Florida Governor Ron DeSantis officially entered the presidential race last week, but he seems further than ever from the one-on-one matchup his allies say is necessary to force former President Donald J. Trump’s nomination.
Former Vice President Mike Pence is digging deeper into Iowa, crucial to his effort to dislodge the Republican frontrunners even before announcing his bid. Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is stepping up preparations for a new campaign, with an expected focus on New Hampshire. And Republican donors and leaders on Capitol Hill are showing new interest in South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, who resigned his campaign last week. Even barely mentioned candidates suddenly show interest in 2024.
The fast-growing field, combined with Mr. Trump’s seemingly unbreakable support, poses a serious threat to Mr. DeSantis, jeopardizing his ability to consolidate the non-Trump vote, and could reflect the dynamics that will drive the takeover. of the party driven by Mr. Trump. in 2016.
It’s a matter of math: Every newcomer threatens to steal a tiny piece of Mr. DeSantis’ potential coalition — whether it’s Mr. Pence with Iowa evangelicals or Mr. Scott with college-educated suburbs. And these new candidates are unlikely to eat up Mr. Trump’s votes. The former president’s base — more than 30 percent of Republicans — remains strongly committed to him.
“President Trump — he should go to the casino, he’s lucky,” Dave Carney, a veteran Republican strategist from New Hampshire, said of former casino owner Mr. Trump.
“It’s a gigantic problem” for Mr. DeSantis, added Mr. Carney, who has worked on previous presidential campaigns, because “whatever percentage they get makes it hard for second place to win because there just aren’t the available votes are.”
Mr Trump’s advisers have almost gleefully hailed each successive entry as part of a divide-and-conquer strategy his team has been talking about since 2021. And many of the candidates seem more comfortable throwing punches at Mr. DeSantis than Mr. Trump.
The DeSantis campaign takes a different look at the landscape.
“We don’t believe it’s 2016 again,” Ryan Tyson, a senior adviser to Mr. DeSantis, said in an interview.
And in a private briefing for donors this week, Mr. Tyson described a Republican electorate divided into three parts: 35 percent as “Trump only” voters, 20 percent as “never Trump” and the remaining 45 percent as the DeSantis sweet spot .
Mr Tyson told donors, in audio leaked and published online, that every participant except the two front runners were isolated in the “never Trump” segment. “If your name is not Ron DeSantis or Donald Trump, you divide this part of the electorate,” he said.
In the months leading up to his campaign launch, Mr. DeSantis and his allies framed the 2024 primary as a two-man race. But as he has stumbled in recent months, amid questions about his personality and political agility, rivals have been emboldened. And some have the money to stay relevant deep into the primary calendar.
Mr. Scott entered the race with nearly $22 million on hand, and he raised another $2 million on his first day as a candidate. Now envisioning a 2024 opening, wealthy, little-known North Dakota governor Doug Burgum has recently been filming ads in preparation for an impending campaign, according to two people involved in the planning.
Vivek Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur, has invested $10 million of his own money in his campaign. Like Mr. DeSantis, Mr. Ramaswamy sells a similar anti-wake sentiment, but he does so with the charm of a natural communicator.
Mr. Trump has welcomed the non-DeSantis entrants to the race. When Nikki Haley, who was Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, called him in January to announce her intention to run, Trump was not ranting about her infidelity as some had expected. He sounded unfazed and told her to “do what you have to do,” according to two people briefed on their conversation.
And in the days leading up to Mr. Scott’s announcement, Mr. Trump was sitting in his Mar-a-Lago office watching Fox News when he said, “I like him.” We’re just going to say nice things about Tim,” said a person familiar with his private comments.
The conventional wisdom at the start of the year was that the field would be relatively small, maybe no more than five running people. Republican anti-Trump donors sought to thin out the herd to avoid a repeat of the divided field that guaranteed Mr Trump’s 2016 victory. Now, after Mr. DeSantis’ early stumbles, there will likely be as many as 10 candidates vying for attention and competing for the debate stage.
For Mr. DeSantis, the pressure was obvious the day he entered the race.
In New Hampshire, Mrs. Haley mocked him on Fox News for only “copying Trump,” right down to his mannerisms. “If he just becomes an echo of Trump, people will just vote for Trump,” she said.
In Iowa, Mr. Pence sat down with the kind of mainstream media that Mr. DeSantis has shunned, including The Des Moines Register. Mr. Pence also met with Bob Vander Place, the same evangelical leader Mr. DeSantis had recently taken to Tallahassee for a private meal.
The split screen was a reminder that Mr. DeSantis is being pinched both ideologically and geographically as the field expands.
Mr. Pence and Mr. Scott have made clear their plans to compete for influential evangelical voters in Iowa. In New Hampshire, both Mr. Christie, who focused his 2016 campaign on the state, and the state’s incumbent governor, Chris Sununu, a moderate who has left the door open for a run, threaten to siphon votes from Mr. DeSantis . And in South Carolina, he will be sandwiched between two home state candidates, former governor Ms. Haley and Mr. Scott.
Many Republicans seeking to beat Mr. Trump are appalled at the exploding field — along with Mr. DeSantis’ underwhelming performance in recent months. Mr. DeSantis has slipped in the polls and is now trailing Mr. Trump in all states and by an average of more than 30 percentage points nationally.
“All Republicans must beat Donald Trump,” said Mr. Sununu, who described himself as “50-50” about entering the race. “Any Republican who doesn’t hit Donald Trump hard right now is doing the entire party a disservice because if only one or two people are willing to shoot Donald Trump, it looks personal. It looks petty.”
So far, Mr. Christie has received most of the attention for his direct attacks on Mr. Trump, which he has indicated would be critical to his candidacy. But he also loved to occasionally bully Mr. DeSantis, an acknowledgment of the Florida governor’s position in the race.
The reluctance to go after Mr. Trump feels eerily like a repeat of 2016 to many Republicans. After that, Mr. Trump’s rivals largely left him alone for months, thinking he would implode or that they were destined to defeat him the moment they would defeat him. could narrow the field to a one-on-one matchup, a situation that never happened.
The two Florida-based candidates in that race, Senator Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush, a former governor, spent millions of dollars shooting each other. Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who eventually became Mr. Trump’s biggest rival, privately rejoiced to donors that he was hugging Mr. Trump while also patiently waiting for the moment to strike. It never came.
Mr Trump’s current rivals seem exasperated by their collective inability to crack his base: Mr Trump’s supporters have been trained for years to defend him when he is under attack.
Mr. Trump has another asymmetric advantage: Current and potential rivals have tried not to criticize him too harshly so as not to alienate Republicans who still love Mr. Trump and who are automatically suspicious of anyone who attacks him. In contrast, other 2024 contenders have not hesitated to go after Mr. DeSantis.
“His team – maybe him – is excellent at crafting the veneer of bravery without actually living up to the real thing,” said Mr. Ramaswamy in an interview last month. “And that can work on TV and even on social media,” he added. “But once you poke a little bit, it’s like a little bubble in the air: a little touch and it bursts.”
Mr Ramaswamy, who has criticized Mr Trump, has focused most of his fire on Mr DeSantis. A close friend of Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, Mr. Ramaswamy dined with Mr Trump and Mr Kushner in 2021 at the former president’s New Jersey club, Bedminster, according to two people familiar with the event.
And as the field grows, there’s the issue of the debate stage, where Mr. Trump eviscerated his opponents in the 2016 primary.
Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel said earlier this year that she did not expect to need two debate phases as the party required in 2016, with the lists of candidates determined by polls.
But by August there could be as many as a dozen candidates, and many are already racing to collect the 40,000 backers and the 1 percent voting threshold the party needs to get on the podium. This pool includes longer shot candidates like Larry Elder, the talk show host who was toppled in California’s recall election.
“Everyone is saying, ‘We have to prevent people from going in,'” Mr Sununu said. “That’s the wrong message, the wrong mindset, and that’s not going to work.”
But he acknowledged that consolidation will eventually be needed to defeat Mr. Trump.
“The discipline,” added Mr. Sununu, “is coming out.”