MANCHESTER, N.H. — With voters set to cast key presidential primary ballots in less than a year, one key ingredient has become scarce in the Republicans’ first-in-the-nation primary: visits from presidential contenders.
By mid-spring 2011 and 2015, the last two times there was no incumbent Republican in the White House seeking re-election, candidate visits were a near-daily occurrence, with campaigns making regular announcements of staff hires to develop on-the-ground teams for turning out voters.
“There’s none of that going on. Just none,” said Fergus Cullen, a former state party chair.
A one-week span in April 2015 saw visits from Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker — not counting a candidates’ forum the state party staged in Nashua.
Today, candidate visits are dramatically down in comparison. South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott made his first visit Thursday. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ appearance at the state party’s fundraising dinner Friday was his first to the state. Of the candidates and potential candidates, only former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy have been making frequent trips.
“We’re 10 months out from the primary, and this is unrecognizable compared to what we’ve seen before,” Cullen said.
And as with so many things involving the Republican Party in recent years, the reason for the change is their de facto leader, coup-attempting former President Donald Trump.
Eight years ago, as the other candidates scurried around the early-voting states meeting with handfuls of activists in their living rooms and headlining county party dinners, Trump did almost none of that. Instead, he “campaigned” by riding his elevator down from his office in Manhattan’s Trump Tower to the atrium where he appeared on Fox and other cable networks. As the summer progressed, he began adding a large rally once a week or so in cities nationwide.
Despite the lack of traditional “retail” politicking, Trump came a close second in Iowa in 2016 and won New Hampshire easily.
“Donald Trump changed how you campaign. The myth was you had to go almost door to door,” said Matt Mayberry, a former vice chair of the state party.
Cullen said other candidates learned from that and are emulating that strategy now. “Why would you bother going to all that trouble when you can just go on Fox? This primary is playing out on cable TV,” he said. “Voters in New Hampshire get their information the same way everybody else in America does, which is sitting in their living room in their Lazy-boy.”
David Kochel, a longtime consultant in Iowa, said he’s seeing the same thing play out there. “The new model is go on Fox, get on Fox as much as you can because that’s where the audience is,” he said.
DeSantis himself used that strategy as he campaigned for the GOP nomination for Florida governor in 2018. The favorite in that race was then-Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam, who over the years, had built relationships with Republican activists in every county in the state. Rather than trying to out-chicken-dinner Putnam, DeSantis took to Fox News at every available opportunity. That, combined with an endorsement from the Fox-viewer-in-chief Trump, resulted in a landslide primary win.
Trump is also playing a more direct role in causing the relative trickle of New Hampshire visits by remaining the dominant figure in his party despite the criminal indictment against him in New York for falsifying business records to pay hush money to a porn star and the continuing investigations against him for his Jan. 6, 2021, coup attempt and his refusal to turn over top-secret documents in defiance of a subpoena.
“I think most people realize that he’s going to get the nomination,” said Di Lothrop of the Nashua Republican City Committee and a Trump supporter. “I think that’s why there’s a lot of trepidation.”
Mayberry agrees that other candidates are hesitant to make a full-throated commitment to run before getting a better sense of how Trump’s criminal cases play out. “I think a lot of Republicans are waiting to see what happens with the president,” he said.
On the other hand, the fact that Haley is already officially running while DeSantis and former Vice President Mike Pence appear committed to announcing candidacies suggests that they know there are a significant number of Republicans — including Mayberry himself — who are desperate for another, he said.
“That’s why they’re coming back. That’s what they’re seeing in their polls,” he said.
Gene Fox, a 74-year-old retiree attending a Ramaswamy town hall at New England College in Henniker last week, is among those Republicans who are ready to move past Trump and said additional, more serious indictments against him could “give the other candidates a boost.”
Until that happens, he said he understands why they don’t want to go after Trump directly. “I think they’re a little fearful,” he said.
But Lothrop said Republicans who think Trump will be weakened or even discouraged from his campaign to regain the White House just because he is facing charges that could put him in prison are in for a rude awakening. “He’s not going to walk away. He’s not going to back down,” she said. “We are all dealing with a different entity than we’ve ever dealt with in this country before with Donald Trump.”