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      DeSantis Super PAC’s Urgent Plea to Donors: ‘We Need 50 Million Bucks’

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      In an audio recording made just before the first G.O.P. debate, the super PAC’s chief strategist disparaged rivals and described an expensive attempt to thwart Donald Trump in Iowa.Hours before the Republican Party’s first presidential debate, the chief strategist for the super PAC that has effectively taken over Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign met with donors in Milwaukee.“Now let me tell you a secret — don’t leak this,” the strategist, Jeff Roe, told the donors last Wednesday, according to a recording of the meeting reviewed by The New York Times. “We need to do this now. We’re making a move now.”Then Mr. Roe made a bold sales pitch: “The day after Labor Day we’re launching and we need your help to stay up and go hard the rest of the way. We need 50 million bucks.”With urgency in his voice, Mr. Roe told the donors he required much of the $50 million in the next month before the second G.O.P. debate on Sept. 27. He said he needed $5 million a month just to sustain his Iowa operations. And he said Mr. DeSantis needed to beat Donald J. Trump in “the next 60 days” and separate from all of his other rivals “now.”The audio revealed that the people running the DeSantis super PAC, Never Back Down, are placing big bets now in the hope that donors will cover them later. And it underscored just how steep a task the group confronts as it heads into the fall with its candidate far behind Mr. Trump in the polls, a campaign that is low on cash and a growing recognition that a Trump victory in Iowa could accelerate the end of the Republican race.In his meeting with the donors — a portion of which was reported on earlier Thursday by CNN — Mr. Roe made a cutting assessment of much of the Republican field competing against Mr. DeSantis, the Florida governor.Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, Mr. Roe said, was deemed nice by voters but not seen as presidential. Nikki Haley, he added, was “not actually a lovely person” and also viewed as unpresidential. He mocked former Vice President Mike Pence, recalling the fly that landed on his head during his only debate with his ultimate successor, Kamala Harris, in 2020. And Mr. Roe said that Mr. Trump, the front-runner for the nomination by a wide margin, was certain to lose the general election and drag down other Republicans on the ballot.While Mr. Roe predicted multiple paths to victory ahead of Super Tuesday in early March, it was his plaintive warnings about when the race would be “moving” that made clear he sees Mr. DeSantis’s chances as resting on winning Iowa.In addition to being the top strategist for Never Back Down, Mr. Roe runs Axiom Strategies, the highest-grossing consulting firm in Republican politics. He is comfortable with asking candidates and their donors to part with large sums of cash, and made light of doing so at the meeting.“Now the good news is that we have all the money we need in this room,” Mr. Roe told the donors. “The bad news is it’s still in your wallet.”Even so, his request for a quick $50 million was an audacious ask given that Never Back Down has already taken $82.5 million out of Mr. DeSantis’s state political committee, raised an additional nearly $50 million and spent nearly $34 million through the end of June, according to federal filings.There are clear signs the super PAC is shifting its spending: It is ending its highly promoted door-knocking program to sway voters in Nevada, one of the early states, as well as in some Super Tuesday states, a development first reported by NBC News on Thursday.Mr. Roe leaned heavily on the donors to give more money and quickly — telling them he would meet them in the T.S.A. line at the airport to collect their checks.“This doesn’t run on, you know, fumes,” Mr. Roe told the donors. “And so we’re going to go spend this money right now, betting that our donors won’t let us down. And I’ve been let down by donors a lot. And I’ve already lost once to Trump and we can’t do it again.”That loss happened in 2016, when Mr. Roe ran the presidential primary campaign of Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who came closer than any other candidate to toppling Mr. Trump.For his 2024 rematch against Mr. Trump, Mr. Roe and his colleagues at Never Back Down are trying something that has never been done before at this scale in American politics: They are running almost every aspect of the DeSantis presidential effort out of a group that is barred by campaign finance laws from coordinating strategy with either Mr. DeSantis or his campaign team.Super PACs are allowed to raise unlimited sums but because of the prohibition against coordination they are usually used as a piggy bank to buy advertising. Everything else that’s part of a modern presidential campaign — from events, to bus tours, to the labor intensive business of calling voters and knocking on their doors — is usually handled by the campaign. But because the DeSantis campaign has relatively little cash and the super PAC has had plenty, Never Back Down has taken over all of those functions.The unusual arrangement has necessitated an awkward tap dance around campaign finance laws. Mr. DeSantis insists he is technically separate from this super PAC even as he travels around on a bus funded by the super PAC and even as he attends his own events as a “special guest” of the super PAC.In July, Mr. DeSantis laid off more than a third of his campaign staff. Donors had slowed giving as he slid in the polls and as his first campaign manager, Generra Peck, spent early and aggressively. The campaign’s cash crunch has meant that the health of Never Back Down is more important to Mr. DeSantis’s fortunes than the structure of his own campaign.Officials with Never Back Down and the DeSantis campaign declined to comment.In the presentation to donors last Wednesday, Mr. Roe described several data points about how the super PAC has helped collect commitments from caucusgoers in Iowa to support Mr. DeSantis on Jan. 15.While Mr. Roe trashed most public polling, he suggested that the Des Moines Register poll this month showing Mr. Trump at 42 percent and Mr. DeSantis at 19 percent was “right along the path where our numbers show.”Then, he said, there was a drop-off to a lower tier of candidates.“Tim Scott is a wonderful human being, a nice man. He’s a moderate, a squish, but he’s a nice guy. He doesn’t have a name I.D. problem. He has a not-being-viewed-presidential problem,” Mr. Roe said.A spokesman for the Scott campaign, Matt Gorman, declined to comment.“Nikki Haley is not actually a lovely person,” Mr. Roe continued in the recording, adding that she has higher name identification. Still, he said, she has a “not-being-viewed-presidential problem.”A spokeswoman for the Haley campaign, Chaney Denton, responded by email, writing, “Lol, if anyone ever thought that, her debate performance put it to rest.”As the donors prepared to watch the first debate, Mr. Roe forecast who might attack Mr. DeSantis or anyone else. To watch “Mike Pence attack somebody, that’d be kind of weird,” he said, adding, “He might get his fly out to kind of help him.”A spokesman for Mr. Pence did not respond to an email seeking comment.Mr. Roe said that Mr. Trump, whose campaign did not respond to a request for comment, had a lower ceiling of support than the 42 percent backing him in the Des Moines Register poll. He claimed the real number was 37 percent and that Mr. DeSantis still needed to chase that core Trump bloc for its votes. He said that an additional 37 percent liked Mr. Trump but wanted to move on from him.“We want to show them we’re a better option — never back down, give it to the elite, like be who we are,” he said in the recording. “But the 37 percent that like Trump but want someone new, we’ve got to give them what they want, and that’s policies. Show them what the governor has done. These folks — we’ve got to get them what they need, which is common sense, which is durability and stability and a leader, vision, optics, family, Casey.”His mention of Mr. DeSantis’s wife, Casey, recalls a strategy memo that Mr. Roe wrote ahead of the debate in which he implored the candidate to “invoke a personal anecdote story about family, kids, Casey, showing emotion.” The memo was posted on the website of Mr. Roe’s firm to get around laws restricting how super PACs and candidates can coordinate. A person not affiliated with the DeSantis operation alerted The New York Times to its existence. Mr. DeSantis was furious about the memo, according to people with knowledge of his reaction.In the presentation to donors last Wednesday, Mr. Roe described Mr. Trump as a surefire loser who cannot win the four states he said the race would come down to.“It’s Arizona, and it’s Georgia and it’s Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. And we have Senate races there that cannot overcome him on the ballot,” Mr. Roe said, though he later clarified that there was no Senate race in Georgia, according to a person familiar with the comments. “We’re going to lose them. This is not in dispute. We have to beat him and we’ve got to beat him in the next 60 days and we’ve got to beat everybody else nipping at our heels. Now. And we’ve got to separate further — now.” More

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      Choosing Hospice Care, as Jimmy Carter Did

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      More from our inbox:Changing Our Election SystemReflections on the G.O.P. DebateReplicating the ‘Magic’ of CampJimmy and Rosalynn Carter in 1966. Mr. Carter is now in home hospice, surrounded by a loving family with the resources to care for him.Horace Cort/Associated PressTo the Editor:The Aug. 29 guest essay by Daniela J. Lamas, “A Fitting Final Gift From Jimmy Carter,” is a heartfelt tribute to Mr. Carter.While Dr. Lamas acknowledges hospice’s unpopularity (noting that “the very word ‘hospice’ so often conjures the idea of death and defeat”), she nevertheless makes a persuasive case for it.Hospice is not about giving up hope — it is about making the most of the time we have left. The key to a successful hospice stay is early enrollment, and the fact that Mr. Carter has already benefited from multiple months of care is a testament to this approach.Perhaps Mr. Carter’s real gift is helping us all to overcome our reservations and misguided stereotypes about hospice care. His example should make policymakers rethink current regulations so that all Americans might one day receive — and understand — the full benefits of hospice care.Michael D. ConnellyJohns Island, S.C.The writer served as the chief executive of Mercy Health (now Bon Secours Mercy Health) and is the author of “The Journey’s End: An Investigation of Death and Dying in Modern America.”To the Editor:The idealized fantasy of at-home hospice care is just that: a fantasy.Families who turn down at-home hospice care are right to do so. At-home hospice care is extremely lucrative for the hospice agencies precisely because they provide so little care while the families do all of the work. We were told not to call 911, and most of us do not have medical or nursing training and are on our own, in way over our heads, caring for a dying loved one who may well be in distress and is often frightened.My husband’s death was traumatic for the whole family. Based on my experience, I urge families faced with the heart-wrenching decisions around end-of-life care to consider the family’s needs and the patient’s needs — not the false advertising of the hospice agencies or the naïve recommendations of doctors who don’t live with the consequences.Deena EngelGreenwich, Conn.To the Editor:As a retired hospice nurse, I can totally relate to what the Carters are going through. It is hard for people to accept that the death of a loved one will be coming soon and that fighting against it in a hospital is an unnatural way to die, involving unnecessary and meaningless care at a high cost.Being at home (or sometimes in a hospice facility) surrounded by family and friends with comfort care is much better. Being awakened to be poked and prodded 24 hours a day in a fruitless and expensive effort to keep a dying person alive is just not a good way to go. Hospice can provide all the care that a dying person needs, with much less hustle and bustle.Part of the concern about hospice care is that it uses medications that are not always used in other practices. Morphine is still the best pain control available, and hospice uses it — carefully, with strict controls. Occasionally, hospice also uses ketamine, which has a very bad rap because of abuse of the drug, but is a potent pain control drug if used properly.Hospice care is well established in other parts of the world, but in the U.S. we have a hard time accepting death as being inevitable.It warms my heart that the Carters chose hospice care. It shows yet again what forward-thinking and thoughtful people they are, setting an example for others even in death. Godspeed, Jimmy!Michael OrlinDenverChanging Our Election SystemPhoto illustration by Boris Zhitkov/Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “To Improve Democracy, Get Rid of Elections,” by Adam Grant (Opinion, Aug. 23), about using lotteries to select our leaders:At first glance, Mr. Grant’s essay seems way too radical to even consider, but everyone should read and reflect on it.I, for one, am tired of constantly having to vote for the “lesser of two evils” to serve in a Congress filled with representatives who lack the basic qualifications and ethical compass to do their jobs.I am tired of the corruption in our current election system from gerrymandering, the anemic controls on campaign contributions and spending, and the infusion of shameless lying into what we call “spin” or “campaign rhetoric.”Add to that the ever-present possibility of hacks into our election systems, legislation to disenfranchise voters, and baseless allegations of voter fraud that undermine public confidence in our elections.We may not be ready to adopt Mr. Grant’s proposal, but it is an important subject for debate that should not be ignored.Bruce WilderNew OrleansTo the Editor:Adam Grant is right: Winning elections swells the egos of leaders, who imagine that they’re superior to everyone else. But so does the admission system at elite universities like the one where he and I work. The tiny fraction of applicants who get in are led to think they’re better than the vast hordes who got rejected.That’s why we should admit students using a weighted lottery, like the one Mr. Grant proposes for selecting political leaders. Students would need to demonstrate certain competencies to be considered. But their admission would also rest on luck, so they could no longer pretend that they earned their way here simply by merit.The education of our leadership class starts early. And we’re teaching all the wrong lessons.Jonathan ZimmermanPhiladelphiaThe writer teaches education and history at the University of Pennsylvania.Reflections on the G.O.P. DebateRepublicans watched a broadcast of the debate at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library in California.Ariana Drehsler for The New York TimesTo the Editor:“From Party Stronghold, Debate Watchers Cheered Signals From a Post-Trump Era” (news article, Aug. 25) was perceptive. However, I’d like to add two important points.First, the Republican Party is finally making headway: Its candidates for president are starting to reflect the colors of America — white, Black and Asian, with one being a woman.The second is regressive. We saw very little civility between the candidates and from the candidates to the moderators. These people are running for president of the United States, our nation’s “face” to the world. Do we want that person to be crass, rude and disruptive?Jade WuCollier County, Fla.Replicating the ‘Magic’ of CampSilvia TackTo the Editor:As a devoted former summer camper myself, I appreciate all of the joys that Sandra Fox illuminates in her guest essay “There’s No Cure for Campsickness. That’s OK.” (Opinion, Aug. 21).Summer camps offer a kind of time-bound, immersive magic that, as Dr. Fox writes, can’t be replicated at home. But it’s also worth asking why kids have such a need for “an escape, an opportunity for self-reinvention and an invitation to be messier, weirder and just more myself” in the first place.Why can’t real life be more like summer camp? It can be, and already is (at least in some respects) for young people lucky enough to attend schools that are focused on helping them grow into the best possible versions of themselves. When learning is active, immersive and meaningful, kids become fluent in addressing real-world problems. In these schools, trust, strong relationships and a healthy, respectful community are prioritized as much or more than test scores.Long live summer camp! May its magic reach and serve every child. But real life can be magical too. In fact it must be, in order for young children to grow into capable, caring adults.Andy CalkinsGloucester, Mass.The writer co-directs the nonprofit education organization Next Generation Learning Challenges. More

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      Small Donors Are a Big Problem

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      One of the most important developments driving political polarization over the past two decades is the growth in small-dollar contributions.Increasing the share of campaign pledges from modest donors has long been a goal of campaign-finance reformers, but it turns out that small donors hold far more ideologically extreme views than those of the average voter.In their 2022 paper, “Small Campaign Donors,” four economists — Laurent Bouton, Julia Cagé, Edgard Dewitte and Vincent Pons — document the striking increase in low-dollar ($200 or less) campaign contributions in recent years. (Very recently, in part because Donald Trump is no longer in the White House and in part because Joe Biden has not been able to raise voter enthusiasm, low-dollar contributions have declined, although they remain a crucial source of cash for candidates.)Bouton and his colleagues found that the total number of individual donors grew from 5.2 million in 2006 to 195.0 million in 2020. Over the same period, the average size of contributions fell from $292.10 to $59.70.In an email, Richard Pildes, a law professor at N.Y.U. and an expert in campaign finance, wrote: “Individual donors and spenders are among the most ideological sources of money (and are far more ideological than the average citizen). That’s particularly true of small donors.”As a case in point, Pildes noted that in the 2022 elections, House Republicans who backed Trump and voted to reject the Electoral College count on Jan. 6 received an average of $140,000 in small contributions, while House Republicans who opposed Trump and voted to accept Biden’s victory received far less in small donations, an average of $40,000.In a 2019 article, “Small-Donor-Based Campaign-Finance Reform and Political Polarization,” Pildes wrote:It is important to recognize that individuals who donate to campaigns tend, in general, to be considerably more ideologically extreme than the average American. This is one of the most robust empirical findings in the campaign-finance literature, though it is not widely known. The ideological profile for individual donors is bimodal, with most donors clumped at the “very liberal” or “very conservative” poles and many fewer donors in the center, while the ideological profile of other Americans is not bimodal and features strong centrist representation.The rise of the small donor has been a key element driving the continuing decline of the major political parties.Political parties have been steadily losing the power to shape the election process to super PACs, independent expenditure organizations and individual donors. This shift has proved, in turn, to be a major factor in driving polarization, as the newly ascendant sources of campaign contributions push politicians to extremes on the left and on the right.The 2010 Supreme Court decision Citizens United v. F.E.C. was a crucial factor in shaping the ideological commitments of elected officials and their challengers.“The role of parties in funding (and thus influencing) campaigns at all levels of government in America has shifted in recent decades,” Thad Kousser, a political scientist at the University of California-San Diego, wrote in an email.“Parties often played a beneficial role,” he added, “helping to bind together broad coalitions on one side or the other and boosting electoral competition by giving in the most competitive races, regardless of a candidate’s ideology. Then much of their power was taken away, and other forces, often more ideologically extreme and always less transparent, were elevated.”This happened, Kousser continued, “through an accretion of campaign finance laws, Supreme Court decisions and F.E.C. actions and inactions. This has led us toward the era of independent expenditures and of dark money, one in which traditional parties have lost so much power that Donald Trump was able to win the Republican nomination in 2016, even though he began with little support among the party’s establishment.”The polarizing effects of changing sources of campaign contributions pose a challenge to traditional reformers.Raymond La Raja and Brian Schaffner, political scientists at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and Tufts, wrote in their 2015 book, “Campaign Finance and Political Polarization: When Purists Prevail”:The public intensely dislikes how campaigns are financed in the United States. We can understand why. The system of private financing seems rigged to favor special interests and wealthy donors. Much of the reform community has responded by calling for tighter restrictions on private financing of elections to push the system toward “small donor democracy” and various forms of public financing. These strategies seem to make sense and, in principle, we are not opposed to them.But our research and professional experience as political scientists have led us to speculate that these populist approaches to curtailing money in politics might not be alleviating but contributing to contemporary problems in the political system, including the bitter partisan standoffs and apparent insensitivity of elected officials to the concerns of ordinary Americans that appear to characterize the current state of U.S. politics.La Raja and Schaffner argued that “a vast body of research on democratic politics indicates that parties play several vital roles, including aggregating interests, guiding voter choices and holding politicians accountable with meaningful partisan labels. Yet this research seems to have been ignored in the design of post-Watergate reforms.”The counterintuitive result, they wrote,has been a system in which interest groups and intensely ideological — and wealthy — citizens play a disproportionately large role in financing candidates for public office. This dynamic has direct implications for many of the problems facing American government today, including ideological polarization and political gridlock. The campaign finance system is certainly not the only source of polarization and gridlock, but we think it is an important part of the story.Nathan Persily, a professor of law and political science at Stanford, observed in a telephone interview that the trend in campaign finance has been to “move money from accountable actors, the political parties, to unaccountable groups.”“The parties,” he pointed out, “are accountable not only because of more stringent contribution disclosure requirements but also by their role in actual governance with their ties to congressional and executive branch officials and their involvement with legislative decision making.”The appeal of extreme candidates well to the right or left of the average voter can be seen in the OpenSecrets listing of the top five members of the House and Senate ranked by the percentage of contributions they have received from small donors in the 2021-22 election cycle:Bernie Sanders raised $38,310,351, of which $26,913,409, or 70.25 percent, came from small donors; Marjorie Taylor Greene raised $12,546,634, of which $8,572,027, or 68.32 percent, came from small donors; Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez raised $12,304,636, of which $8,326,902, or 67.67 percent, came from small donors; Matt Gaetz raised $6,384,832, of which $3,973,659, or 62.24 percent, came from small donors; and Jim Jordan raised a total of $13,975,653, of which $8,113,157, or 58.05 percent, came from small donors.Trump provides an even better example of the appeal of extremist campaigns to small donors.In a February 2020 article, “Participation and Polarization,” Pildes wrote: “In 2016, Donald Trump became the most successful candidate ever in raising money from small donors, measured either in aggregate dollars or in the percentage of his total contributions. In total small-donor dollars for the 2015-16 cycle, Trump brought in $238.6 million.”Significantly, Pildes continued, “small donations ($200 or less) made up 69 percent of the individual contributions to Trump’s campaign and 58 percent of the Trump campaign’s total receipts.”Michael J. Barber, a political scientist at Brigham Young, argued in a 2016 paper, “Ideological Donors, Contribution Limits and the Polarization of American Legislatures,” that “higher individual contributions lead to the selection of more polarized legislators, while higher limits on contributions from political action committees (PACs) lead to the selection of more moderate legislators.”In addition to the impact of the small donor on weakening the parties, Pildes wrote in his email,a second major development is the rise of outside spending groups, such as super PACs, that are not aligned with the political parties and often work against the party’s leadership. Many of these 501(c) (tax exempt) groups back more ideologically extreme candidates — particularly during primaries — than either the formal party organizations or traditional PACs. The threat of such funding also drives incumbents to the extreme, to avoid a primary challenger backed by such funding.Details of the process Pildes described can be found in a 2020 study, “Assessing Group Incentives, Independent Spending and Campaign Finance Law,” by Charles R. Hunt, Jaclyn J. Kettler, Michael J. Malbin, Brendan Glavin and Keith E. Hamm.The five authors tracked the role of independent expenditure organizations, many of which operate outside the reach of political parties, in the 15 states with accessible public data from 2006 (before Citizens United) to 2016 (after Citizens United).The authors found that spending by ideological or single-issue independent expenditure organizations, the two most extreme groups, grew from $21.8 million in 2006 to $66 million in 2016.More important, the total spending by these groups was 21.8 percent of independent expenditures in 2006 (including political parties, organized labor, business and other constituencies). Ten years later, in 2016, the amount of money spent by these two types of expenditure group had grown to 35.5 percent.Over the same period, spending by political parties fell from 24 percent of the total to 16.2 percent.Put another way, in 2006, spending by political parties and their allies was modestly more substantial than independent expenditures by more ideologically extreme groups; by 2016, the ideologically extreme groups spent more than double the amount spent by the parties and their partisan allies.On a national scale, Stan Oklobdzija, a political scientist at Tulane, has conducted a detailed study of so-called dark money groups using data from the Federal Election Commission and the I.R.S. to describe the level of influence wielded by these groups.In his April 2023 paper, “Dark Parties: Unveiling Nonparty Communities in American Political Campaigns,” Oklobdzija wrote:Since the Citizens United decision of 2010, an increasingly large sum of money has decamped from the transparent realm of funds governed by the F.E.C. The rise of dark money — or political money routed through Internal Revenue Service (IRS)-governed nonprofit organizations who are subject to far less stringent disclosure rules — in American elections means that a substantial percentage of American campaign cash in the course of the last decade has effectively gone underground.Oklobdzija added that “pathways for anonymous giving allowed interest groups to form new networks and to create new pathways for money into candidate races apart from established political parties.” These dark money networks “channel money from central hubs to peripheral electioneering groups” in ways that diminish “the primacy of party affiliated organizations in funneling money into candidate races.”What Oklobdzija showed is that major dark money groups are much more significant than would appear in F.E.C. fund-raising reports. He did so by using separate I.R.S. data revealing financial linkages to smaller dark money groups that together create a powerful network of donors.Using a database of about 2.35 million tax returns filed by these organizations, Oklobdzija found that “these dark money groups are linked via the flow of substantial amounts of grant money — forming distinct network communities within the larger campaign finance landscape.”Intense animosity toward Trump among Democrats and liberals helped drive a partisan upheaval in dark money contributions. “In 2014,” Oklobdzija wrote by email, “dark money was an almost entirely Republican phenomenon. The largest networks — those around Crossroads GPS and Americans for Prosperity — supported almost exclusively conservative candidates.”In 2018, however, with Trump in the White House, Democratic dark money eclipsed its Republican counterpart for the first time, Oklobdzija wrote:In that year’s midterms, liberal groups that did not disclose their donors spent about twice what conservative groups did. Democrats also developed a network similar to those developed by Koches or Karl Rove with the 1630 Fund, which spent about $410 million total in 2020, either directly on elections or propping up liberal groups. In 2020, Democratic-aligned dark money outspent Republican-aligned dark money by almost 2.5 to 1. In 2022, total dark money spending was about 55 percent liberal and 45 percent conservative, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.A separate examination of the views of donors compared with the views of ordinary voters, “What Do Donors Want? Heterogeneity by Party and Policy Domain” by David Broockman and Neil Malhotra, political scientists at Berkeley and Stanford, finds:Republican donors’ views are especially conservative on economic issues relative to Republican citizens, but are typically closer to Republican citizens’ views on social issues. By contrast, Democratic donors’ views are especially liberal on social issues relative to Democratic citizens’, whereas their views on economic issues are typically closer to Democratic citizens’ views. Finally, both groups of donors are more pro-globalism than citizens are, but especially than Democratic donors.Brookman and Malhotra make the case that these differences between voters and donors help explaina variety of puzzles in contemporary American politics, including: the Republican Party passing fiscally conservative policies that we show donors favor but which are unpopular even with Republican citizens; the focus of many Democratic Party campaigns on progressive social policies popular with donors, but that are less publicly popular than classic New Deal economic policies; and the popularity of anti-globalism candidates opposed by party establishments, such as Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.Some of Brookman and Malhotra’s specific polling results:52 percent of Republican donors strongly disagree that the government should make sure all Americans have health insurance, versus only 23 percent of Republican citizens. Significant differences were found on taxing millionaires, spending on the poor, enacting programs for those with low incomes — with Republican donors consistently more conservative than Republican voters.On the Democratic side, donors were substantially more liberal than regular voters on abortion, same-sex marriage, gun control and especially on ending capital punishment, with 80 percent of donors in support, compared with 40 percent of regular voters.While most of the discussion of polarization focuses on ideological conflict and partisan animosity, campaign finance is just one example of how the mechanics, regulations and technology of politics can exacerbate the conflict between left and right.The development of microtargeting over the past decade has, for example, contributed to polarization by increasing the emphasis of campaigns on tactics designed to make specific constituencies angry or afraid, primarily by demonizing the opposition.The abrupt rise of social media has, in turn, facilitated the denigration of political adversaries and provided a public forum for false news. “Platforms like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter likely are not the root cause of polarization but they do exacerbate it,” according to a 2021 Brookings report.Some of those who study these issues, including La Raja and Schaffner, argue that one step in ameliorating the polarizing effects of campaign financing would be to restore the financial primacy of the political parties.In their book, La Raja and Schaffner propose four basic rules for creating a party-centered system of campaign finance:First, “limits on contributions to the political parties should be relatively high or nonexistent.” Second, “modest limits should be imposed on contributions to candidates.” Third, “no restrictions should be imposed on party support of candidates. Political parties should be permitted to help their candidates as much as desired with direct contributions or in-kind support.” Fourth, “public financing should support party organizations.”Persily, however, voiced strong doubts about the effectiveness of these proposals. “You cannot put the toothpaste back in the tube,” he said, noting that polarization is becoming embedded in the personnel and decision-making processes of political parties, especially at the state and local levels, making a return to the parties’ past role as incubators of moderation unlikely.Broockman, Nicholas Carnes, Melody Crowder-Meyer and Christopher Skovron provided support for Persily’s view in their 2019 paper, “Why Local Party Leaders Don’t Support Nominating Centrists.” Broockman and his colleagues surveyed 1,118 county-level party leaders and found that “given the choice between a more centrist and more extreme candidate, they strongly prefer extremists, with Democrats doing so by about two to one and Republicans by 10 to one.”If what Broockman and his co-authors found about local party leaders is a signal that polarized thinking is gaining strength at all levels of the Democratic and Republican Parties, the prospects for those seeking to restore sanity to American politics — or at least reduce extremism — look increasingly dismal.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Candidates Look to Cash In on First G.O.P. Debate — Especially Haley and Pence

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      Campaigns saw the nationally televised event, the first of the 2024 campaign, not just as a way to reach voters, but also as an appeal to donors big and small.Eric J. Tanenblatt, a top fund-raiser for former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, woke up Thursday morning in his Milwaukee hotel room to dozens of enthusiastic text messages and emails from donors expressing admiration for Ms. Haley’s performance, particularly her command of foreign policy and handling of questions about abortion.“Donors who have been sitting on the sidelines are now taking another look,” said Mr. Tanenblatt, an Atlanta businessman who has known Ms. Haley since she was a state legislator and attended the debate Wednesday night. “Obviously I am somewhat biased, but I think last night was a really good night for Nikki Haley.”Mr. Tanenblatt was not alone in his assessment. In conversations with more than a dozen Republican donors — including undecided backers and some who support other candidates — Ms. Haley was singled out as the night’s standout. The question now becomes whether her debate performance will translate into dollars.For years, the Republican money class has been seeking an alternative — any alternative — to former President Donald J. Trump. In some ways, donors were the most consequential audience for Wednesday night’s debate, and many of them, including those who have not yet backed a candidate this cycle, were in Milwaukee.While the official fund-raising totals won’t be known until October, when campaign quarterly filings are due, there were signs within hours of the debate — flurries of text messages, requests for introductions to campaigns and reports of fresh contributions — that the candidates’ performances, even if they might not change hearts and minds, could move piles of cash.A spokeswoman for Ms. Haley declined to release detailed numbers, but said the campaign had raised more money online in the 24 hours after the debate than it had on any day since the campaign started. “The response to Nikki’s debate performance has been overwhelming,” said the spokeswoman, Nachama Soloveichik.Former Vice President Mike Pence, whom the donors also identified as having a good night onstage, also saw an uptick, according to his campaign. Marc Short, a top adviser to Mr. Pence, said it had taken in at least 1,000 new contributions overnight. While most were smaller donors — valuable because they can sustain a campaign in the long term — “the bigger breakthrough last night was the major donors,” he said, including some who had funded other candidates but held back on Mr. Pence.“I think there’s been a large number of supporters who have been on the sidelines but have been looking for some of that spark,” Mr. Short said. “I think many of them saw that last night.”The immediate feedback reflected the traditional sympathies of major Republican donors. They favored candidates who they felt came off as authoritative but not obnoxious, with established résumés and hawkish foreign policy views. They also, naturally, tended to see their preferred candidates’ performances through hopeful eyes.These tendencies have proved to be blind spots before, especially in the face of the unwavering support of the small donor base that remains fiercely loyal to Mr. Trump. Several major donors downplayed the significance of the immediate returns, saying that no debate-dollar bump could surmount Mr. Trump’s popularity. Some who attended the debate described it as something of a social occasion or a sideshow.Unsurprisingly, the candidate who most defended — and sounded like — Mr. Trump on Wednesday night, Vivek Ramaswamy, was also the candidate who most rankled the high-dollar donors. Several of them said they thought Mr. Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur and author, had overplayed his hand, citing his bombast and confrontational style.“Vivek made a complete jackass out of himself,” said Andy Sabin, a major donor to Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina. “He is so clueless about what’s going on in this country.”But his performance appeared to have appeal for some small-dollar donors. A spokeswoman for Mr. Ramaswamy, Tricia McLaughlin, said the campaign raised $625,000 in the 24 hours after the start of the debate — the biggest single fund-raising day of the campaign, with an average donation size of $38.“Unlike some donor-favorite candidates onstage,” Ms. McLaughlin said, “Vivek is not worried about what the donor class has to say about his politics and performance, which is why he is unconstrained in speaking the truth.”Mr. Sabin said he thought Mr. Scott had “done what he was supposed to do,” but the crowded, fast-paced format, in which candidates frequently talked over the moderators, made it hard for Mr. Scott to stand out. Money is less of a concern for Mr. Scott than for Mr. Pence or Ms. Haley: His campaign had $21 million on hand at the end of June, and groups supporting him have spent tens of millions of dollars on advertising in the early states.“Tim stayed out of trouble and out of the fray, had good answers,” Mr. Sabin said. “He probably should have been more involved in this, but I don’t think that had anything to do with him.”A major donor to Senator Tim Scott said the debate’s crowded, fast-paced format made it hard for the candidate to stand out.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesGov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who went into the debate with the highest poll numbers of any candidate on the stage, was also quieter than many had expected.Some unaffiliated donors said it was a missed opportunity for Mr. DeSantis. Among the backers of other candidates, Bill Bean, an Indiana businessman and longtime supporter of Mr. Pence, said Mr. DeSantis “did not have that moment where he just separated himself from the whole field that I think some people were looking for.”The days after the debate kicked off a major slate of campaign travel and new ads for Mr. DeSantis, according to Jay Zeidman, a major DeSantis fund-raiser. “We view this as the turn of a new chapter,” he said — a reference, in part, to the turbulence of the governor’s campaign in recent months, as his poll numbers have lagged. Mr. DeSantis’s super PAC, Never Back Down, confirmed that it would spend $25 million on ads in Iowa and New Hampshire in the next two months, a buy that was first reported by The Washington Post.Mr. Pence, who has struggled to gain traction in the race and still lags far behind his rivals in fund-raising, spoke the most of any candidate on the stage last night, and many donors took notice.“There was a lot of energy there,” said Mr. Tanenblatt, the Haley donor. “I think that surprised people.”Several bundlers and donors — some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because they still plan to support Mr. Trump — suggested that Mr. Pence’s performance and steadfast appeal to evangelicals were likely to help him in Iowa, which is crucial to his campaign.Before Wednesday’s debate, Mr. Bean, who has given $100,000 to a super PAC supporting Mr. Pence, hoped that Mr. Pence would have the opportunity to “show the American people who he really is.”That objective was largely met, Mr. Bean said, although he felt the debate format was too fast-paced and chaotic to give any candidate enough time to cover significant topics.“The biggest thing that was accomplished last night,” Mr. Bean said, was that Mr. Pence “moved past the Jan. 6 issue, which I thought was probably the biggest single thing out there that he had to do.” More

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      Trump’s Mug Shot: ‘Not Comfortable’ but Potentially Lucrative

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      The former president’s campaign immediately began fund-raising off his booking photo and started selling merchandise featuring it.Former President Donald J. Trump has done his best to appear unfazed and unbowed by having been indicted four times since March, but even he acknowledged that he did not enjoy one particular element of his booking in Georgia on Thursday night on racketeering charges: the mug shot.“It is not a comfortable feeling — especially when you’ve done nothing wrong,” he told Fox News’s website in an interview afterward.Nonetheless, he made the most of it.Not long after the release of the mug shot — the first taken of Mr. Trump in any of the criminal proceedings he faces and the first known to have been taken of any former president — it appeared prominently on Mr. Trump’s campaign website, under a “personal note from President Donald J. Trump.”At the bottom were several tabs users could click to donate to his campaign in small-dollar increments.Mr. Trump quickly posted the picture on X, marking his return to the platform formerly known as Twitter for the first time since he was banned by the company’s former ownership following the attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob on Jan. 6, 2021.The joint fund-raising website his campaign helps maintain immediately started offering mugs, beverage coolers and T-shirts in different colors and sizes with the mug shot and the words, “Never Surrender!” (Those words despite the fact that the photo was taken upon his surrender to authorities in Georgia.)Mr. Trump’s oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., posted on X a link to his own website featuring merchandise with the photo. The younger Mr. Trump said he would donate proceeds from the sales to a legal-defense fund that his father’s advisers had set up to assist with bills accrued by people who are witnesses in the cases.By late afternoon Friday, the Trump campaign had sent an email blast with the photo and Mr. Trump’s booking number.The mug shot represented perhaps the former president’s best chance to juice his fund-raising numbers in several weeks, after raising several million dollars following his March indictment in New York on charges related to hush-money payments to a porn actress but seeing that figure drop after the Justice Department’s special counsel, Jack Smith, filed charges against him in June for mishandling national security documents.Even before the mug shot was snapped at the jail in Atlanta, an email from his joint fund-raising committee primed his supporters by saying, “It’s been reported that if I am unjustly indicted and arrested in the Atlanta Witch Hunt, a mug shot will be taken of me.”Campaign officials did not make overnight fund-raising figures public on Friday morning.In a sign of how politically valuable the Trump campaign anticipated the mug shot could be to its fund-raising, one of Mr. Trump’s top advisers, Chris LaCivita, issued a warning on social media — with 11 siren emojis — to political entities that might seek to profit from the photo by using it to suggest a connection to the Trump campaign.“If you are a campaign, PAC, scammer and you try raising money off the mugshot of @realDonaldTrump and you have not received prior permission …WE ARE COMING AFTER YOU you will NOT SCAM DONORS,” he wrote on X. The photo was released by the Fulton County sheriff’s department and is a public document.Mr. Trump has never shied away from opportunities to wring financial benefit from what is happening in his life and career. But in this case the personal and the political were mixed in ways that he acknowledged were out of the ordinary even by his standards.“They insisted on a mug shot and I agreed to do that,” Mr. Trump told Fox News’s website after he was booked on a lengthy list of charges stemming from his efforts to remain in power after his election loss. “This is the only time I’ve ever taken a mug shot.”(President Biden, vacationing in Lake Tahoe, was asked by a reporter if he had seen the mugshot. “I did see it on television. Handsome guy,” he said.)In the New York case, the office of the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, opted against a mug shot, which is used to identify criminal defendants in case they flee while awaiting trial. Federal officials came to the same conclusion that there was no need to take another picture of Mr. Trump, arguably one of the most recognizable faces on the planet.But in Fulton County, Ga., on Thursday, officials adhered strictly to protocol, even as Mr. Trump appeared at the jail with news helicopters tracking his motorcade.That decision left some of Mr. Trump’s rivals unsettled.“I think it’s disgraceful,” said Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, on Fox News on Friday. “I mean, the idea that we’re seeing a mug shot of a 77-year-old former president. I mean, how did we get to this point? And I don’t know that anyone in America should look at that and feel good about it.” More

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      When Is the Second Debate, and Who Will Be There?

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      The Republican National Committee will hold its second primary debate on Sept. 27 at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California.Eight Republicans clawed their way onto the stage on Wednesday for the first presidential primary debate, with some using gimmicks and giveaways to meet the party’s criteria.That may not cut it next time.To qualify for the second debate, which will be held on Sept. 27 at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif., candidates must register at least 3 percent support in a minimum of two national polls accepted by the Republican National Committee, according to a person familiar with the party’s criteria. That is up from the 1 percent threshold for Wednesday’s debate.Organizers will also recognize a combination of one national poll and polls from at least two of the following early nominating states: Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina. The R.N.C. is also lifting its fund-raising benchmarks. Only candidates who have received financial support from 50,000 donors will make the debate stage, which is 10,000 more than they needed for the first debate. They must also have at least 200 donors in 20 or more states or territories.Candidates will still be required to sign a loyalty pledge promising to support the eventual Republican nominee, something that former President Donald J. Trump refused to do before skipping Wednesday’s debate. He has suggested that he is not likely to participate in the next one either.As of Wednesday, seven Republicans were averaging at least 3 percent support in national polls, according to FiveThirtyEight, a polling aggregation site.That list included Mr. Trump, who is leading Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida by an average of more than 30 percentage points; the multimillionaire entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy; former Vice President Mike Pence; Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina; Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and Mr. Trump’s United Nations ambassador; and former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey.Based on the R.N.C.’s polling requirements, Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota and Asa Hutchinson, the former Arkansas governor, are in jeopardy of not qualifying for the second debate, which will be televised by Fox Business.Both candidates resorted to unusual tactics to qualify for the first one.Mr. Burgum, a wealthy former software executive, offered $20 gift cards to anyone who gave at least $1 to his campaign, while Politico reported that Mr. Hutchinson had paid college students for each person they could persuade to contribute to his campaign. More

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      The Secrets of Debate Swag

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      Oh, the games campaigns play with political merch. They may surprise you.Whatever happens at the first Republican presidential primary debate on Aug. 23, whatever revelations emerge from the melee of eight (count ’em) contenders, whatever slings and arrows are thrown, and whoever is declared the winner, one thing is certain: There will be a viral moment or two; a riposte that becomes a meme. Campaign staff will be watching. And before you can say “in my prime” or “too honest,” it will end up on a T-shirt in a candidate’s store.These days, retail politics has a whole new meaning. At a point in the electoral cycle when candidates are desperate to distinguish themselves and have only minutes onstage to do so, being able to deliver a zinger that will play on via swag is a key advantage.Ever since the inauguration of George Washington, voters have been participating in the electoral process by means of merch. Back then, it was fancy commemorative buttons that were sewn onto clothes (and were, largely, accessible only to the well-off).Over the years, the “store” — effectively an alternate way for candidates to elicit small-dollar donations and add to their supporter base by appealing to consumer culture — has grown in importance as technology has transformed our ability to make stuff, sell stuff and mine data. Now, almost as soon as presidential contenders declare their candidacy and their websites go live, the shops go live with them.“It’s one of the biggest changes over the last 20 years,” said Ron Bonjean, a Republican strategist and a founder of ROKK, a public affairs firm.By their stuff ye shall know them. Or at least know something about their strategy. It’s no longer just bumper stickers and baseball caps with a candidate’s name and the electoral year, but a constantly evolving stream of purpose-made product.And because of that, by their merch they are also finding new ways to know you.Casey DeSantis in her “Where Woke Goes to Die” leather jacket on a campaign stop in Iowa in June.Hannah Fingerhut/Associated PressA quarter-zip sweatshirt on offer in the DeSantis for President store inspired by Casey DeSantis’s jacket.Campaign store offerings have essentially become Rorschach tests for the electorate: What people buy, the slogans that get their shopping juices flowing, help determine how the candidates sell their ideas.“It’s a way to trial how candidates market themselves and how people respond to that,” said Claire Jerry, a curator of political history at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, who had been scouting the landscape at the Iowa State Fair.Which is why campaign store offerings are getting so, well, tailored, the better to put their own spin on the popular conversation. Not the one taking place about policy among talking heads, but the one taking place on Instagram, X (the platform formerly known as Twitter) and TikTok. It’s a bona fide trend.Get Ready for the RevolutionJust in time for the debate, Vivek Ramaswamy’s team rebranded his main product stream (he offers about 65 total SKUs, as stock-keeping units of an item are called) to move away from his original focus on woke-ness, or anti-wokeness, to a new “Revolutions” theme., including what Tricia McLaughlin, a senior adviser on the campaign, called “Thomas Paine-style” campaign literature and slogans, with 18th-century script and sepia tones.At the Iowa State fair, Nikki Haley (about 70 SKUs), who has had great success with products featuring the slogan “In Her Prime” — a reference to Don Lemon’s much criticized comment that she was past her prime — modeled her “Underestimate me, that’ll be fun” T-shirt, which became its own talking point.Doug Burgum, the governor of North Dakota (about 40 SKUs), has “Doug Who?” shirts, playing up his underdog status. When Casey DeSantis wore a leather jacket with an alligator on the back superimposed over a map of Florida with the words “Where Woke Goes to Die” on it, the image went viral — and ended up on a quarter-zip sweatshirt in the store. The DeSantis campaign boasts it is the fastest selling of its more than 70 products.Clockwise from top left, candidate merchandise that exploits a moment from Vivek Ramaswamy, Nikki Haley, Mike Pence and Doug Burgum.And when the federal indictment against Donald Trump was opened and included a quotation from Mr. Trump calling Mike Pence “too honest” for insisting there was no constitutional basis for rejecting Biden electoral votes in the 2020 election, the Pence campaign jumped on the phrase and made it the centerpiece of his store.This kind of quick reaction “allows you to meet people where they are, rather than trying to drag them over to where you are,” Ms. McLaughlin said. (The “Dark Brandon” phenomenon, which President Biden’s team has appropriated to great success, is a prime example.)Arguably, where people are — in the middle of cancel culture, locked in their own social media echo chambers — is not the most positive place, and making it into merch is a cynical move to exploit our factionalism and us-versus-them mentality. But then, fashion is often the locale where culture and politics meet. Swag just makes it obvious.Indeed, the shop has become so central to campaigning that not long after a group of Republican strategists created WinRed, the party’s donation-processing digital platform, in 2019, it has included support for opening storefronts available free of charge to every candidate. That helped erase any barrier to entry for a campaign that may not have the complex operations needed to design, source, produce and distribute merch. (Democrats have had a similar entity, ActBlue, since 2004.)Every Republican candidate who has qualified for the debate on Wednesday night uses WinRed for their shop, except Chris Christie, the rare candidate, Republican or Democratic, to not have a store, viewing it as a drain on personnel resources. Donald J. Trump, who qualified for the debate but has decided not to appear, also uses the platform.WinRed vets its recommended vendors, like Ace Specialties, “known for making the MAGA hat,” and Merch Raise, allowing candidates to state that products are “made in the U.S.A.” And all of them work on a drop-ship model, meaning they produce items only after they are ordered, so campaigns can test as many designs as they want without the expense of holding inventory.That has allowed campaigns to be ultra-responsive to buzzword moments and to weaponize them for their own purposes. After all, sites like Redbubble and Etsy have built their business on exploiting virality, including viral political moments. Why shouldn’t the protagonists themselves profit from the give-and-take between publicity and product? Not to mention exploit our desire for stuff.Reading the Merch Leaves“People like the tangible sense of participating in a campaign,” Ms. Jerry, of the Smithsonian, said. And we have become conditioned to appreciate acquisition.“If someone just asks if you want to donate, you might say no,” Ms. Jerry continued. “But if you can get a T-shirt?” Tim Scott has even sent out direct mailings asking supporters what “new piece of Tim Scott merchandise” they would like to see. (The socks are kind of fun.)Merch turns individuals into billboards in a cycle of shopping satiation and public support. “When you see people in a crowd identified as being on your side, it creates a sense of excitement,” Ms. Jerry said. Case in point, the ocean of red baseball caps at Trump rallies, which sends a visual message that is, to many in our current environment, more convincing than any poll.Even more significantly, merch allows candidates to see what is resonating with voters and adjust their message accordingly, much like a focus group. When you buy some merch, you are giving a candidate not just your money, email and address, but (whether you realize it or not) psychographic information that can be used to geo-target mailings and commercials. The more varied the offerings, the more information they elicit.If you buy, say, a camo hat in the Burgum store, you may suddenly find yourself on the receiving end of lots of Second Amendment information. If you buy a “Joe Biden Makes Me Cry” baby onesie at the DeSantis store, or a “Mamas for DeSantis” T-shirt, you may be inundated with information about the battle over school curriculums and abortion. If you buy a “Faith” tee from Tim Scott, it’s understood as a signal that you care about religious freedoms.Clockwise from top left, candidate merchandise from Vivek Ramaswamy, Mike Pence, Doug Burgum and Ron DeSantis, on what appear to be the same computer-generated bodies.There’s only one problem: The WinRed-effected ease of shop creation, in which every candidate’s store is powered by the same platform, means that they all look pretty much the same.Down to the structure (four horizontal squares of products), the color scheme (red, white and blue, duh, with some gray, black, white and pink thrown in for good measure) and the chubby baby torso depicted in each onesie, or the generic female and male torsos, all of which resemble A.I.-generated fake humans from a very bland heartland. It can make going from one shop to the other a bit like entering the Twilight Zone.And, given the need to stand out from the crowd, having a storefront that looks just like the other guy’s — and is populated with the same bots as the other guy’s — can also seem less than ideal.“I don’t think anyone notices,” said Mr. Bonjean, the strategist (he is not working for any of the candidates). Which may be true for those already decided, but given the early stage of the campaign cycle, anyone … um, shopping around for a candidate and visiting the sites may have a different opinion.Still, the current reality has led to a situation in which, Mr. Bonjean said, not only are campaigns primed to jump on any one-liner that can easily translate into merch, but also they are likely teeing them up, seeding quips in debate responses, the better to jump-start a new political product placement cycle.“We don’t think it’s ever going away,” Ms. Jerry said.Watch for it Wednesday, and then see what sentiment ends up on the sleeves, socks or sunglasses strap coming soon to a voter near you. More

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      Beyond the Debate, Republicans Are Deep in the 2024 Ad Wars

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      Many of the party’s presidential candidates have spent heavily as they try to introduce themselves to voters. Ads for Donald Trump, meanwhile, look ahead to a matchup with President Biden.Americans who don’t live in early presidential nominating states — that is to say, most Americans — might not be aware of the advertising wars already underway in the 2024 campaign. For months, Republican candidates have been on the airwaves, plugging away at themes we are likely to see more of during the party’s high-stakes first debate on Wednesday.This year, they face an unusual challenge: Former President Donald J. Trump has effectively taken on the role of an incumbent. The rest of the candidates have spent tens of millions of dollars to introduce themselves to primary voters, stake out policy positions and chart a course to the general election — only to be overshadowed by Mr. Trump.“I think of advertising as spitting out Ping-Pong balls,” said Ken Goldstein, a professor of politics at the University of San Francisco who has researched political advertising. Mr. Trump’s influence, he said, means that other candidates’ messages often do not reach voters: “There’s this big, huge wind blowing those Ping-Pongs back in their face.”The gamble for the challengers is that the wind will shift — or go away entirely.“If your opponent is winning 57 percent of the vote and you have 2, there is zero percent chance you are making that difference up with advertising,” said Lynn Vavreck, a professor of political science at the University of California, Los Angeles. Even in a typical election year, Dr. Vavreck said, the persuasive effects of campaign television advertisements are small, and fade fast.“That doesn’t mean everybody polling under 10 percent should stop,” Dr. Vavreck said. “They need to be seen as a candidate who’s taking it seriously. That includes advertising.”Here’s a look at some of the themes and strategies emerging in the campaign advertising for the more than a dozen Republican candidates.How are the candidates dealing with Trump?Republican candidates face an unusual challenge: Former President Donald J. Trump has effectively taken on the role of an incumbent.Christian Monterrosa for The New York TimesMany of the Republican candidates, particularly the lower-polling ones, do not address the former president at all in their ads. Others take indirect shots at him.Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey and his allies are the loudest exception.In a series of acerbic ads, a super PAC supporting Mr. Christie has ripped Mr. Trump over his indictments, his electoral losses and his impeachments. In an ad that ran nationally after Mr. Christie qualified for the debate on Wednesday, the narrator goads Mr. Trump to join him onstage: “Are you a chicken, or just a loser?”Ads on New Hampshire and Iowa stations by the main super PAC backing Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida have criticized Mr. Trump elliptically — for instance, asking why the former president is attacking Republican governors rather than focusing his attention on Democrats and President Biden. (Mr. Trump, one ad concludes, “is all about himself.”) In another ad, a man covers his Trump bumper sticker with a DeSantis one.Other groups not connected to any candidate have spent millions opposing Mr. Trump.Win It Back, a super PAC that shares leadership with the Club for Growth, a conservative anti-tax group, has bought $5.6 million in ads, according to an analysis by AdImpact, a media-tracking firm. The ads including lengthy broadcast spots in Iowa and South Carolina that feature voters who once supported Mr. Trump but are now looking for a new candidate.A political action committee supporting Mr. Trump, in the meantime, has turned its attention to the general election, with a 60-second ad attacking Mr. Biden.Who is spending the most?Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina and his allies have spent $46.2 million on ads, including a huge outlay on commercials planned for the weeks after Wednesday’s debate.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesThe main super PAC supporting Mr. DeSantis has spent $17 million buying television ads, while MAGA Inc, a PAC supporting Mr. Trump, has spent $21.4 million, according to the AdImpact analysis.But that doesn’t come close to the $46.2 million spent in support of Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, between his campaign and a super PAC backing him. That figure includes a huge outlay on ads planned for the weeks after Wednesday’s debate.A PAC supporting Nikki Haley has spent $8.4 million on ads — about the same amount spent on ads for Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota, between his largely self-funded campaign and a super PAC supporting him. Ms. Haley’s ads include broadcast spots in New Hampshire and Iowa that draw on her experience as ambassador to the United Nations, and a clip describing her as the “surprise rock star” of the Trump administration.Perry Johnson, a businessman who has lent his own campaign $8.4 million, has spent $1.9 million on ads. One ad that ran in Illinois features him walking determinedly through a blizzard of computer-generated charts and mathematical equations, representing his love of statistics and quality standards.Many of his online ads have included a plea for donations to get him over the threshold of 40,000 donors required to participate in Wednesday’s debate. (The Republican National Committee said on Tuesday that he had not qualified.)Pleas for donors to contribute just $1 — a clear attempt at meeting the debate threshold — also featured heavily in digital ads by SOS America PAC, which is supporting Mayor Francis X. Suarez of Miami. The super PAC has spent $1.7 million on ads, the AdImpact analysis shows.What themes are emerging?Many of the candidates have appealed to anti-abortion voters in their ads.Meridith Kohut for The New York TimesBorder security, China, a touch of Ukraine, inflation, cleaning up Washington. And, of course, the culture wars.Mr. DeSantis’s super PAC has amplified his resistance to coronavirus lockdown orders, and lauds him for “pushing back against the woke left.” In a video clip in one of the ads, he says: “If you’re coming for the rights of parents, I’m standing in your way.” The group’s ads have also gone after Disney and Bud Light.Another ad from the group aims to appeal to anti-abortion voters, quoting Mr. Trump relaying criticism that the six-week abortion ban Mr. DeSantis signed in Florida was “too harsh.”The super PAC supporting Ms. Haley ran a digital ad in May that highlighted her “pro-life” voting record in South Carolina, and criticized Mr. Biden for encouraging protests after Roe v. Wade was overturned. “We need a president who unites Americans,” she says, “even on the toughest subjects.”Perhaps no candidate has made more of his opposition to abortion than former Vice President Mike Pence, and his ads have addressed this head-on. One of his longer ads focuses entirely on his anti-abortion record.Both Ms. Haley and Mr. Pence have used the phrase “the ash heap of history” in stump speeches that wind up in their ads — Ms. Haley in reference to the future of “Communist China,” and Mr. Pence in reference to the overturning of Roe.What’s the visual style of the ads?Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign ads often feature him speaking directly at the camera.Christian Monterrosa for The New York TimesSo far, most of the ads have been pretty “cut-and-paste,” as Mr. Goldstein put it. Inspiring personal stories, a few grim shots of Mr. Biden, uplifting music, a few wives offering endorsements of their husbands, adoring crowds, American flags.The entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy (total ad outlay: $334,000, plus $240,000 more from a supporting super PAC) has made a slightly different presentation. Unlike other candidates’ campaign ads, his spots do not rely on dramatic voice-overs, but feature him in a room, speaking directly at the camera.The super PAC supporting Mr. Scott tried another approach to introduce the candidate: ads featuring prospective voters speaking to the camera about the senator, as if speaking to their neighbor: “Have you seen him work a crowd?” “Did you see Tim Scott on ‘The View’?” “He will crush Joe Biden.”Who has the best Ronald Reagan cameo?Recordings of Ronald Reagan have appeared in ads for former Gov. Asa Hutchinson, Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Ramaswamy.Dirck Halstead/Getty ImagesDoes a 40-year-old endorsement count? An ad for former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas — seeking $1 donations to help him reach the debate stage — consists almost entirely of a short clip of former President Ronald Reagan, sitting at his desk in the Oval Office and addressing the camera.“If you believe in the values I believe in, there’s a man you should get to know,” Mr. Reagan says. “His name is Asa Hutchinson.”Mr. Reagan had nominated Mr. Hutchinson to serve as the United States attorney for the Western District of Arkansas. The clip appears to be from an endorsement for Mr. Hutchinson in the 1986 Senate race. (He lost to Dale Bumpers, an incumbent Democrat.)Mr. Ramaswamy invokes Mr. Reagan in a digital ad, saying the former president “led us out of our national malaise” carried over from the 1970s. Mr. Ramaswamy pledges to lead America out of its latest “national identity crisis.” More