Why New Hampshire thinks it's smarter than Iowa
Now that the Republican presidential primaries have moved from Iowa to New Hampshire, a few things will change.
The evangelical Christian social conservatism that dominates Iowa Republican politics is gone, replaced by budgetary hawkishness and a libertarian streak rooted in the Granite State's “Live Free or Die” ethos.
With Iowa squarely in the rearview mirror, expect some variation on the phrase “Iowa picks corn, New Hampshire picks presidents,” a favorite local slogan that expands the state's role in the nominating process. Just ask Pat Buchanan and John McCain how victories in New Hampshire in 1996 and 2000 catapulted them to the White House.
One thing is clear: Republicans in New Hampshire think their focus on federal spending and the national debt makes them a lot smarter than their brethren in Iowa, for whom abortion and transgender issues have been at the top of the agenda.
“You have a more sophisticated electorate in New Hampshire,” said Ryan Williams, a Republican operative who got his start in the state working for Mitt Romney's presidential campaigns. “New Hampshire voters exude rugged individualism and hard-nosed Yankee thrift. It's a different situation.”
Exit polls from Iowa showed that many of the state's Republican caucus-goers decided to support former President Donald J. Trump long before the campaign was set to end there. Voters in New Hampshire have a well-deserved reputation for making their decisions too late. McCain's 2008 victory — which did propel him to the nomination — followed a final surge over Romney and other rivals.
This year, former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina is betting there is enough elasticity among New Hampshire voters for momentum to carry her past Mr. Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.
For weeks she has played to the vanity of New Hampshire Republicans. When she said the state's key voters would “correct” the outcome of the Iowa caucuses, she channeled a long-held belief among Granite State Republicans that they have a better understanding of what kind of politician is best suited to become the party's presidential candidate. .
She earned her comment an attack ad by Mr. DeSantis, who was featured extensively on Iowa television. But the same sentiment will likely earn her praise in New Hampshire.
“We don't know based on the polls what's going to happen next week,” Chris Ager, the chairman of the Republican Party of New Hampshire, said on CNN on Tuesday. “We just have a very independent electorate, and they're not going to look at what happened in Iowa and make a decision based on that.”
Mr. DeSantis, who has accused both Mr. Trump and Ms. Haley of not being sufficiently committed to banning abortion and has made his opposition to transgender rights central to the campaign, has not focused heavily on New Hampshire. He has moved his post-Iowa resources to South Carolina.
“People don't choose their presidential candidate in New Hampshire based on their position on transgender rights,” said Steve Duprey, a former McCain aide who served on the Republican National Committee from New Hampshire before being ousted for disloyalty. enough was enough for Mr. Trump.
Last year, Mr. Duprey endorsed Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina in the presidential race. When Mr. Scott subsequently dropped out, he backed Ms. Haley, and he is now working to put together the old McCain coalition to help her prevent Mr. Trump from running away with the nomination again.
The challenge Duprey faces is that for much of the party, the old focus on budget issues has been replaced by the magnetism of Trump, who won the state's 2016 primary by nearly 20 percentage points. That contest all but crushed the hopes of several moderate rivals, including Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and Chris Christie, and gave an unlikely boost to John Kasich, who finished second.
Now Ms. Haley's chances of showing she can compete with Mr. Trump after next week may depend on her ability to reincarnate herself as Mr. McCain's next arrival as the campaign shifts to her home state of South Carolina. The big question is whether New Hampshire Republicans see her that way.