It may seem like it’s some time away here in the Bay State, but for residents of the first-in-the-nation primary state just to our north, it would be impossible to ignore the steady beat of the political war drums through their cities and towns.
Despite the year and a half standing between now and the 2024 presidential election — or the most of a year before the party primaries — New Hampshire is already crawling with White House hopefuls, some of whom are already household names in the Granite State.
Former President Donald Trump is obviously not unknown to voters north of Boston, where he twice won the state primary, and Salem, N.H., was Trump’s first official campaign stop after announcing his run. The 45th President, who continues to dominate the Republican field, was there again last week for a campaign rally in Manchester and will be there again next week for a town hall-style forum at Saint Anselm College.
“Trump to me is clearly taking this seriously and this time he’s got a team around him. The fact that he trotted out dozens of endorsements when he was last in New Hampshire means he’s not taking this for granted,” Dante Scala, a professor of political science at the University of New Hampshire and an expert on the New Hampshire primary, told the Herald.
According to Scala, in an era of social media and a 24-hour news cycle, New Hampshire may not be the king-making primary state it once was, but many candidates still view it as a way to boost their name recognition against more well-known figures.
Nikki Haley, who served as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations in the Trump Administration after terms as the governor of South Carolina, was the first to announce she would challenge Trump in the Republican Primary.
Her addition to the race hasn’t seemed to dent her ex-boss’ numbers in the slightest, but according to Scala it’s entirely too soon to tell if her own efforts in the Granite State, where she spoke just days after launching her bid, will pay off in the end.
“Haley is a good case in point. I think she is someone who is not at the Trump-DeSantis level obviously, but she’s still spending a good amount of time here trying to lay the groundwork for a potential breakthrough that might not come for months. She sees reason and opportunity to be here,” he said.
Haley will be in New Hampshire again this month, also at Saint Anselm, where both former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and former Vice President Mike Pence have spoken to political insiders during a traditional pre-presidential pitstop. Hutchinson has announced he will seek the presidency, while Pence is widely rumored to be considering a run.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is polling well behind Trump but is the clear second in the race, also has not declared his intentions to run but is expected to do so. DeSantis was the keynote speaker at the Amos Tuck dinner in March and spent time in Manchester earlier this month.
Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, an outsider who is nevertheless polling above Haley and even with Pence, has been in the state at least twice, most recently for a three-day bus tour that ended Thursday.
It’s not unusual to see this many candidates up north this early, according to Scala, who said the scales could tip at any time for a candidate who has done the ground work.
“I think at some point inevitably, you will have a reasonably large field and candidates will start to sort themselves out a bit in terms in how high a priority New Hampshire is for them,” he said. “We’ve still got eight months to go — that’s a long time. These primary polls, the audience is so volatile, that we can see some pretty big swings in a hurry.”
