Former U.S. President Donald Trump arrives to board his plane at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, on Aug. 3, in Arlington, Va., after facing a judge on federal conspiracy charges that allege he conspired to subvert the 2020 election.Alex Brandon/The Associated Press
Nikki Haley didn’t do what many Republican candidates did after Donald Trump’s most recent indictment. She didn’t rush out a statement. Instead, taking her presidential campaign to a popular radio show in the state that holds the first presidential primary, she said that she had lost count of how many times her rival had been charged. Was it, she wondered, “the third or fourth or the fifth?”
The more pertinent question, however, is whether, with Mr. Trump’s third arraignment Thursday, Ms. Haley – whose support was registered at 3 per cent in the latest New Hampshire poll – and the other Republican candidates have lost even more ground to the former president, who remains atop the Republican field despite his mounting legal challenges. Or, as he puts it, actually because of the cascade of court cases he now is confronting.
“I’m tired of commenting on every Trump drama,” Ms. Haley, a former governor of South Carolina and Mr. Trump’s first ambassador to the United Nations, said on the Good Morning New Hampshire radio show. In that, she is virtually alone. One of her competitors, the business executive Vivek Ramaswamy, said in remarks that are to be broadcast on New Hampshire’s WMUR television Sunday, “I will pardon Trump for the three indictments, at least that have come so far that I’ve read.”
Speaking in Iowa Friday, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida said he too would pardon Mr. Trump.
As summertime campaigning continued here, it became apparent that Mr. Trump’s latest arraignment, which brings the charges against him to 78, is bad news for all the Republican presidential candidates – and perhaps even for Mr. Trump himself.
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For struggling candidates like Ms. Haley – who gamely tried this week to shift the attention to China, immigration and the Joe Biden economic record – Mr. Trump’s continuing domination of the news makes it difficult for them to get the exposure they need to sculpt a persona here and in Iowa, which holds the first caucuses in early January, eight days before the primary here. It makes it difficult for their policy positions to be heard; their remarks are drowned out by the Trump spectacle. It makes it difficult for them to recruit the activists who provide the jet-propulsion fuel of retail-style politics in Iowa and New Hampshire; the appeal of staffing phone banks, distributing leaflets, knocking on voters’ doors, monitoring and creating social media posts and enlisting supporters for get-out-the-vote efforts is considerably diminished when only one candidate is getting attention.
For candidates like Mr. DeSantis and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina who in ordinary times might be poised for a breakthrough, Mr. Trump’s high profile is a deterrent to creating the traction required to overcome a front runner. The two candidates know that eight years ago, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas had the support of less than 10 per cent at this general stage of the primary campaign. He won the Iowa caucuses, edging out Mr. Trump.
For Mr. Biden, every time Mr. Trump is indicted there is increased attention to the presidential family’s own potential legal troubles growing out of investigations into the President’s son, Hunter Biden.
For Mr. Trump, there is the maxim, well known in these hills, that even strong front runners are vulnerable to upsets. His social-media posts may say he is profiting from three indictments, with a fourth likely on the way as Georgia officials polish their case charging Mr. Trump for attempting to overturn the state’s 2020 election results, but the Cruz precedent weighs on Mr. Trump and his strategists.
The Trump team luxuriated in the New York Times/Siena College Poll released earlier this week that showed him with a larger lead than any successful presidential nominee ever recorded. But his staff presumably also knows that the last time the newspaper had a finding like that was just before the 1984 New Hampshire primary, when former vice-president Walter Mondale had the most commanding lead ever recorded at that stage of a presidential campaign. Mr. Mondale lost New Hampshire to Senator Gary Hart of Colorado.
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Those precedents do not undermine the commanding position Mr. Trump occupies now, though there are some slight cracks in his support. On the one hand, the latest New York Times/Siena College poll shows him with the support of 44 per cent of likely-caucus goers. On the other, that figure is 10 percentage points lower than his standing nationwide – and the high favorability ratings registered by Mr. DeSantis (77 per cent) and Mr. Scott (70 per cent) are competitive with those of Mr. Trump (72 per cent).
That does not show Trump vulnerability, but it does show his rivals’ opportunity.
But right now the indictments are dominating the conversation, and Mr. Trump is dominating the Republican race – a connection that has endured for four months.
“I would say to the Trump campaign: Be careful what you ask for,” said former state attorney-general Thomas Rath, a prominent local Republican and a key figure in the New Hampshire campaigns of senator Bob Dole of Kansas (1988), governor Lamar Alexander of Tennessee (1996), and governor George W. Bush of Texas (2000). “All of us who obsess on polls better be careful [not] to rush to a judgment. I cannot remember a campaign where there was an intervening, outside event beyond the control of the campaign itself to equate with this.”
For that reason, the continued focus on Mr. Trump still could backfire on his effort to recover the presidency.
Even if he maintains his lead, Mr. Trump’s legal problems could easily be transformed into grave political problems. CivicScience, the internet-based survey firm, found that 70 per cent of the public believes Mr. Trump is guilty of at least one charge, with 49 per cent saying he is guilty of most or all the charges. “Everyone is talking about the indictments,” said Governor Doug Burgum of North Dakota. “Who loves all this indictment talk? Joe Biden.”