Can DeSantis break Trump’s hold on New Hampshire?

Former President Donald J. Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will hold dueling events in New Hampshire on Tuesday, but from vastly different political positions: One as the dominant front-runner in the state, the other still standing firm.

Strategists for both campaigns agree that the state will play a key role in deciding who leads the Republican Party into the 2024 election against President Biden.

Mr. Trump sees New Hampshire’s first primary as an early opportunity to clear the crowded field of rivals. And members of Team DeSantis — some of whom watched from the losing sidelines as Trump rampaged through the Granite State on his way to the nomination in 2016 — hope New Hampshire will be the first to flip the Republican field to two.

“In the old days, campaigns in the cornfields of Iowa were cut short, and now campaigns in New Hampshire are dying,” said Jeff Roe, who runs Mr. DeSantis’ super PAC, Never Back Down. Mr. Roe has painful memories of 2016 when he ran the presidential campaign of the last man to stand against Mr. Trump: Texas Senator Ted Cruz.

New Hampshire voters are known for being fickle and picky, sometimes to the chagrin. The joke is that when you ask a Granite Stater who they’re voting for, they say, “I don’t know, I’ve only met the candidate three times.”

But by mid-2023, the state—more secular than Iowa and with a libertarian streak—seems frozen in place. Mr. Trump, now indicted twice and impeached twice, is nowhere near as dominant with Republicans as he was in 2020, but he is stronger than he was in 2016, and his closest challenger is well behind him.

In 2016, Mr. Trump won New Hampshire with a blunt and inflammatory message, fanning the fire about terrorist threats and without engaging in the retail politics traditionally required. But local agents and officials believe Mr. Trump, with his decades-long celebrity status, is the only politician who could get away with this.

“It’s certainly not going to be something someone like Ron DeSantis pulls off,” said Jason Osborne, the New Hampshire House Majority Leader who supported Florida’s governor for president. “He has to do the exercise, just like everyone else.”

Polls show there is room for an alternative to Trump. But to be that person, Mr. DeSantis has miles to make up.

As recently as January, Mr. DeSantis led Mr. Trump in the state by a healthy margin, according to a poll conducted by the University of New Hampshire. But Mr. DeSantis has fallen significantly, with recent polls suggesting his support is in the teens and more than 25 percentage points behind Mr. Trump.

In a move that some saw as ominous, Never Back Down, the pro-DeSantis super PAC, went off the air in New Hampshire in mid-May and has not included the state in its latest bookings, which only cover Iowa and South Carolina.

DeSantis allies insist the move was designed to leverage resources in Boston’s marketplace, which they say was an expensive and inefficient way to reach primary voters. And they said Mr. DeSantis would maintain an aggressive schedule in the state.

“We are confident that the governor’s message will resonate with voters in New Hampshire as he continues to visit Granite State and lay out his solutions to Joe Biden’s failures,” Bryan Griffin, a spokesman for Mr. DeSantis, said in a statement. a statement.

Yet many of Mr. DeSantis’ early moves appear to be aimed at Iowa and its primaries dominated by the most conservative activists, many of whom are evangelical. New Hampshire, on the other hand, has an open primary that allows independents, who tend to be more moderate, to vote. And without a competitive 2024 Democratic primary, they could make up a particularly large portion of the GOP primary.

Iowa is where Mr. DeSantis held his first event and where his super PAC has his $100 million operation knocked on the door.

Mr. DeSantis’s signing of a six-week abortion ban is unlikely to prove popular in New Hampshire, where even the state’s Republican governor described himself as “pro choice.”

The clashing events of Trump and DeSantis this week have tickled the nerves of local officials. Mr. DeSantis’ decision to schedule a town hall in Hollis on Tuesday, at the same time as the influential New Hampshire Federation of Republican Women is hosting Mr. Trump at its Lilac Luncheon, has sparked a backlash. The group’s events director, Christine Peters, said that “having a candidate come in and be distracted” from the group’s event was “unprecedented”.

Mr. DeSantis’ town hall marks his fourth visit to New Hampshire this year and his second since announcing his campaign in May.

Mr. DeSantis collected chips in April when he helped the New Hampshire Republican Party raise a record amount at a fundraising dinner. And he has collected more than 50 messages of support from state representatives. But he has yet to answer questions from voters in New Hampshire in a traditional setting.

On his latest trip to the state — a four-stop tour on June 1 — Mr. DeSantis to a reporter who pressured him for not answering voter questions.

“What are you talking about?” said Mr. DeSantis. “Are you blind?”

New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu said in an interview that there was “a lot of interest” in Mr. DeSantis from voters who had seen him on television but wanted to vet him closely.

“Can he hold up under our watch?” said Mr. Sununu. “I think he’s going to do pretty well here personally,” he added, but “the main thing” on the minds of voters is “what will he be like when he knocks on my door.”

New Hampshire voters will indeed be subjected to thousands of DeSantis door knocks — but not from the man himself. He has outsourced his ground game to Never Back Down, which is expected to have more than $200 million at his disposal. According to a super PAC official, the group has already knocked on more than 75,000 doors in New Hampshire, an extraordinary figure this early in the race.

But Mr. DeSantis still faces enormous challenges.

Mr. Trump remains popular among Republicans, even more so after his indictments. And he does not take the state for granted. Unlike in 2016, his operation has been hard at work in the state for months now, with influential figures such as former Republican party chairman Stephen Stepanek working on Trump’s behalf.

Mr. Trump’s super-PAC has hammered Mr. DeSantis with television commercials citing his past support for a sales tax to replace the federal income tax — a message crafted to provoke residents of the proudly anti-tax state.

Mr. DeSantis’ biggest problem is the size of the field. Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie camped out in the state in 2016 and appeared to be making progress in consolidating some of the anti-Trump vote in recent polls.

Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy has campaigned in the state for about 20 days, according to his adviser Tricia McLaughlin. Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley is another frequent visitor. Both have events in the state on Tuesday. In addition, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott’s campaign has already spent about $2 million in New Hampshire.

If these candidates stay in the race until early next year, a repeat of 2016 could be inevitable. In a crowded field, Mr. Trump won the state with more than 35 percent of the vote.

In the meantime, Mr. DeSantis “needs a defining message beyond the small base he has,” said Tom Rath, a veteran of New Hampshire politics who has advised the presidential campaigns of Republican nominees including Mitt Romney and George W. Bush. “He has to do real retail, and so far there’s no indication he can do that.”

Ruth Igilnik reporting contributed.