Several contenders said they’d consider the decision over the holiday. Now that the new year has begun, should we expect a wave of entries?
Several potential GOP contenders for the 2024 presidential race suggested they would take the holidays to seriously consider whether to run. Now that we’re firmly post-holiday, should Americans expect a flood of presidential hopefuls to enter the spotlight?
Maybe not, according to national Republican strategist Kristin Davison.
Those weighing a 2024 bid will surely be haunted by the specter of former Wisconsin governor Scott Walker’s failed 2016 presidential run. In the 2016 cycle, the first Republican primary debate was held in August 2015, one month after Walker launched his campaign. He dropped out the next month.
“The big comparison I hear right now out there is Scott Walker . . . People want to be sure they don’t peak like he did in 2015 and then burn out,” Davison told me.
“I think people have to remember two years is a long time to keep up enthusiasm and fund a big team and so you want to peak at the right time,” she said. Instead, candidates are mostly in a “testing the waters” phase right now. She expects the race will become “more official and aggressive” by the end of this year.
“So I think right now you’re going to see a lot of behind-the-scenes moves,” Davison said. “I don’t expect anyone to make any major moves. If they do [it] this early, it’s going to be finance-driven, that they feel like they need to get in now in order to raise money to compete, and that’s really not sustainable.”
Nonetheless, former Trump national-security adviser John Bolton told Good Morning Britain earlier this month that he plans to run for president.
“I wouldn’t run as a vanity candidate. If I didn’t think I could run seriously then I wouldn’t get in the race,” he said in an interview clip shared by the show. Bolton added that Trump’s support within the GOP is in “terminal decline.” The report generated minimal buzz.
Former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley is expected to be one of the first candidates to follow former president Donald Trump into the race, per Axios. The outlet reports that Haley is staffing her future presidential operation and top advisers are making plans to move to South Carolina, where she is based. This after Haley, as well as former vice president Mike Pence and former Maryland governor Larry Hogan, were said to be taking the holidays to mull a run with their families.
A Pence adviser told me the former vice president did in fact discuss a potential run with his family over the holidays, adding that Pence and his wife “have been giving it prayerful consideration” and will continue to do so in the coming weeks and months.
“I think after serving for four years as vice president, Pence has among some of the highest name ID out of any of the potential contenders,” the adviser said. “And so it affords him the ability to wait a little bit longer. I don’t think that there’s a rush for him to get in in the next few months, if he were to get in.”
On the other side of the aisle, President Biden has said he expects to run but suggested he hoped to “sneak away for a week” with First Lady Jill Biden between Thanksgiving and Christmas to discuss his plans.
“My guess is it will be early next year when we make that judgment,” Biden said back in November.
Meanwhile, as Davison said, candidates are quietly working in the background. Former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, who is set to go on a nationwide book tour after the release of his new memoir next week, placed a full-page ad in a booklet handed out to state Republican lawmakers at the Iowa GOP Annual Legislative Breakfast last week, CBS reported. Trump and Senator Tim Scott (R., S.C.) also placed full-page ads in the booklet, while former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson was the guest speaker at the breakfast, according to the report.
“Going to Iowa probably does send some signals that you’re serious about looking at 2024,” Hutchinson told Fox News, in discussing his two recent trips to the state.
For Pompeo, any announcement is unlikely until at least May, Axios reports. The same has been said of Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who is likely to wait out Florida’s legislative session before he potentially jumps into the race. Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin would likely wait for the conclusion of his own state’s legislative session before announcing as well.
So for now, a waiting game emerges. Candidates will wait to see whether Trump’s support in the party will grow or crumble, and whether DeSantis jumps in and retains a significant portion of the spotlight.
“The press . . . and politicos will definitely want it to happen earlier but I think this is definitely going to be a year where there’s going to be a lot of people watching and waiting to see,” Davison said. “No one wants to get into a race they can’t win.”
As for how this cycle compares to previous years, an analysis of open presidential primaries between 1980 and 2020 by FiveThirtyEight found that roughly three in four primary candidates launched their campaigns (either by filing with the Federal Election Commission or announcing their candidacy) between 210 and 420 days before the Iowa caucuses. If that pattern holds true, most of Trump’s Republican opponents will launch their bids sometime between now and June, according to the analysis.
Meanwhile, Trump, the only candidate to have formally announced a bid, is set to hold his first public campaign event later this month in South Carolina. He will be joined by Senator Lindsey Graham and Governor Henry McMaster. Trump is set to unveil his South Carolina leadership team, per the Associated Press.
Around NR
• Nate Hochman, who spoke to Representative Jim Banks last week before the Indiana Republican publicly announced his 2024 Senate bid, suggests the culture war “should be watched closely as it is debated within the confines of the Indiana Senate primary.”
Banks said:
Wokeness “is a cancer that will kill America if we don’t fight back against it. . . . And for too long, we’ve had a generation of establishment Republican leaders in this country who turned a blind eye to the culture fight. I’m not one of them. I’m never going to be one of them.”
• Trump again took credit for DeSantis’s political rise this week, claiming he got the Florida governor elected “pure and simple.” He tried to appear unbothered by a potential DeSantis 2024 run, saying, “We’ll handle that the way I handle things.” More here.
• Michael Brendan Dougherty responds to theories that Biden is being purposely sabotaged by Democrats ahead of 2024 with the classified-documents investigation. Actually, says MBD, Biden is as good as it gets for Democrats:
I have no idea if Biden is being pushed under the bus. But it would be really stupid if he was. Even if Biden were 20 years older and started doing guest appearances on HBO as the Crypt Keeper, he would remain the best option for the Democrats.
• After Representative Katie Porter (D., Calif.) announced her Senate run, a former staff member told Ryan Mills she doesn’t believe Porter is “in it for the people anymore” and is instead “in it for herself.”
“I think she likes the attention. I think she likes being a well-known name, and being a Democratic sweetheart,” [Sasha] Georgiades said. “I think the fame and the power, with anybody, can turn somebody in a direction that they may not have been before. I think it’s becoming less and less about her actually helping, and more and more about her ego.”