Democratic 2020 U.S. presidential candidate and former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg casts a shadow while speaking at a campaign town hall meeting in North Conway, New Hampshire, on Jan. 3, 2020.Brian Snyder/Reuters
There are many indicators of the state of American presidential politics: the myriad poll results; the various measures of the health of the economy; technical studies measuring media attention. But right now, the surest indicator is a refrigerator on the second floor of a low-slung white building beside the railroad tracks on Seavey Street here.
In the freeze of a frosty February, that refrigerator is the barometer that tells the tale of the 2024 presidential election. There’s nothing there.
For decades presidential candidates trudging through the snows in the vital New Hampshire primary have submitted themselves to the questions of the seven staff members of the Conway Daily Sun, a free newspaper with a circulation of 15,500 but no paid print subscribers that enjoys an outsized influence in the Mount Washington Valley.
The newsroom refrigerator is a magnet to politicians with visions of the White House, who over the years have taken a Sharpie in hand and affixed their thick black signatures to its doors and sides. Former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton did it twice, and so did Senator Bernie Sanders (once on his birthday, prompting the baker next door to present him with a cake). If you look closely, you will see the scratchings of Barack Obama, Mitt Romney, John McCain and Marco Rubio.
But there are no signatures from 2024 candidates, and that’s because the presidential campaign is taking on the characteristics of the eight-month period before the brutal battling of the Second World War. That was called the Phoney War, and American politics – measured by the reliable civic barometer of the Conway Daily Sun refrigerator – is in an unusually phoney period.
Below the surface – like the microbial life in the dark reaches below New Hampshire’s frozen lakes – much is going on. In stealth, challengers to former president Donald Trump are calling potential donors. In the deepest secrecy, their closest associates are approaching the activists who are the infantry of the organization required to win the Republican caucuses in Iowa, which traditionally conducts the first political caucuses, and to capture the contest here, the first primary in the nation. In off-the-record conversations, the potential candidates are keeping their prospects, and their hopes, alive by briefing political correspondents.
But, aside from former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, who late last month announced her intention to run, they are not announcing their candidacies.
Trump’s growing list of Republican 2024 challengers revive fears of 2016 repeat
In an enterprise that reliably speaks of political change but that hews to tradition, the putative 2024 contenders are not reverting to form.
By this time in the 1972 political cycle, senator George McGovern, the eventual Democratic nominee, already was a declared candidate. By this time in the 1984 cycle, senator Gary Hart of Colorado, who crafted a stunning New Hampshire primary victory and almost won the Democratic presidential nomination, was an official candidate. In the 2008 cycle, Mr. Obama, who won the Iowa caucuses, and Ms. Clinton, who won the primary here, were in.
But the political hustings here are as quiet as the summit of Mount Washington, which last week recorded the coldest wind-chill marker in American history, at -78 C.
There are several reasons for the sound of silence, and one of them is the vision softly creeping of Mr. Trump unleashing a fusillade of cruel criticism. The candidates’ calculation: Let others get out in front first and let them absorb the bombardment of bluster.
Ms. Haley, who is to visit here next week, already has received the opening volley of Mr. Trump’s rage. GOP Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina is sticking his toes in the cold waters of Iowa in the following week. But no one else – not Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, not former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, not former governor Larry Hogan of Maryland, all possible candidates – is stirring in public.
Another reason for hesitation is big-donor caution. These wealthy funders saw how a crowded Republican field in 2016 allowed Mr. Trump to prevail because the other 16 candidates split the anti-Trump vote. “The mega donors are going to keep their chequebooks in the desk for a while,” Dave Carney, a national Republican consultant based in New Hampshire, said in an interview, “because they saw what happened in 2016.”
It’s not that Mr. Trump is invulnerable. Although the state’s Republican Party is basically a wholly owned subsidiary of the former president, popular GOP governor Chris Sununu is a prominent Trump critic. He won his fourth term by more than 15 percentage points in November – about the margin of Mr. Trump’s victory in the primary here in 2016. And there is ample evidence, in press reports and casual conversations, that “Trump Fatigue” is growing here.
The polls show this. The highly regarded Granite State Poll released late last month by the University of New Hampshire Survey Center showed Mr. DeSantis leading Mr. Trump by 12 percentage points. Half of those polled said they did not want Mr. Trump to undertake another presidential campaign, while two-thirds wanted Mr. DeSantis to run. Though Mr. Trump rates a 47-per-cent approval rating among New Hampshire Republicans, Mr. DeSantis checks in with a 73-per-cent approval rating.
Even so, the New Hampshire political scene resembles nothing so much as a vast political game of Where’s Waldo? Granite State politicos, eager to begin attending informal gatherings in coffee shops and truck stops and girding to fire their questions at town-hall meetings, are wondering where’s the campaign.
It’s coming, to be sure. But the candidates have calculated it is in their interest to hold back.
“These candidates need to build a financial infrastructure in advance and once they announce, they have to do stuff to attract attention,” said Mr. Carney, the consultant with deep roots here. “That’s expensive. You can’t wait too long, though, because you want to be in the debates once they start.”