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      DeSantis Campaign Offloads Costs for Private Flights to Super PAC

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      The Florida governor’s campaign, facing a cash crunch, has found a way to offload the steep costs of private air travel. Campaign finance experts say the arrangement could test the limits of the law.Short on cash, Gov. Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign has found an unusual way to pay for his habit of flying in private planes: passing the cost to the better-funded super PAC that is increasingly intertwined with his operation.The practice, described by three people who spoke about the arrangement on the condition of anonymity, appears to have cut the campaign’s travel bills by hundreds of thousands of dollars in September alone. It could test the limits of campaign finance laws, experts said.“This is old news, and it’s entirely appropriate for N.B.D. to be covering the costs of their events,” said Andrew Romeo, a spokesman for the DeSantis campaign, using shorthand for the super PAC, Never Back Down. “The campaign is firing on all cylinders, and as we see a considerable uptick in fund-raising, we are continuing to identify cost savings, run an efficient operation, and focus resources on Iowa and the early states.”Asked on Friday about the flights as he visited a Veterans of Foreign Wars post in Murrells Inlet, S.C., Mr. DeSantis said, “Everything is checked by lawyers,” adding, “I don’t move without lawyers signing off.”Never Back Down pays for Mr. DeSantis’s travel only on days when the events he is attending are hosted solely by the group, the people familiar with the arrangement said. The super PAC now hosts many of his events in early primary states.A representative for Never Back Down declined to comment on the arrangement.Federal candidates can appear as “featured guests” of super PACs, but whether a super PAC can also pay for transportation is less clear cut. Super PACs are not allowed to coordinate with campaigns, and campaign finance experts say that Mr. DeSantis’s arrangement — in which he is campaigning for president as a guest of a super PAC — could test that rule.“I think what DeSantis is currently doing is an abuse of this law to benefit his candidacy — paid for by his super PAC and its special-interest donors,” said Saurav Ghosh, a former Federal Election Commission lawyer and the director of federal campaign finance reform for the Campaign Legal Center.The Campaign Legal Center filed an ethics complaint in July with Florida officials against Mr. DeSantis for failing to disclose gifts of plane travel — made before he formally declared his candidacy for president — that was arranged by a nonprofit group, an arrangement described by The New York Times in May.Aside from comfort, private air travel can be a tremendous help to candidates as they move quickly from state to state in the thick of primary season. Many of the other Republican presidential candidates have often flown commercial, including Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, who has taken jabs at Mr. DeSantis for his well-known preference for flying private.The travel expenses for Mr. DeSantis’s campaign have previously drawn scrutiny.In July, his campaign’s first report showed that he had spent $179,000 on chartered planes, as well as $483,000 to a limited liability company for “travel.” Never Back Down paid that same company $343,000 in June.In August, The Washington Post reported that Never Back Down and the campaign had become joint investors in a private transportation management company that provided lower-cost airplane rental leases for Mr. DeSantis, citing people familiar with the deal. The Post reported that Mr. DeSantis had used planes from the company in July; in its October filing, the campaign lists the last payment to the company, Empyreal Jets, as $41,433 on August 10.A shrinking campaignCampaign finance filings show just how much Mr. DeSantis’s campaign has transformed since late July, when sagging poll numbers and astronomical spending forced him to pare back his operation and reboot his bid for the White House.Mr. DeSantis, who has served as Florida’s governor since 2019, began his run for president in May campaigning as a front-runner, with money to burn. With a large entourage in tow, he traveled to big venues, delivering his stump speech in highly stage-managed appearances; he kept the news media at arm’s length and spent millions on consultants.In July, records show, the campaign spent $5.5 million. Bills that month included nearly $1 million for travel, including hundreds of thousands to jet rental companies; $1.8 million to consultants specializing in areas like survey research, media and fund-raising; and $828,000 in payroll expenses.Then came the financial report for the second quarter of 2023, which revealed an unsustainable level of spending. At the end of July, Mr. DeSantis cut more than a third of his staff, hired a new campaign manager and handed over most of his event planning to Never Back Down, which was already managing operations traditionally handled by a campaign, like field work.By the end of September, he was running like an insurgent: leaner, more accessible and much less expensive.The campaign spent 75 percent less in September than it did in July, the records show, even as Mr. DeSantis toured Iowa, traveled to New York and Texas for donor events, and delivered speeches in California and Washington, D.C. Travel costs plummeted to $130,000 in September from about $1 million in both July and August.The campaign’s top expenses in September were relatively modest: $100,000 for media placement, $70,000 for postage, $70,000 for digital fund-raising consulting. Payroll costs fell to $532,000.The downsizing was in part strategic, Mr. DeSantis’s campaign and his surrogates have said, positioning him as a nimbler, scrappier presence on the trail. They say it has been a success, allowing Mr. DeSantis to engage with voters directly and saving campaign funds.Lingering cash problemsBut Mr. DeSantis’s financial situation remains strained. Averaged over the entire quarter, the campaign spent 99 cents of every dollar it brought in, a worrisome burn rate. The campaign entered October with only $5 million in cash on hand for the primary election, and $1 million in debts, which appear to be unpaid bills.His fund-raising from July through September declined by about 25 percent from the previous quarter.More than 80 percent of all the money Mr. DeSantis’s campaign has raised since entering the race in May has come from people who have given more than $200, and at least two-thirds came from people who have given at least the maximum $3,300 allowed for the primary, a greater share than any other Republican candidate, the filings show.This is a sign of enthusiasm for Mr. DeSantis among large donors, but it suggests a weakness among smaller donors. While it is impossible to say how many individual small donors he has — his campaign has an arrangement that prevents the disclosure of donors of less than $200 in official records — such donors are critical to the long-term success of a campaign, since they can be tapped for repeated contributions, and can be an indicator of broader enthusiasm for a candidate.The campaign’s Oct. 15 filing does not provide a full picture of its financial health. Some of the campaign’s expenses may not have appeared, because campaigns sometimes defer paying bills until after the quarter is over.And some larger expenses have been shifted over to Never Back Down, which for months has been acting as a shadow campaign operation. In July, the campaign said Mr. DeSantis would shift focus to smaller, intimate events, and would rely on invitations from outside organizations rather than hosting events itself.Shifting the strategyMr. DeSantis is now running the type of campaign befitting a candidate low on cash, who is trailing the front-runner, Donald J. Trump, in national polls by more than 40 percentage points, and has lost ground to other candidates who are raising — and saving — money faster.In Iowa this month, after a full day of campaigning, Mr. DeSantis stopped at a small diner in Fort Madison to meet a group of roughly two dozen voters, patiently taking their questions in an impromptu question-and-answer session outside.In New Hampshire, he gabbed with clusters of voters at gas stations and convenience stores in the state’s remote North Country. It was a shoestring approach that felt worlds removed from a campaign that spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in May to court donors at the Four Seasons in Miami.Mr. DeSantis has also significantly adjusted his press strategy, becoming a constant presence in the mainstream news media and regularly taking questions in person from reporters.His newfound accessibility has earned him reams of free media, even if it means he now must take tougher questions.Some questions, though, can be deferred — like details about who is covering his flights. His campaign, the super PAC and other committees supporting him do not have to file financial reports again until Jan. 31, after the first nominating contests in Iowa and New Hampshire.Rachel Shorey More

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      Tim Scott’s Super PAC Cancels Fall TV Ad Buys

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      In a memo, the super PAC told donors that it was not going to “waste our money when the electorate isn’t focused or ready for a Trump alternative.”The main super PAC supporting Senator Tim Scott’s presidential campaign abruptly announced to donors in a memo that it was canceling millions of dollars in television ads it had reserved this fall, writing that Donald J. Trump’s strength was so ingrained among Republican voters that additional advertising would currently make little difference.“We aren’t going to waste our money when the electorate isn’t focused or ready for a Trump alternative,” Rob Collins, a Republican strategist who is a co-chairman of the super PAC, wrote in the blunt memo to donors that was circulated on Monday. “We have done the research. We have studied the focus groups. We have been following Tim on the trail. This electorate is locked up and money spent on mass media isn’t going to change minds until we get a lot closer to voting.”A copy of the memo was obtained by The New York Times.The super PAC, called the Trust in Mission PAC, or TIMPAC, has been one of the largest advertisers in the race, spending roughly $5 million in Iowa alone this year. Mr. Scott’s poll numbers have hardly budged, however, and Mr. Trump remains far ahead.In addition to the super PAC, Mr. Scott’s campaign had also spent aggressively on television advertising, spending more than $12.5 million on ads to run through the end of November, the campaign said. That total far eclipses any other campaign, according to AdImpact, a media-tracking firm. It’s not clear exactly how much the super PAC is canceling, though it could be $15 million or more. The group, according to data from AdImpact, has roughly $10 million reserved in just the next six weeks.“We are doing what would be obvious in the business world but will mystify politicos,” Mr. Collins wrote in the memo.The super PAC is likely to begin paying for some of Mr. Scott’s events as part of a move that was described as shifting resources elsewhere.The decision to cancel the ads and begin paying for some of Mr. Scott’s events comes a day after Mr. Scott revealed the deteriorating state of his campaign’s finances, which showed swelling spending and shrinking receipts.Mr. Scott had a robust $13.3 million cash on hand — including $11.6 million that can be used for the primary — but he raised only $4.6 million in the third quarter, down from $5.9 million the previous quarter. In the most recent period, Mr. Scott raised only a fraction of what former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida pulled in, and roughly one-tenth of Mr. Trump’s haul.He was even topped by Vivek Ramaswamy, who raised $7.4 million in the third quarter, about a third of which came from donors who gave less than $200.Mr. Scott’s campaign has been spending freely. When Mr. Scott entered the race in May, he brought with him $22 million left over from his last Senate re-election — and he has been steadily burning through that stockpile. In July alone, the campaign spent $5.4 million. In contrast, Ms. Haley’s campaign spent $3.5 million in the entire third quarter.Mr. Scott’s super PAC had entered July with only $15 million in cash on hand yet it soon made $40 million in television and digital reservations.That gap raised questions about how the super PAC had secured so much money so quickly. At the center of those questions is Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle, who previously had been one of Mr. Scott’s biggest benefactors but had not yet been among those donors who had given to the super PAC in the first half of the year. The canceled ads are likely to raise more questions about what financial role Mr. Ellison is playing.The super PAC said it would continue to spend on door-knocking programs, raising money online for Mr. Scott and holding events. The group claimed it was not giving up on the campaign entirely. Mr. Collins argued that Mr. Scott remained the “best fit” for Iowa voters and that for other campaigns and super PACs that fill the breach, “money will simply be wasted.” He wrote in the memo that two-thirds of Iowa caucusgoers will decide in the last six weeks before the caucus on Jan. 15, 2024 — not in the next six weeks.Regardless of the rationale, the decision will be seen in political circles as all but abandoning Mr. Scott.“Some will challenge our theory of the election,” Mr. Collins wrote, “but we would ask these critics to produce any evidence that shows any candidate, at this time, at any spending level, breaking through.”Matt Gorman, a spokesman for Mr. Scott, said in a statement that Mr. Scott’s campaign remained “built for the long haul — powered by the most primary cash on hand and the highest candidate favorability of anyone in the field.”He added, “On issues ranging from foreign policy to abortion, he has been the clearest and strongest voice, leading while others have followed.” More

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      Trump’s Giant Lead Is Financial, Too: 6 Takeaways From 2024 Filings

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      Ron DeSantis has spent heavily and Nikki Haley has padded her war chest. On the Democratic side, President Biden continues to show overall strength, and the party’s incumbent senators fared well.Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign entered October with nearly as much cash on hand for the Republican primary race as the rest of the field combined, underscoring the former president’s dominance as the contest enters its critical final stretch before the Iowa caucuses in January.The financial picture, laid out in quarterly fund-raising and spending reports filed by campaigns on Sunday, shows just how uphill Mr. Trump’s challengers are fighting, with some of them appearing to hemorrhage cash. Still, others showed signs of momentum. More

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      Biden Campaign Raises $71.3 Million in Third Quarter Alongside D.N.C.

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      The president’s re-election campaign announced a substantial quarterly fund-raising haul, but it’s far short of what Donald J. Trump raised in the same quarter of his 2020 re-election campaign.President Biden’s re-election campaign announced on Sunday it had raised a combined $71.3 million alongside the Democratic National Committee and a joint fund-raising committee during the three-month period that ended in September, a haul that eclipses what his Republican rivals have amassed but falls short of where President Donald J. Trump was at this point four years ago.The campaign said the three fund-raising vehicles had a combined $90.5 million in cash on hand. It did not disclose how the cash was divided between the three fund-raising vehicles.“It was a spectacular quarter,” said Jeffrey Katzenberg, the Hollywood mogul whom Mr. Biden named a co-chairman of his campaign, said in an interview Saturday. “It certainly exceeded our own expectations around it significantly. The fact that we’re sitting with $91 million in the bank today is really an extraordinary advantage.”But Mr. Biden’s fund-raising haul is well short of the $125 million Mr. Trump and the Republican National Committee raised during the same period of his 2020 re-election campaign. And it is just a touch more than the $70.1 million President Obama and the D.N.C. raised at this point in his 2012 campaign — at a time when individual contribution limits were far lower than they are today.Mr. Katzenberg, in the interview, dismissed comparisons to such campaigns as “comparing apples to submarines.”Comparisons with Mr. Obama’s fund-raising efforts for the 2012 campaign are indeed imprecise, because a 2014 Supreme Court decision and other legal changes now allow candidates and parties to form joint fund-raising committees that can accept single donations of nearly $1 million. In 2012, Mr. Obama and the D.N.C. could collect only $30,500 per person.More revealing details about the Biden campaign’s financial status will emerge when the committees file quarterly reports required by the Federal Election Commission. Those are due by the end of Sunday; a campaign official said the reports would become public late Sunday evening.Among the most significant details in the campaign’s fund-raising report will be the amount of cash it has accumulated from donors who gave less than $200.These so-called small donors are vital to presidential efforts because they can be recruited to give again and again over the course of a long campaign. During the three-month fund-raising period that ended in June, $10.2 million of contributions to the Biden effort, or about 21 percent, came from small donors, an amount smaller in percentage and in real dollars than the Trump and Obama campaigns in the comparable time periods.While the Biden campaign has not disclosed how much of its haul came from small donors, an official, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak for the campaign, did reveal that 49 percent of its $71.3 million came from donors who gave through the internet or mail programs. The campaign had expected that about 36 to 37 percent of third-quarter fund-raising would come online or through the mail.Mr. Biden’s fund-raising total far outpaces what his Republican rivals have reported for the third quarter.Mr. Trump’s campaign reported it raised $45.5 million, with $37.5 million in cash on hand. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida raised $15 million. Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, raised $11 million. Aides to Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina revealed to Republican donors this week that his campaign began October with $11.6 million in cash on hand, more than either Mr. DeSantis or Ms. Haley.The Biden campaign trumpeted an array of fund-raising figures that officials said proved that there was indeed enthusiasm for their candidate, even as polls show that Mr. Biden is unpopular and suggest that he has not engendered enthusiasm within his own party.The campaign said that it attracted 240,000 donors who had contributed to the campaign in 2020 and that 97 percent of contributions were less than $200. A contest for a chance to meet both Mr. Biden and Mr. Obama raised “nearly $2.5 million,” according to the campaign, while the sales of mugs with a picture of Mr. Biden’s face with the “Dark Brandon” meme brought in “close to $2 million” in August and September. More

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      Haley Slams Trump and Ramaswamy Over Israel Remarks

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      Nikki Haley on Friday knocked two of her Republican presidential rivals, Donald J. Trump and Vivek Ramaswamy, over their recent comments on Israel, underscoring the deepening divide within the party around the “America First” anti-interventionist stance that Mr. Trump made a core part of his first campaign.Mr. Trump, Ms. Haley suggested, lacks moral clarity and has not left “the baggage and negativity” of the past behind, an apparent reference to Mr. Trump’s still-simmering animosity toward Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, over events that include his congratulating President Biden on winning the 2020 election. Mr. Ramaswamy, meanwhile, sounds more like a liberal Democrat than a Republican, Ms. Haley said.“To go and criticize the head of a country who just saw massive bloodshed — no, that’s not what we need in a president,” Ms. Haley said of Mr. Trump, the former president and current Republican front-runner, in a news conference in Concord, N.H., after filing to get on the state’s primary ballot.Ms. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and United Nations ambassador under Mr. Trump who has been running on her foreign policy experience, said the next president of the United States needed to be someone who “knows the difference between good and evil, who knows the difference between right and wrong.”“You don’t congratulate or give any credit to murderers, period,” she said. Steven Cheung, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, accused Ms. Haley of using Democratic talking points and said that “there has been no bigger defender and advocate for Israel than President Trump.” But Mr. Trump has drawn scorn from both sides of the political aisle for referring to Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant group, as “very smart” while criticizing Israel’s prime minister and Israeli intelligence.His tone shifted on Friday, though, as he posted on his social media platform, Truth Social, that he had “always been impressed by the skill and determination of the Israeli Defense Forces.” A second post said simply: “#IStandWithIsrael #IStandWithBibi.”Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Ramaswamy campaign, dismissed Ms. Haley’s remarks on Friday — including Ms. Haley’s accusation that he sounded like a member of the group of progressives known as “the squad” — as a scripted attack from a candidate whom Ms. McLaughlin sought to portray as beholden to special interests.“Pre-canned quip brought to you by the Boeing squad,” she said in an email, invoking Ms. Haley’s tenure of less than a year on the corporate board of Boeing.Ms. Haley’s dig at Mr. Ramaswamy on Friday escalated an ongoing feud between the G.O.P. rivals that has pitted those with more traditional conservative positions, who believe the United States should play a major role abroad, against those espousing anti-interventionist views, who want Americans to focus on issues at home.Mr. Ramaswamy was sharply rebuked by his opponents over his conversation with Tucker Carlson on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, earlier this week.He called the Republican response to Hamas’s attacks on Israel another example of “selective moral outrage” and argued that politicians on both sides of the aisle had largely ignored other atrocities, citing fentanyl deaths in the United States and the accusations of genocide of ethnic Armenians by Azerbaijan.“It comes down in most cases — some people do have ideological commitments that are outdated that are earnest — but a lot of it comes down to money, the corrupting influence of super PACs on the process,” Mr. Ramaswamy said.In a statement on Friday, Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota, another Republican candidate in the race, condemned Mr. Ramaswamy’s remarks, saying that he was “pulling out the oldest and most offensive antisemitic tropes possible.”He added: “To say that outrage is fueled by donor money and the media is beyond offensive. It is morally wrong and it is dangerous.”Mr. Ramaswamy accused critics and even conservative media outlets of taking his words out of context. Ms. McLaughlin, his campaign spokeswoman, said in an email on Friday that he was talking about Azerbaijan, not Israel.But Sean Hannity, the Fox News commentator, was not persuaded. In a tense exchange between the two men on Thursday night, Mr. Hannity said that Mr. Ramaswamy had a history of retreating from his incendiary statements and had made wild claims without backing them up.“What are the financial corrupting influences that Nikki Haley is taking a position on?” he said. “We’ve got pictures of dead babies decapitated, burned babies’ bodies. We’ve got the equivalent of what would be, population-wise in the U.S., over 37,000 dead Americans. So, how much more evidence do you need? What are you talking about?”Mr. Trump, during his time in the White House, virtually did not challenge Israel on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.As his United Nations ambassador, Ms. Haley forcefully spoke out in support of the president’s formal recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, as well as his decision to cut American funding to Palestinian refugees. She has since made her foreign policy credentials and staunch support for Israel pillars of her campaign. Her sparring with Mr. Ramaswamy over foreign policy on the national debate stage in particular helped to boost her in the polls, propelling her to the second position behind Mr. Trump in New Hampshire.On the trail and on the Republican media circuit this week, Ms. Haley has been talking up her on-the-ground experience in the Middle East and calling for the elimination of Hamas. In town halls in New Hampshire on Thursday, she ratcheted up her criticism of Mr. Trump for his reaction to the Israel-Hamas war, saying the former president was too focused on himself.In a small room crowded with reporters at the New Hampshire State House on Friday, Ms. Haley again pitched herself as “a new generational conservative leader” who knew how to negotiate with world leaders.“I know what it takes to keep Americans safe,” she said. She later added: “You don’t just have Israel’s back when they get hit. You need to have Israel’s back when they hit back, too.” More

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      The Spoiler Threat of R.F.K. Jr.

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      Mary Wilson, Stella Tan and Rachel Quester and Dan Powell and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicRobert F. Kennedy Jr. was once dismissed as a fringe figure in the 2024 presidential race. But this week, as he announces an independent run for the White House, he’s striking fear within both the Democratic and Republican parties.Rebecca Davis O’Brien, who covers campaign finance for The Times, explains why.On today’s episodeRebecca Davis O’Brien, a reporter covering campaign finance and money in U.S. elections for The New York Times.Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a leading vaccine skeptic and purveyor of conspiracy theories, has said he represents “a populist movement that defies left-right division.”Ryan David Brown for The New York TimesBackground readingRobert F. Kennedy Jr. told supporters he would end his campaign as a Democratic candidate and run as an independent, potentially upsetting the dynamics of the 2024 election.From July, five noteworthy falsehoods Mr. Kennedy has promoted.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.Rebecca Davis O’Brien More

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      Would a 3-Way Arizona Senate Race Help Kari Lake? Her Party Isn’t So Sure.

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      Kyrsten Sinema, the independent incumbent, has not announced whether she will run for re-election. But as both parties in Arizona prepare for that outcome, Republicans are worried.Republicans are growing anxious that their chances of capturing a Senate seat in Arizona would be diminished in a potential three-way race that included Kyrsten Sinema, the independent incumbent.While Ms. Sinema hasn’t announced whether she will run for re-election, the race already includes Representative Ruben Gallego, a Democrat, and Kari Lake, a Republican scheduled to host her first campaign rally on Tuesday.Many political strategists had figured that a re-election bid from Ms. Sinema, who dropped her Democratic affiliation last year, would split votes in her former party and increase the odds that Ms. Lake, the controversial front-runner for the Republican nomination, would be sworn in to the Senate. Arizona, along with West Virginia, Montana and Ohio, has been seen as among the best opportunities for Republicans to pick up Senate seats next year and win back a majority.But private and public polling has suggested that Ms. Sinema is viewed much more favorably by Republican voters than by Democrats. Those surveys indicated that Mr. Gallego would benefit in a three-way race.“Some of the early conventional wisdom about this race assumed there would be more Democratic defections,” said Austin Stumpf, a Democratic consultant in Arizona. “But party unity among Democrats is hard to overstate. It’s a real phenomenon right now.”Republicans expressed their concerns as Ms. Lake, a TV-anchor-turned-conservative-firebrand, made an otherwise amicable visit to Washington last week. While she met with a half-dozen Republican senators, many of whom offered campaign assistance or asked to have their photos taken with her, conversations among aides revealed worries about current polling. One Lake adviser described being surprised by the level of “freaking out” by Washington Republicans.In response, Ms. Lake’s campaign has produced a nine-page internal memo aimed at reassuring the party that she stands to benefit the most from a three-way race. She was also expected to take aim at Ms. Sinema with some of her most withering attacks during her opening campaign event on Tuesday, according to people familiar with the planning, in an attempt to address the concerns that an independent bid by the senator could siphon off a significant share of Republican votes.The previously unreported memo relies largely on recent turnout trends in Arizona to point to built-in advantages for Republicans.While Republicans account for roughly 35 percent of registered voters in the state, they typically make up about 40 percent of turnout, according to the memo. Arizona’s unusually large bloc of independent voters accounts for 34 percent of the voter rolls, but makes up a smaller share of turnout, typically between 26 percent and 29 percent, according to the memo.That means that Ms. Lake — who struggled to unite Republicans during her unsuccessful bid for governor last year as she attacked fellow Republicans, falsely insisted that former President Donald J. Trump had won the 2020 election and later refused to accept her own defeat — should have “significantly more elasticity in shedding Republican voters” than Democrats, according to the memo. (First, Ms. Lake will have to win the Republican primary race; her early rivals include Mark Lamb, a right-wing sheriff and fellow Trump ally.)Kari Lake, who lost the Arizona governor’s race last year and has continued to dispute the results, is running for Senate. Mario Tama/Getty ImagesThe memo also calculates that if Mr. Trump captures another Republican presidential nomination — and wins roughly the same number of votes in Arizona next year as he did in 2020 — then Ms. Sinema’s best path to victory would require more than 600,000 Arizonans to split their ballots between him and the incumbent senator. That total would be about 35 percent of Mr. Trump’s votes.“This is incredibly unlikely in the Trump era of American politics,” the memo says, noting that split-ticket voting is “near all-time lows.”One of the private polls that showed Mr. Gallego leading the race, in part because Ms. Lake appeared to be losing Republican votes to Ms. Sinema, was from Chuck Coughlin, a longtime Arizona operative, according to people briefed on the survey. Mr. Coughlin declined to comment on specific findings in his poll, but said that while Ms. Sinema would be a significant underdog if she sought re-election, it would also be foolish to count her out.“Kyrsten is a monstrously strong campaigner, a very effective fund-raiser and has shown a lot of personal strength to do what she’s done in politics, and I don’t want to underestimate that,” Mr. Coughlin said. “All of that is going to be necessary and a lot more for her to be successful.”The ambiguity about Ms. Sinema’s plans for re-election has confounded political professionals across three time zones separating Arizona and Washington.Some of those who anticipate she will retire point to fund-raising numbers showing that Mr. Gallego has consistently out-raised her this year. Ms. Sinema is sitting on a considerable war chest of nearly $11 million, but the Arizona Senate race last year drew more than $230 million in spending from the two major-party candidates and multiple outside groups.Some of those convinced she will seek a second term pointed to a fund-raiser she hosted this year at the Phoenix Open. The annual golf outing attracts a mix of rowdy partygoers and avid golfers, far from the typical Sinema crowd. “That’s like nails on the chalkboard for Sinema,” said Barrett Marson, a Republican operative in Arizona.Others were encouraged about her prospects after an internal fund-raising prospectus surfaced last month that signaled she and her team were actively charting a path to a second term, telling donors she could win a competitive three-way race as an independent, which is practically unheard-of in modern American politics.“Kyrsten promised Arizonans she’d be an independent voice who wouldn’t answer to party bosses and would deliver real, lasting solutions to the challenges Arizonans face,” said Hannah Hurley, an aide to Ms. Sinema. “Instead of engaging in name-calling and stupid political insults, Kyrsten has worked with anyone to make Arizonans’ lives better and then get government out of the way — and that’s exactly what she’s done and will continue to do as Arizona’s senior senator.”Ms. Sinema’s path relies on an unusual coalition of voters, according to the document, which was first reported by NBC News: winning between 10 percent and 20 percent of Democrats, 25 percent to 35 percent of Republicans and 60 percent to 70 percent of independent voters in the state.The most difficult benchmark may be the projection among independents. Even Senator John McCain — who was famously popular among independent voters — won just 50 percent of that group in his sixth and final victory in the state in 2016, according to exit polls.Independents also figure to be a top target for Mr. Gallego, an engaging politician with an inspiring personal story who is running to be the state’s first Latino senator. His campaign projects that Latinos account for about 30 percent of unaffiliated voters in Arizona, and he was ahead of both Ms. Sinema and Ms. Lake in the one public poll that has tested all three candidates this year.Some public and private polling has shown that Representative Ruben Gallego, who is seeking the Democratic nomination, would benefit in a three-way race.Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times“Ruben is in a good spot and he knows it,” said Mike Noble, an Arizona pollster. He noted that early polls showed that people who had heard of Mr. Gallego generally liked him, while Arizonans tended to have negative views of both Ms. Lake and Ms. Sinema.Still, Mr. Gallego is running his first statewide campaign since first being elected to the state’s most liberal House district in 2014.He has collected a handful of endorsements from local officials and public encouragement from Yolanda Bejarano, the chairwoman of the Arizona Democratic Party, but the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Senate Majority PAC — which combined to spend nearly $40 million in the Arizona Senate race last year — have both remained silent on the prospect of a three-way race.Stan Barnes, a Republican consultant and former Arizona state legislator, said a potential three-way race offered a unique opportunity for voters because the top candidates would rely on compelling personalities as they pursued their own silos of voters.“It is about the most exciting thing I have seen in terms of politics in Arizona in the three decades I have seen,” Mr. Barnes said. 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      Nikki Haley Raises $11 Million, Battling With DeSantis to Take on Trump

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      The former South Carolina governor has made gains in recent months — in fund-raising and polling — that have helped her compete for the No. 2 spot in the primary field.Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, has ramped up her fund-raising in recent months, a sign that her performance in the early presidential debates may have invigorated her 2024 candidacy.Ms. Haley, who, according to her campaign, has raised $11 million across her political committees, entered October with significantly more cash on hand that can be spent on the 2024 primary than Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida — $9.1 million to roughly his $5 million — even as he out-raised her overall.But both Ms. Haley and Mr. DeSantis’s fund-raising figures were dwarfed by the man they are chasing in the polls: Former President Donald J. Trump announced in recent days that he had raised $45.5 million in the quarter and had $36 million on hand that is eligible to be spent on the primary.Ms. Haley’s campaign provided her fund-raising figures for the third quarter, from July 1 to the end of September, to The New York Times in advance of the Oct. 15 disclosure deadline. The numbers underscore not just her financial gains from the debates, but the extent to which she has run a lean operation, keeping a limited payroll and eschewing campaign-backed television ads so far. Her campaign said it had saved roughly half of every dollar it had raised into her 2024 account in the last three months.“We have seen a big surge in support and have real momentum,” said Olivia Perez-Cubas, a spokeswoman for Ms. Haley. “Nikki is emerging as the candidate who can move America beyond the chaos and drama of the past and present, and we have the resources we need to do it.”Her campaign said it had received more than 165,000 donations in July, August and September, including from 40,000 new donors. Overall, her campaign has topped 100,000 unique contributors.The next stage of the 2024 Republican race has in many ways become a primary within the primary between Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Haley as they compete for the role of chief rival to Mr. Trump.At the start of the summer, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina had appeared poised to benefit as Mr. DeSantis slid in the polls. Mr. Scott was emerging as a favorite among major donors, and he already had ample funds in his campaign coffers. But his poll numbers have remained stagnant. His campaign has not yet released third-quarter fund-raising numbers — it had more than $21 million cash on hand at the end of June, much of which had been drawn from his senate campaign fund.For the first half of 2023, the position of second to Mr. Trump had been held by Mr. DeSantis. But Mr. DeSantis’s campaign momentum stalled over the summer, and his support has deteriorated. In some surveys in New Hampshire and in her home state of South Carolina, Ms. Haley has taken the second spot. As he retools his campaign, Mr. DeSantis recently announced he was shifting staff from his Tallahassee headquarters to Iowa after raising $15 million in the third quarter.Advisers to both Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Haley are headed to Texas this week for an important gathering of major Republican donors, a group known as the American Opportunity Alliance, to convince those contributors of their path forward against Mr. Trump. The former president’s apparently impermeable poll numbers and robust grass-roots fund-raising have led to desperation and frustration among some donors.Among the talking points that Ms. Haley’s team will arrive armed with in Texas is that her fund-raising has ticked up while Mr. DeSantis has gone down in recent months, and that he remains more strapped than her overall. Both have supportive super PACs, but Mr. DeSantis’s allies have reported far more money — a $130 million war chest that is more than everyone else in the field — and have created a robust infrastructure in Iowa that is unrivaled in the race.Ms. Haley’s recent rise in the polls has been accompanied by television ad spending from her super PAC, Stand for America, a major advertiser in the early states over the summer.For Ms. Haley, the coming report will show that her campaign’s overall cash on hand grew to $11.6 million from $6.8 million at the end of the previous quarter. Most of that money, $9.1 million, is eligible to be spent in the primary; the rest is earmarked for her only if she becomes the Republican nominee. More