Americana

Nikki Haley has a theoretical path to victory. Her rivals want to keep it that way.

THE SCENE

MANCHESTER, N.H. – The opening riff from “Welcome to the Jungle” filled the McIntyre Ski Area lodge, and Gov. Chris Sununu walked into the crowd, triumphant. He’d endorsed Nikki Haley for president. She was surging at the right time and could beat Donald Trump here, cracking open the GOP primary, proving that it wasn’t over.

“Now that I’ve endorsed Nikki Haley, I don’t know why anyone else is running!” Sununu told reporters.

Twenty-four hours later, at a crowded VFW lodge in Londonderry, Chris Christie ripped into Haley. Her answers on abortion were “word salad.” She was losing her home state: “I’m closer to Trump here than she is in South Carolina.” And Sununu’s choice?

“What am I going to say?” Christie asked sarcastically. “Congratulations on a bad decision?”

The emerging wisdom of donors and free agent Trump opponents is that Haley is in the best position to slow down his march to re-nomination. And a major part of that assessment is that Haley has room to grow, especially in New Hampshire, where Christie is still sitting on a pile of relatively moderate anti-Trump voters and there’s a large and untapped supply of center-left independents who could cross over.

“If we get independents, if we get conservative Democrats, that’s what the Republican Party should pursue,” Haley told reporters in Manchester. “Our goal is to get as many people in the tent as we can. Stop pushing people away from the party. Instead, bring people in.”

But Christie isn’t buying it, and it’s not yet clear voters are as enthused about Haley’s message or electability arguments on the ground in New Hampshire or in Iowa, where she still needs a strong showing to quickly knock out Ron DeSantis. Before she gets a one-on-one shot at Trump, she must fend off fierce attacks from her rivals that will test her appeal to conservatives and moderates alike.

Christie, who has ignored Iowa to focus on the first primary state, spent considerable time this week going after Haley’s promises to find an undefined abortion “consensus” and cut off trade with China; DeSantis, often campaigning alongside Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, warns that Haley can’t go the distance against Trump.

“Even a campaigner as good as Chris is not going to be able to paper over Nikki being an establishment candidate,” DeSantis said in a CNN-hosted town hall this week.

Haley, who leads both candidates in New Hampshire, increasingly ignores them — and has started to attract some voters who care less about litmus tests or infighting than who can actually surpass Trump. In Iowa, the vast majority of caucus-goers are conservative Republicans; in New Hampshire, up to half might be independents, or Democrats who temporarily switched their registrations.

When a potential voter in Manchester sounded skeptical about Haley’s ability to beat Trump — “he’s got well over 50%” — Haley went through the calendar to explain how only she could do it.

“We’ll have three or four people go into Iowa,” said Haley in Manchester. “A couple drop, and we’ll have two or three coming into New Hampshire. But guess what’s next? Then you’ll see me and Trump go head to head in my home state of South Carolina.”

At another stop, in Newport, Haley got skeptical questions from a man who asked about her plans for Social Security, got incredulous when she called it an “entitlement,” then stormed out, refusing to give his name to reporters. Another voter, who also asked not to be named, pressed Haley on Israel’s “human rights violations” and “ethnic cleansing.” Haley’s answer didn’t satisfy her.

“The Palestinians want a one-state solution,” said Haley. “They don’t want Israel to exist. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.”

Still, when the room cleared out, the voter said she was open to supporting Haley, strategically, if she could win the primary and slow down Trump: “We so don’t want Trump to go against Biden. We’re very, very worried about that. A lot of folks who lean left think we should vote in the Republican primary.”

DAVID’S VIEW

A common question for Trump’s rivals, and the reporters who cover them, is why they won’t drop out and consolidate the vote. It’s time for some game theory: They’ve independently determined that no one else can beat Trump.

DeSantis’s rationale is that Haley can’t crack into Trump’s soft support, and he can; when asked for their second choice, a plurality of Trump voters still say it’s DeSantis. Haley’s case is what she said in Manchester: If the rest of the field clears out before South Carolina, she can beat Trump there, no matter what polls say now.

What would it take for Christie to quit? He batted back that question all week. He could slingshot a win in New Hampshire to a win in Michigan (where he has not campaigned yet), while Haley would lose her home state. Everyone else, he said in Londonderry, is running for a cabinet position. Meanwhile, Haley is an inflated stock whose free ride would end if Trump, and the press, wanted it to — especially on abortion.

“You’re letting her get away with saying one thing in Iowa and saying something different in New Hampshire,” Christie told reporters in Londonderry. “In the same answer yesterday, at her town hall meeting, she said: It’s good for people to decide, but there’s space for a federal law. Come on! Get to work, and start writing stories about that, and holding people to account.”

THE VIEW FROM CHRIS SUNUNU

New Hampshire’s governor went everywhere with Haley this week, amplifying her electability message and tying his more moderate brand to hers. In Newport, where the Haley campaign put “51-34” on a gym scoreboard – Haley’s margin over Biden in a new Wall Street Journal poll – Sununu said that the candidate could win independents and conservatives with no adjustments.

“I don’t think she’s out there saying, Oh, I’m changing my policies. I’m changing my views. I’m changing my appeal,” Sununu told Semafor. “That’s not what she’s doing. She just has a universal appeal. There’s an opportunity here, knowing that 40-45% of the voting base will be undeclared voters. A lot of them tend towards her, not because she wavers on policy, not because she moves away from her conservative credentials, but because she comes at it with this transparent sense of trust.”

NOTABLE

• In a Friday morning statement, Haley said she’d participate in an Iowa debate hosted by CNN and planned for Jan. 10. The debate’s rules require candidates to poll at 10% nationally and in Iowa, all but guaranteeing that Christie and Vivek Ramaswamy won’t make it; a DeSantis-Haley one-on-one debate is more likely.
• In NHJournal, Michael Graham asks whether there’ll be a primary debate in the state, dependent on Haley — who looked at WMUR correspondent Adam Sexton on Tuesday and said she hoped the network would do one. “It is now considered likely among Granite State political insiders that there won’t be a CNN debate in New Hampshire.”
• In Politico, Madison Fernandez looks at how Haley is answering and not answering the abortion question, which Christie took as an opening to attack: “We have to humanize the situation and deal with it with compassion.”

New York. Republicans picked Mazi Melesa Pilip, a county legislator and Jewish child refugee from Ethiopia, to contest the 3rd congressional district vacated when George Santos was expelled from Congress. She’ll face ex-Rep. Tom Suozzi, the Democrat who held the seat until last year, and she opened her campaign with attacks on President Biden’s immigration and foreign policies — vulnerabilities that the GOP made use of when they gained ground in the New York City suburbs last cycle.

Chris Christie for President, “Only One.” The first New Hampshire ad from Christie’s campaign — previous pro-Christie ads came from his super PAC — clips the negative ads that Haley and DeSantis super PACs have been running, next to the polls that show them losing in South Carolina and Iowa. The message: Don’t listen when they tell you they’re competitive candidates. “He’s the only one who can beat Trump,” says a narrator, “because he’s the only one trying to beat Trump.

SFA Fund, “More Money in Your Pocket.” Haley’s campaign has drawn distinctions between herself and the religious right, and the candidate has talked more and more about Ukraine funding as her party’s grown cold on it. But she’s given few details about her domestic economic policy, as seen in her super PAC’s new positive spot. “We’re going to cut taxes for the middle class,” she says, but the ad doesn’t explain what those cuts would be — it’s a statement of intent, not a plan.

Biden for President, “Sees Us.” Donald Trump’s presidential campaigns increased his margins with Latino voters, in part, by linking Democrats to left-wing strongmen in Central America. Democrats tried, ineffectively, to make the same comparison with Trump. They’re trying again now, rebooting the approach with the fresh hook of Trump saying he’d “only on day one” be a dictator and stretch his executive power; the faces of Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro flash on-screen to make that look scarier.

The Republican demand all year, started by the party’s MAGA nationalists, then adopted more widely, has been to secure America’s southern border before worrying about Ukraine’s. Just one-third of Republicans now say they want to continue funding Ukraine’s defense — of that group, 26% say money should flow to Israel and Ukraine, and just 5% say it should only go to Ukraine. In the GOP primary, voters can choose between candidates who want to fund both countries (Haley and Christie), candidates who support only Israel (Trump and DeSantis), and one candidate who thinks all funding can be scaled down.

The DeSantis lead over Haley has evaporated in Iowa and inverted in New Hampshire. One of the Florida governor’s messages to voters is that he can bring enough Republicans together to beat Trump in a one-on-one primary, and no one else can. There’s some evidence for that. Haley’s still viewed more skeptically by more Republicans than DeSantis; Christie is toxic outside of a small core of moderate anti-Trump Republicans.

CONCORD, N.H. – Forty-six days ago, with no direction from the president or his campaign, a group of seasoned New Hampshire Democrats founded Granite State Write-In. The mission: Win the primary for Joe Biden by informing enough Democrats and independents that they can put him down as an option, even though he didn’t file his candidacy and, through the DNC, tried to kick the state down the primary calendar and deprive it of delegates. Jim Demers, one of the group’s organizers, talked about the strategy this week, and this is an edited transcript of the conversation.

AMERICANA: How did this write-in effort come together?

JIM DEMERS: We were texting each other, saying: Hey, I saw that you were quoted on this. We were all thinking the same thing, that we should be putting something real together. It started to blossom, and then we started researching what we could do as a non-candidate committee, wanting to raise money and organize.

There are limitations on what we can do. We can’t advertise. We can’t do mail. We can’t do TV. We can’t do digital. But we can do signs, and we can organize a real grassroots effort. Kathy left our group to work on an independent expenditure super PAC, which can do the media and advertising piece of this. We hired two staffers, who are assisting with the grassroots, and the first week after we launched our website, over 1,000 people signed up. That’s pretty unheard of. Our budget is $100,000, and we’ve raised around 70% of that already.

AMERICANA: What kind of grassroots activity are you organizing?

JIM DEMERS: We do a bi-weekly Zoom meeting with all the supporters. We’ve been really lucky to have some national leaders join us. Two weeks ago, Ro Khanna spoke to the group; this week, Cory Booker is joining it. And we have some other national leaders, who I would consider potential future presidential candidates, getting engaged. We have a dozen clubs around the state. All volunteer, except for those two staffers. And we’ve heard from people outside the state, who would come in and work for a regular campaign, who want to come and work on this.

This is all helping to get Democrats united and organized as we prepare for a race where New Hampshire’s four electoral votes could make the difference. There’s a very large senior center housing facility in Exeter — 600 people live there. They get all the presidential candidates to speak to them, so we sent a representative. It’s simple because we’re not talking issues; we’re educating people on how they have to write in the president, and how to do it so that it conforms with the law.

AMERICANA: How long is it going to take to count these ballots? There’s going to be a lot of interest in knowing the margin as soon as possible.

JIM DEMERS: It’s pretty discretionary. So. if a person goes in and writes in Biden, or Joe Biden, or spells Biden’s name wrong, but it’s clear that they were voting for Joe Biden, that would count. If somebody went in and wrote “the President,” that would likely be questionable. Do you mean, President Biden? Do you mean former President Trump? I think there’s actually somebody on the ballot whose name is “president.”

But there’s one ballot, and that ballot just has the presidential race on it. So it should be fairly easy to get through. I don’t think we’re talking about the wee hours of the morning.

AMERICANA: How does the GOP primary factor into your planning? There are voters, and I’ve met some, who want to vote there to stop Trump. We could enter mid-January with Trump far ahead, and that primary looks over; what would happen if their primary looks close?

JIM DEMERS: This one is complicated. For the first time ever, there has been a super PAC trying to organize independents to actually vote for Chris Christie. Prior to the cutoff date for switching parties, they were sending a lot of mail to Democrats asking them to switch and support Christie. But I think voters are looking hard at this, and if they’re feeling like Trump has this nailed down, many of them may take a Democratic ballot and say: “I’m going to send a message that democracy is at risk. I’m going to write in Joe Biden.” We’re expecting that the turnout will probably be lighter for Democrats than normal. But it’s a wildcard. We’re Plan B, for some of those frustrated independent voters.

AMERICANA: How much does Biden need to win by, in order to declare a real victory here? We know the history — Gene McCarthy didn’t win, but he loses by 8 points, and that changes the entire conversation and leads to Johnson ending his re-election campaign.JIM DEMERS: He can win by one vote. If Joe Biden can win without being on the ballot, that is, in my view, historic. Keep in mind — he’s never won the New Hampshire primary before! That would be a gigantic story in itself. Quite frankly, even if he didn’t win, I think that a good turnout helps us organize for the general election.

I think there’s another piece of this. The DNC is going to be looking at the calendar again ahead of 2028. If we did nothing, no campaign whatsoever, we would have absolutely no story to tell. But when the DNC looks at the calendar, if we can demonstrate that without the president even being on the ballot, New Hampshire Democratic voters are so serious about this process that they showed up and wrote in his name, that is an important story for us to be able to tell.

AMERICANA: What would happen if the primary was today — and how does the anger you’re seeing about the Israel-Gaza war, and Biden’s handling of it, change the picture of who may vote?

JIM DEMERS: There are some Democrats who are concerned about the situation with Israel, but the vast majority are extremely motivated, out of fear that Donald Trump could be president again. We started this effort before Dean Phillips got into this race, and it appears that he’s going to spend millions of dollars of his own money. That should be enough for him to win, right? But so far, it’s not having any effect. I think his campaign is struggling. A lot of Democrats are scratching their heads trying to figure out why he is even doing this. And I’ve never really seen a candidate generate so much anger amongst registered Democratic voters.

House. The state GOP’s new gerrymander claimed another Democrat this week – Rep. Wiley Nickel, who won a close race for a seat that’s being replaced with one that should be safe for Republicans. Citing the “rigged” map, Nickel said he’d retire this year and “look to flip our U.S. Senate seat” in 2026, when Sen. Thom Tillis will be up for re-election. In another redrawn district, lobbyist and former Hill staffer Addison McDowell got a surprise endorsement from Trump — surprising because he hadn’t entered the race yet. Trump bypassed Bo Hines, the candidate who lost his 2022 race to Nickel.

• 31 days until the Iowa Republican caucuses
• 39 days until the New Hampshire primary
• 60 days until the special election to replace George Santos
• 71 days until the South Carolina Republican primary
• 325 days until the 2024 presidential election

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