who want to defeat Mr. Trump are aghast at the exploding field — along with Mr. DeSantis's underwhelming performance in recent months. Mr. DeSantis has slipped in the polls and now trails Mr. Trump in all states and by an average of more than 30 percentage points nationally.
"All Republicans have to be hitting Donald Trump," said Mr. Sununu, who described himself as "50-50" about entering the race. "Any Republican that isn't hitting Donald Trump hard right now is doing the entire party a disservice because if only one or two people are willing to take a shot at Donald Trump, it looks personal. It looks petty."
So far, Mr. Christie has gotten the most attention for his direct attacks on Mr. Trump, which he has signaled would be crucial to his candidacy. But he also has delighted in needling Mr. DeSantis at times, an acknowledgment of the Florida governor's position in the race.
The reluctance to go after Mr. Trump, for many Republicans, feels eerily like a repeat of 2016. Then, Mr. Trump's rivals left him mostly alone for months, assuming that he would implode or that they were destined to beat him the moment they could narrow the field to a one-on-one matchup, a situation that never transpired.
The two Florida-based candidates in that race, Senator Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush, a former governor, spent millions of dollars strafing each other. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who wound up as Mr. Trump's top rival, gloated privately to donors that he was bear-hugging Mr. Trump while also patiently waiting for the moment to pounce. It never came.
Mr. Trump's current rivals seem exasperated by their collective inability to crack his foundation: Mr. Trump's supporters have been trained for years to come to his defense whenever he is under fire.
Mr. Trump has another asymmetrical advantage: Current and potential rivals have sought to avoid criticizing him too harshly so as not to alienate Republicans who still like Mr. Trump and are automatically suspicious of anyone attacking him. By contrast, other 2024 contenders have shown no hesitation in going after Mr. DeSantis.
"His team — maybe him — is excellent at manufacturing the veneer of courage without actually delivering on the real thing," Mr. Ramaswamy said in an interview last month. "And that can work across TV and even social media," he added. "But once you poke a little bit, it's like a little bubble in the air: A little touch, and it's burst."
Mr. Ramaswamy, who has criticized Mr. Trump, has aimed most of his fire at Mr. DeSantis. A close friend of Mr. Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, Mr. Ramaswamy dined with Mr. Trump and Mr. Kushner at the former president's New Jersey club, Bedminster, in 2021, according to two people familiar with the event.
And while the field grows, there is the matter of the debate stage, where Mr. Trump eviscerated his opponents in the 2016 primary.
The chair of the Republican National Committee, Ronna McDaniel, said earlier this year that she did not expect to need two debate stages as the party required in 2016, with the tiers of candidates determined by polling.
But there could be as many as a dozen declared candidates by August, and many are already racing to collect the 40,000 donors and 1 percent polling threshold the party has indicated will be needed to get onstage. This pool includes longer-shot candidates like Larry Elder, the talk radio host who got walloped in the California recall election.
"Everyone says, 'We have to keep people from getting in.'" Mr. Sununu said. "That's the wrong message, the wrong mentality, and that's not going to work."
But he acknowledged that consolidation will eventually be needed to defeat Mr. Trump.
"The discipline," Mr. Sununu added, "is getting out."
Shane Goldmacher is a national political reporter and was previously the chief political correspondent for the Metro desk. Before joining The Times, he worked at Politico, where he covered national Republican politics and the 2016 presidential campaign. @ShaneGoldmacher
Jonathan Swan is a political reporter who focuses on campaigns and Congress. As a reporter for Axios, he won an Emmy Award for his 2020 interview of then-President Donald J. Trump, and the White House Correspondents' Association's Aldo Beckman Award for "overall excellence in White House coverage" in 2022. @jonathanvswan
Maggie Haberman is a senior political correspondent and the author of "Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America." She was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for reporting on President Trump's advisers and their connections to Russia. @maggieNYT
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It sounds like Sununu is getting in, so now there will be 7 or 8 GOP candidates, not counting the fringe ones like Larry Elder. This is the so called "nightmare" scenario where the other candidates split the anti-Trump vote and he waltzes in with 30% support.
How can this be? Because none of these people will be upset if Trump gets nominated and "re"elected, and thus they have zero sense of urgency about keeping him out. They would rather have their own "chance" than be concerned about Trump.
Lets suppose this is true. There are "45 %" of GOP voters that are neither only Trump or never Trump. Trump starts with a base of 30%, so anyone who will beat him must get a singular majority of that 45% , as a minimum. For every vote in that 45% that votes for someone other than DeSantis, DeSantis' chances of being the nominee are lessened. Soon he will be below 30% and unable to catch up with trump.
The Hawkeye cauci starts the ball rolling in late January, followed shortly by New Hampshire. There is no telling where the relative standings of the hopefuls will be at that time. But due to lack of funding or interest, most of them will be weeded out in fairly short order. This will come down to Trump and DeSantis rising to the top of the list by the time of the convention. All of the other aspirants are irrelevant.
I don't see Trump gaining any more support than he has now. The Republican decision makers will come to realize they have a better chance of winning without Trump and all his baggage. DeSantis will be well funded, while Trump will have to rely on his hangers on election deniers. So don't get your hopes up just yet...a lot can happen in the ~8 months. There is not guarantee that the hard core 30% (if it even exists) will hold up.
DeSantis only real chance is that Trump gets convicted of a crime within the next year or so and becomes ineligible to run.
Unfortunately that seems to be how this is shaping up. It is early in the election cycle, but from what we know today ... it seems Trump will win the GOP nomination by plurality.
I would agree. The question is if he can win if he simply holds on to his MAGA contingent. He still seems able to take the GOP nomination and yet again allow the GOP to screw itself (and the nation). DeSantis would need to be an extraordinary performer to upset Trump. Of course, barring disruptive events like Trump being found guilty of federal crimes.
trump is talking about skipping the debates which seems like a big mistake. That's where he would eliminate much of the field.
Due to the winner takes all aspect of most gop primaries Trump only needs about 30% of gop primary votes to secure the gop nomination!
The gop will nominate Trump. Joe Biden will win his second term and go down in history similarly to Harry Truman as a great President who was underestimated yet exceeded all expectations.
Biden as the unlikely senior statesman who stepped into the breach, who served with honor and dignity despite being ridiculed for his base humanity.
Lots of people are going to look bad looking back.
"Mark My Words" -JBB
I couldn't stop laughing when I read this.
If you disagree I must be spot on, again!
[deleted]
67% of Americans say a Biden re-election would be a disaster. After getting rolled by McCarthy he may lose to a ham sandwich, which may be functionally more intelligent than Biden is now.
I'd like to see that poll.
Sorry, I was off by a point, it’s 66%
To interpret that poll better I submit that I would have voted with the 66%. Biden should NOT be running for reelection.
However, voting in the 66% does NOT in any way shape or form indicate that one would vote for Trump over Biden if it came to that.
To wit, I do not see this poll as answering the question:
If the vote for president came down to Biden or Trump, would you vote for Trump?
Interesting wording in that poll, in that there is a big difference between "setback" and "disaster"
So according to the poll you site, more Americans think Trump winning would be a disaster
the two are about even in the share who say each of them winning would be a disaster (44% say so about Trump, while 41% say the same about Biden).
while trump fares even worse if we confine it to independents.
among independents, 45% say a Trump win would be a disaster while 35% say a Biden win would be.
Of course trump winning will be a disaster on the same scale as the senile fool Biden winning, the problem for democrats is, it’s impossible for trump to pick a more incompetent VP than Harris. Since I have no faith in either being able to complete their term, the VP position is now a real part of the equation.
The VP position is indeed critical. On this we agree.
Good thing for trump joe isn’t running against him in the primary. Can Joe get past Kennedy? When was the last time a incumbent had a primary challenger? Carter? How did that work out again?
There is no actual evidence that Harris is incompetent, there is just spin.
She wouldnt be my first choice but the idea that she is a worse VP than some we have had in the past is just silly. Spiro Agnew could have become president through the vice presidency.
Kennedy? The anti-vax nut? That guy?
Underestimate Biden at your own peril.
After all, he whooped Trump's behind....
Besides his age, Biden’s vulnerability might be Black voter turnout. Many don’t think that he has done enough for them after they helped him win in the Primary.
Indeed. The operative word is plurality.
Usually things need to hit rock-bottom (or near) before a change of paradigm will ensue. The one good thing of Trump being the nominee (should that happen) is that the GOP will again lose the presidential election, likely take a hit in Congress, and take a hit in state legislatures.
If so, that should be enough for the GOP to basically blow up and recreate itself. I think it needs to do that ... badly. The harm that Trump has done to the GOP needs to be addressed because this nation needs at least two strong viable parties to keep the nutcase politicians in check.
Not gonna happen. There is another article here now that explains the rationalizations Trump supporters need to use even against their past beliefs and better judgement.
The same rationalizations will occur if he loses. This has become an ideological issue that goes way beyond Trump as an individual.
The GOP could be fixed by ejecting Trump and ignoring the MAGA contingent. The MAGA contingent will continue to rationalize (because they are, as a whole, irrational and unreasonable) but the balance of the GOP could very well wake up.
I wonder how the democrats would do against a Scott/Halley ticket?
Without the race misogynists card their deck is empty.
I don't think anything would change. The race/misogynist cards would still be in play. After all, Scott and Hailey are not THEIR kind of minorities..
You know..the ones that white liberals can control.
Yeah, 70 year old millionaire white women like Joy Behar have decided Tim Scott isn't really black.
Neither is Clarence Thomas, nothing like an entitled rich white woman mansplanning the black man’s troubles to him.
You guys are getting off topic. Either stay on topic or risk getting deleted.
Why dont you go to Vegas and make a bet on a Scott- Haley ticket ? There is a better chance that the Houston Texans will win the Superbowl next year.
No one said there would be a ticket like that, but we have correctly described how leftists will react if there is one....including you.
I wouldn't vote for it, but it would be better than a Trump or DeSantis led ticket.
I would not agree with a Trump led ticket, but from what I have seen from here in Florida, DeSantis would be a far better president.
Make America Florida.
Really? Is it Democratic voters fault that neither Scott nor Haley has one chance with the gop's whiteass primary voters?
Get Outta Here With That Lameass Shit!
You don't know if there will be one or not, but from what we have seen over the past decade or so, most leftists would fall right back to their racist ways calling Scott Uncle Tom and who knows what they would call Hailey.
Maybe you can answer that question.
How so JBB?
I've asked you before to prove your dumb ass memes with proof and you have never responded.
I expect no different this time.
Why does Scott have zero chance to win the gop nomination? Democrats? Nope!
Because my memes are self explanatory!
Exactly, so simple-minded.
The only reason I can think of that Scott couldn’t win is that enough republicans didn’t vote for him because they didn’t think he was the best qualified, unlike democrats who base everything on skin color as you comment illustrates so very clearly.
[Deleted Simple Enough?]
I’m an equal opportunity voter.
Get back to us when Scott has a chance!
In a republican primary every one has a chance, trump proved that, democrat primaries are the ones that are rigged, just ask any Bernie supporter.
Got a designated driver for election day?
Not really. Not Tim Scott or Nicky Haley.
Trumpo is already running away with it...
DeSantis has a chance, not Tim or Niki...
I usually walk to my polling place.
I doubt it, Trumpers can still enjoy Coke classic so why would the buy new Coke? Never Trumpers aren’t going to go for new coke either. They enjoy Pepsi, Sprite, Dr Pepper…
Trump may fumble the ball to DeSantis.
The big doners know Trump is old news.
Independents dislike Trump or DeSantis.
The first fumble was the DeSantas campaign launch.
You can almost feel the fear of a Scott/Halley ticket.
The topic of this seed is whether or not it is an advantage for Trump to have many GOP candidates in the race. Much of the stuff appearing in these comments is off topic.
It is obvious that the more candidates to divide the non-MAGA vote, the more advantage given to Trump.
Also, it does not seem as though any candidate other than Trump will draw from the (irrational) MAGA vote.