Welcome to Trail Mix, a fun but nutritious snack for your election news diet. See something interesting on the trail? Email me at jake.lahut@thedailybeast.com.
This week, we bounced around the New Hampshire campaign trail to witness Donald Trump’s return to the Granite State and surveyed voters kicking the tires of a dark-horse bid by Nikki Haley.
Trump goes back to where it began
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Former President Donald Trump arrived at a hotel ballroom in downtown Manchester, New Hampshire, on Thursday with the specific intention of doubling the crowd that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had drawn two weeks earlier.
He got the optics he wanted: a line around the block, a much more packed set of seats than the separate dinner tables used for DeSantis’ Granite State debut—and an overflow room to boot.
But a Trumpian fixation on crowd size wasn’t the only way that the ex-president’s beef with DeSantis hung over his second visit this year to the critical early primary state.
Among some attendees of Trump’s rally on Thursday, there were lingering concerns over his aggressively bare-knuckled approach to countering DeSantis before he even enters the 2024 primary race, which has included an array of sharp personal and policy-based attacks.
State Rep. Ralph Boehm of Litchfield was blunt about Trump and Trump-aligned outside groups attacking DeSantis over his alleged hostility to Social Security and Medicare.
“It’s gonna hurt Trump,” the longtime state lawmaker said, warning that the debate might end up serving Democrats more than anyone else.
“Those attacks on DeSantis by that PAC, I think that’ll hurt Trump, and I’d like to see Trump as the nominee again, but I don’t think he can,” Boehm said. “So I’m here to just find out what’s going on, and I’ll be going to DeSantis’ rallies when he announces.”
Others weren’t so generous when it came to DeSantis.
“I think DeSantis got overzealous and fucked himself, because now, he won’t be able to make it in this race,” retired Army chief warrant officer John Sledge told The Daily Beast.
“Because really, I don’t think he has the experience to be the president,” Sledge added, noting that he hasn’t liked what he’s read about how DeSantis treats reporters in Florida. “That’s not very Republican. I just think he overshot. Over-anxious, over-hungry. He could’ve been selected as vice president.”
There were still some attendees holding onto the perhaps fading dream of a Trump-DeSantis ticket, such as Bob Wilson.
In the crowd for what he said was his 30th Trump rally, Lee is with the former president all the way, but was not willing to cast DeSantis aside just yet.
“I’d like to see Trump drag him along as VP,” Lee said of the Florida governor. “He smoothed everything out with everyone in the past. Why can’t he? It’s politics. It’s a dirty game.”
During his speech, Trump mocked DeSantis a few times, but only briefly and with the shortened “DeSanctus” nickname. He mostly bullied the Florida governor over his standing in the early polls. He did, however, call New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu—a potential 2024 rival—a “nasty guy,” prompting the crowd to boo their own GOP governor, who was re-elected with 57 percent of the vote last year.
Trump’s first public event in the Granite State since 2020 drew a veritable circus of media and attention seekers. Longtime agitator, Libertarian candidate and performance artist Vermin Supreme, for instance, serenaded Trump rally-goers with a jazz-scatting rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
What would-be Nikki Haley voters want to see?
In a stump speech in New Hampshire on Wednesday, Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and 2024 presidential hopeful, checked all the boxes a conservative-leaning primary voter might want.
Except for one.
George and Robert May, two brothers from Merrimack, said they were disappointed Haley didn’t mention abortion at all in her stump speech.
George described a woman’s right to choose as “almost a primary concern for me,” and said a GOP candidate’s openness to abortion rights will likely be the decisive factor in his vote.
Both brothers are exactly the type of independent but right-tilting voters that Haley will need on board if she’s to be a factor in the 2024 Republican primary. In recent elections they’ve voted for Joe Biden, but also Sununu, as well as the state’s two Democratic U.S. senators. Neither plans to vote for Trump.
They weren’t alone in wishing they’d heard more from Haley on abortion rights, which are being curtailed nationwide after the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade.
“I was gonna ask her about abortion and Gen Z,” said Patrick Mastrola, an independent voter from Derry. He told The Daily Beast he’s already “with Nikki”—but wants to see how she’ll find a way to appeal to younger voters and avoid alienating them over abortion rights.
While governor of South Carolina, Haley signed a bill banning most abortions after 19 weeks. She gave a speech short on specifics earlier this week at the Virginia headquarters of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, an anti-abortion group which has promised not to endorse any GOP presidential candidate who does not, at the very least, support a national 15-week abortion ban, “while allowing states to enact further protections.”
There are several blood tests that cannot be performed by doctors under that time frame in a pregnancy, including services that can alert pregnant women to severe genetic conditions, life-threatening birth defects and the risk of a miscarriage.
Haley was not made available for a gaggle with reporters afterwards, and voters did have a chance to come up to her in a selfie line after the event.
“I think anybody who is for women’s rights probably, regardless of that position, indicates the kind of person on all the other issues who I’d probably support,” George said, with the more reserved Robert nodding in agreement.
The brothers said they’re also not thrilled with the Trump alternatives in the field thus far, particularly DeSantis.
“I think he’s pretty much a mini-Trump,” George said of DeSantis. “I don't think he's got the personality. I don't think he's got the speech ability that Trump has, and I think he's just as dangerous as Trump.”
The May brothers were late-deciding backers of Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) in the 2020 Democratic primary, and they found Haley to have a comparable appeal to independents such as themselves.
“She’s the Amy Klobuchar of 2023,” George quipped. (Klobuchar finished a surprising third in New Hampshire, her high water mark before dropping out on the eve of Super Tuesday.)
Mastrola, who said he’s voted in every New Hampshire primary since 1972—he went for Richard Nixon—reflected on how many voters like him are left in the famously independent-minded Granite State.
“My blue-collar friends are die-hard Trump,” Mastrola said. “My white-collar friends that are progressive, they hate him like he brought the plague… There’s a passion out there that it’s one or the other. I don’t know why.”
In recent decades, New Hampshire has undergone a rather unique demographic shift. It has seen an influx of wealthier, college-educated retirees who tend to vote Democratic, while the state GOP has been reshaped in Trump’s image. The split in party registration remains roughly the same, with some 40 percent of registered voters remaining unaffiliated and the two parties holding a base of around 30 percent each.
Despite Democrats pulling off across-the-board defeats of MAGA candidates in New Hampshire’s federal races last year, Mastrola said the former president’s staying power simply cannot be ignored—even if he offered a caveat on his overall chances.
“If he would’ve shut up more,” Mastrola said of Trump, “I think he would’ve had his second term.”
From Harry Crane’s desk
Now that Biden is officially running for re-election, the Democratic digital ad spigot has been turned back on.
By Thursday afternoon, the Biden Victory Fund had already spent around $125,000 on Facebook ads and some $5,500 on Google, according to FWIW, a newsletter tracking digital ads and campaign spending.
Priorities USA, a leading Democratic super PAC, is also out in force, launching a digital ad campaign across six battleground states and setting a spending target of $75 million for the 2024 cycle, according to Politico.
The states in question? Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin—the six where Biden’s margin of victory was narrowest in 2020.
Image of the week
There have been plenty of hackneyed uses of the adjective “unprecedented” since the 2016 campaign, but the Republican National Committee’s response to Biden’s 2024 campaign announcement unquestionably broke into uncharted territory.
For the first time in U.S. politics, a major party used images of people who do not exist to depict a future dystopia should the rival party retain the White House. The RNC’s response video, entirely based on generative AI video technology, not only showed photorealistic versions of Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, but frightening depictions of hellish events that have never happened, like a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
Biden’s announcement video racked up five times the views of the RNC response on the day of the release, but the Pandora’s box opened by Republicans with the introduction of generative AI may have farther-reaching ramifications than the actual video itself.
Campaign lit
Biden’s not so secret plan to the rescue?
Deputy Politics Editor Sam Brodey zooms out to look at how Biden’s first big bill, the semi-forgotten American Rescue Plan, could pay dividends for the president on the campaign trail.
Trump back in court
The Daily Beast’s Jose Pagliery details the latest setback in Trump’s legal woes, this time in the E. Jean Carroll rape and defamation lawsuit now unfolding in New York.
Finessing the debt ceiling?
Semafor’s Joseph Zeballos-Roig explains how Congressional Democrats will insist they won’t negotiate with Republicans on the debt ceiling, but when it comes to the federal debt and budget deficit, there’s room for dealmaking.
Je suis l’alternatif
Chris Christie promptly ended our interview last week by declaring: “I am the viable Trump alternative.” His Granite State return wasn’t so simple.
Herding cash cows
The GOP’s plan for relying on self-funding candidates in key Senate races in 2024 makes a lot of sense, except for a tricky little thing called financial disclosure laws. This week’s Pay Dirt explores the perils of self funding, particularly the increased scrutiny from the state to federal levels.
