International Courant
The collapse of the GOP major marketing campaign in New Hampshire got here on comparatively all of a sudden this week, spurred by DeSantis’ resolution to focus extra on South Carolina — the place the first is a month away — and Haley’s refusal to debate until Trump appeared alongside her. What remained was a string of nighttime rallies by the previous president and a handful of retail occasions that includes Haley. Nobody is barnstorming.
And that’s simply the Republican major. On the Democratic aspect — the place the incumbent president, Joe Biden, will not be even competing and the principle occasions are Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) discussing synthetic intelligence — it’s even worse. The dramatic components which have historically outlined this week of politics — from John McCain catching fireplace to Hillary Clinton choking up with tears — are nowhere to be discovered.
“You don’t see the frenzy, the frenetic exercise,” mentioned Dave Carney, a New Hampshire-based Republican strategist. “You don’t see the actions which can be normally occurring the place you may have of us crisscrossing the state, making an attempt to get each final vote.”
As a substitute, Carney mentioned, it’s largely “lots of TV advertisements and lots of mail.”
Getting up-close-and-personal with presidential hopefuls is a ceremony of passage for Granite Staters who pleasure themselves on placing the nation’s high politicians by means of the retail-politics ringer. Trump modified that in 2016, profitable the state not by tenting out in diners and residing rooms however by holding rallies the place he might converse to lots of of individuals at a time.
However when the 2024 marketing campaign started final yr, New Hampshire gave the impression to be returning to its conventional kind. Trump had ditched his area rallies for high-school auditoriums and performing-arts facilities. He took a couple of questions from voters. He even popped into Manchester’s famed Purple Arrow Diner.
Haley started to barnstorm the state with a pledge to “contact each hand” and “reply each query.” Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy held court docket for hours in eating places and VFW halls, answering questions and interesting in in depth conversations with voters.
Those that broke with customized confronted backlash. DeSantis was
pilloried for not taking questions from New Hampshire voters when he launched his marketing campaign. He was absent from the state for weeks at a time. Positive sufficient, his ballot numbers started to plummet.
And Biden confronted intense criticism from the state’s high Democrats — in addition to most everybody else right here — for shifting to strip the state of its prized first major in favor of South Carolina, a extra numerous state that propelled him to the Democratic nomination in 2020.
However as the first heads into the house stretch in New Hampshire, it feels extra like a corpse than a marketing campaign. Trump is spending simply as a lot time within the courtroom as he’s on the marketing campaign path. ABC and CNN have been pressured to cancel their New Hampshire major debates after solely DeSantis would comply with step on stage.
“It’s most likely the primary time since 1980 that I’ve recognized an election to occur with out there being a Channel 9 debate,” Carney mentioned, referring to the native ABC affiliate that historically co-hosts the talk.
DeSantis, the Florida governor, went again to his house state Thursday. He’s set to return to New Hampshire on Friday, however will then shuttle off to South Carolina — the place he polls within the low teenagers, on common, in comparison with the single-digits right here — for the weekend.
And Haley, after a string of gaffes, has largely traded her staple “city corridor” occasions for “rallies” and “meet-and-greets” the place she will be able to work together with voters with much less likelihood of being picked up on a sizzling microphone.
She tacked on time for 3 voter questions and a 10-minute media availability to the top of her meet-and-greet in Hollis on Thursday morning. That got here a day after DeSantis, as a part of a current about-face for his personal media aversion, hammered her for doing neither and for not debating him in New Hampshire. On Friday, she has a full day of campaigning that begins simply after 7 a.m. and ends after 7 p.m.
“You have got the underdog in Nikki Haley who’s down by about 15 factors, who’s determined to run a defensive marketing campaign, … after which you may have the overwhelming frontrunner who can be not spending an excessive amount of time in New Hampshire as a result of he’s surrounded by his court docket chaos,” Dennehy mentioned. “It’s unusual.”
The Democratic major is even much less related, with the Democratic Nationwide Committee saying it received’t rely towards conference delegates. Biden’s long-shot challengers — Phillips and self-help writer Marianne Williamson — are making a number of stops a day. However their opponent is a write-in marketing campaign for the president, not somebody they will spar with on the talk stage.
It’s a wholesale toppling of New Hampshire’s time-honored traditions, and voters are taking notice.
Bob Meyer, a Dover Republican who attended Haley’s rally Wednesday evening on the American Legion in Rochester, recalled primaries previous when he might go to a good friend’s home and meet candidates shut up. His youngest daughter took an interest within the political course of the yr he took her to the house of Fergus Cullen, the previous state GOP chair who lives close by, to fulfill Jeb Bush. Meyer additionally has fond recollections of his dialog with John Kasich at Cullen’s home.
Nothing like that occurred this yr.
“A part of operating for president is are you able to deal with it? Are you able to deal with the warmth of being president?” Meyer mentioned of candidates’ willingness to take candid viewers questions. “And may you deal with this type of crowd?”
John Watson, too, recalled having one-on-one time with Bush in 2016 after watching Haley, in his phrases, take “like three questions” in Hollis on Thursday morning and depart.
Watson, an unbiased from Hollis, mentioned he nonetheless plans to vote for Haley on Tuesday.
However of this new, less-engaged major regular, he mentioned, “I don’t prefer it.”
‘You don’t see the frenzy’: The New Hampshire major is a bust
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