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      What Polling After the First Debate Tells Us About Round 2

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      Nikki Haley received a small lift, but another good performance Wednesday may simply splinter the opposition to Donald Trump.Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley had a debate within the debate. Kenny Holston/The New York TimesWith the benefit of hindsight, there was one big winner of the first Republican presidential debate: Donald J. Trump.He has gained more support in the post-debate polls than any other candidate, even though he didn’t appear onstage last month. He’s up 3.5 percentage points in a direct comparison between polls taken before and after the debate by the same pollsters. Only Nikki Haley — up 1.5 points across the seven national pollsters — can also claim to have gained a discernible amount of ground.This basic lesson from the first debate might just be the most important thing to keep in mind heading into the second Republican debate Wednesday night. Candidates might be flashy. They might be broadly appealing. They might hit MAGA notes. But after the last debate, there’s that much less reason to think this one will make a big difference in the race. It might even add up to helping Mr. Trump, by splintering his potential opposition.Here are some lessons from the last debate — and what they mean for the next one.Being center stage isn’t enoughNo one seemed to command more attention during the debate than Vivek Ramaswamy. Perhaps no one ought to be more disappointed in the post-debate polls.Despite gaining a fair share of the headlines, Mr. Ramaswamy failed to earn additional support. He has even lost ground in the FiveThirtyEight Republican polling average since the debate.Why didn’t he surge? Is it because he was “annoying,” as the Times Opinion columnist Michelle Goldberg put it? Or maybe it’s because he mostly appealed to Trump supporters, who weren’t going to flip to the young upstart?Either way, his failure to turn a breakout performance into a polling breakthrough raises questions about his upside. It could also raise doubts about everyone else’s upside — at least as long as voters remain loyal to Mr. Trump.Standing up for a faction still paysIf any of the actual debaters “won” the debate, the polls say it was Ms. Haley.Her gains have been fairly modest nationwide, but they have been clearer in the early states. She has re-established herself as a relevant candidate by leapfrogging Ron DeSantis in New Hampshire and overtaking a fellow South Carolinian, Tim Scott, to move into third place in Iowa.Ms. Haley won the old-fashioned way: She vigorously defended the traditional, neoconservative foreign policy views of the Republican Party in a high-profile showdown with Mr. Ramaswamy. And she was modestly rewarded by the party’s moderate establishment voters — a group that is distinct for its committed opposition to Mr. Trump.It’s hard to see a moderate-establishment-type like Ms. Haley seriously contending for the Republican nomination in a populist-conservative party, let alone with a juggernaut like Mr. Trump in the race. But it is quite easy to imagine her adding to the challenges facing Mr. DeSantis or other mainstream conservatives, by winning over many moderate voters who might otherwise represent the natural base of a broad anti-Trump coalition.Her re-emergence as a relevant factional player was probably the most important thing that came out of the debate, and, at least for now, it helped Mr. Trump’s chances by further splitting his opposition. If she builds on her last performance in the next debate, Mr. Trump might count as the winner yet again.Broad appeal isn’t enoughThere’s a fairly strong case that Mr. DeSantis had a decent debate. He promoted a conservative message with fairly broad appeal throughout the party and stayed out of the fray. In the end, a plurality of Republican voters, as well as plenty of pundits, said he performed the best.Nonetheless, he has slipped another two points since then. Of course, he has been sliding in the polls for months, so there’s not necessarily any reason to assume that his debate performance was the cause. But at best, he failed to capitalize on a rare opportunity to regain his footing. At worst, the emergence of Ms. Haley created an additional threat to his left flank.There’s a lesson in Mr. DeSantis’s failure to turn a reasonable performance into gains in the polls: It’s hard to be a broadly appealing candidate in primary politics. Broad appeal, of course, is necessary to win the nomination. But it’s often easiest to build support by catering to the wishes of an important faction, as Ms. Haley did when she blasted Mr. Ramaswamy’s anti-interventionist foreign policy.Usually, broadly appealing candidates overcome this problem with brute force: superior name recognition, resources, media attention and so on. If Mr. Trump weren’t in the race, perhaps Mr. DeSantis would run a broadly conservative campaign and win the nomination by relying on many of these attributes. But right now, it’s Mr. Trump, not Mr. DeSantis, who has the traits of a winning conservative with broad appeal. Not only could Mr. Trump skate by with broadly appealing platitudes if he wanted — but he doesn’t even need to show up.Trump isn’t beating himselfIn August, someone could have plausibly wondered whether Mr. Trump might lose support because of the first debate. Maybe voters would have held his nonparticipation against him. Maybe his opponents would have gone after him. Maybe some voters might have decided they liked one of the other candidates after seeing that person for the first time.Maybe not. In the end, Mr. Trump emerged unscathed. No one really landed a punch on him, whether on the issues or for being too “chicken” to debate. More important, the candidates didn’t draw support away from the former president.After the last debate, we can probably cross “some voters might decide they liked one of the other candidates” off the list of “maybe this will hurt Trump” possibilities. But there’s still an opportunity for the candidates to try something new by attacking him vigorously on his recent abortion comments or for failing to show up. There’s no reason to expect either tactic to yield a huge shift in the race, but it would at least give some reason to wonder whether maybe, just maybe, Wednesday night’s debate will have a different outcome than the first. More

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      The Teacher Shortage: Why, and What to Do?

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      More from our inbox:Mr. McCarthy, Put Country Before EgoDebate, Yes, but Without an AudienceReauthorize PEPFARHow Unions Help Companies Eleanor DavisTo the Editor:Re “People Don’t Want to Be Teachers Anymore. Can You Blame Them?,” by Jessica Grose (newsletter, nytimes.com, Sept. 13):As a retired teacher, I read this with heartfelt interest. Ms. Grose noted the cost of getting a degree, low pay and lack of respect as leading causes for our current shortage of teachers.Then again, when I entered the College of Education at the University of Minnesota in 1980, my friends thought I was crazy. There was little respect even then. Pay was even worse.I began as a pre-law student my freshman year in college. And then it happened. I saw the light. I remembered those teachers who had saved me. Teachers who had seen potential in me that I could not see for myself. My life was transformed by teachers.The courtroom seemed like a selfish ambition. The classroom felt like a journey of love, an opportunity to be inspired and to inspire each and every day. I walked into my college guidance counselor’s office and asked to transfer into the College of Education.No regrets. The 35 years I spent in the classroom taught me so many important lessons. I learned the importance of believing in excellence. I learned that I could help others become excellent. And most important, I discovered that belonging to a professional learning community was eternally gratifying.I understand that people don’t want to be teachers anymore. That was true in the 1980s, too. But for many of us who did become teachers, bliss. Can you say the same in your job today?Dan LarsenBarrington, Ill.To the Editor:Jessica Grose is spot on that financial barriers, mental wellness, culture wars and a profession that is out of step with the wants and needs of this generation are all contributing to teacher shortages across the country, especially in low-income communities.She also notes that people who consider teaching later in life could be a source of optimism. Don’t count Gen Z out. We just welcomed over 2,200 new Teach for America teachers — 40 percent more than last year, and most are recent college graduates.This generation is giving us so much optimism: They understand the experiences and needs of today’s students, and want careers that have meaningful impact, align with their values and foster community. Collectively we have to create the conditions for this generation to say yes to careers in education.Jemina R. BernardStamford, Conn.The writer is president and chief operating officer of Teach for America.To the Editor:I agree with everything Jessica Grose has to say in this piece about the current decline in the number of college graduates who choose to become teachers. I would, however, suggest an additional reason for this decline. Simply put, women graduates today have more career choices than in the past.When I graduated in 1962, most of my friends and I became teachers. What were our choices? Teaching, nursing, or go to Katharine Gibbs and learn to type. Today I have two 24-year-old granddaughters; one is an architectural engineer, the other is enrolled in a graduate program that will enable her to become a clinical researcher.Neither even considered a career as a teacher. Nor did my 51-year-old daughter, who is an attorney.Beverly StautzenbachVenice, Fla.Mr. McCarthy, Put Country Before Ego Kenny Holston/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Hard Right in Congress Sows Havoc,” by Carl Hulse (news analysis, front page, Sept. 25):Mr. Hulse’s article is deeply disturbing insofar as 20 or so radical conservative Republicans can force a government shutdown.There is a simple solution if Speaker Kevin McCarthy would choose to put the country before his own political ego and his party: Walk across the aisle with willing Republicans and speak with Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic minority leader, to vote with the Democrats to approve the budget.Mr. McCarthy should ask himself what a leader and patriot like Senator John McCain would do in a similar situation. Mr. McCarthy’s constituents might surprise him with their support if he demonstrates some real courage.Brian HousealBrunswick, MaineDebate, Yes, but Without an Audience Brian Snyder/ReutersTo the Editor:My suggestion to improve the debates being broadcast on TV would be to get rid of the audience. Then candidates would no longer waste time throwing out these sound bites for the applause and cheers.Perhaps that may help them to listen to the question posed to them by the moderator and possibly answer it.In addition, getting rid of the audience might even force people watching the debates at home to think for themselves when making a decision regarding a candidate, since they would have no idea what everyone else is thinking.Imagine that.Laura KleinPinecrest, Fla.Reauthorize PEPFARAdministering an H.I.V. test in 2012 at a Johannesburg clinic supported by PEPFAR.Foto24/Gallo Images, via Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “Will Republicans Abandon This Medical Triumph?” (column, Sept. 21):Nicholas Kristof’s piece about PEPFAR is spot on: PEPFAR’s work to prevent and treat H.I.V. and AIDS around the world has saved over 25 million lives, and should absolutely be reauthorized by Congress.But even beyond that extraordinary achievement, PEPFAR has ushered in a culture of accountability and efficiency across virtually all sectors of global health, not just H.I.V. and AIDS care.PEPFAR’s accountability standards require foreign governments and implementing NGOs to use data, evaluations (such as randomized control trials), and advanced analytics to measure results and demonstrate value for money.The result: It now costs PEPFAR dramatically less to save each life. In 2014, it cost $315 to give lifesaving treatment to one person for one year. By 2022, that had fallen to $59. Those are industry-changing results.Countries are now using tactics developed by PEPFAR for other health programs, from disaster response to seasonal outbreaks.With PEPFAR’s focus on efficiency and results, the American people can be confident that another five-year authorization would be money well spent.Hannah CooperTyler SmithThe writers are the co-founders of Cooper/Smith, an organization focused on using data to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of foreign aid programs.How Unions Help Companies Evan Cobb for The New York TimesTo the Editor:What has been missing in articles about the current United Auto Workers strike at General Motors, Ford and Stellantis is that having a union is not just about fighting for good wages and benefits but also about fighting for its important role in helping companies.Having a union, whether it’s at G.M., Starbucks or a hospital, can help management avoid making bad decisions, create innovative changes by utilizing the skills and knowledge of the frontline staff, and optimize the use of new technologies.Having a “collective voice” to pressure management to avoid making bad decisions and consider alternative approaches has resulted in improving productivity and the quality of products in companies and hospitals up to 30 percent, reducing costs and at times creating new jobs and additional revenue.Maybe the current strike can help U.S. managers realize that unions can be of benefit to them, too, rather than view them as a burden?Peter LazesWest Stockbridge, Mass.The writer is a visiting professor at the School of Labor and Employment Relations, Penn State, and co-author of the book “From the Ground Up: How Frontline Staff Can Save America’s Healthcare.” More

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      Can the Next GOP Debate Amount to More Than a Race for Second Place?

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      The most important audience might be Republican donors who are waiting to put their money behind a candidate who can take on Donald Trump.The second Republican presidential debate without Donald J. Trump is missing the front-runner’s star power, but the performances of his rivals on Wednesday are still expected to be deeply consequential — forecasting whether the 2024 field of Republicans will consolidate around a single Trump alternative.For months, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has been the chief challenger to Mr. Trump. But the governor’s downward slope in the polls — some surveys in the early states of New Hampshire and South Carolina have shown him dipping to third place, or worse — have provided a potential opening to wrest that title from him for the rest of the field at Wednesday night’s debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California.Among those watching at home will be some of the Republican Party’s biggest donors who have so far held out from backing any of the candidates. Major contributors are planning to watch the second debate carefully, according to people in contact with several of them, in order to see who, if anyone, they might rally behind in the coming months.All seven candidates at the debate are facing the dual-track challenge of trying to emerge as a singular rival of Mr. Trump without letting the former president entirely run away with the contest before that happens. His criminal indictments — now at 91 counts across four jurisdictions — have not slowed his momentum, with each week bringing new surveys showing Mr. Trump above 50 percent nationally among Republicans, and no rival registering even half that level of support.Those who have qualified for Wednesday’s debate are: Mr. DeSantis; former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina; Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina; former Vice President Mike Pence; former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey; the businessman Vivek Ramaswamy; and Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota. Mr. Trump is skipping the debate to travel to Michigan for an event with union workers.The most immediate stakes of the debate are likely financial. The last, major public fund-raising deadline before voting in the primary begins is at the end of September. Few events can generate waves of small donations — or help fence-sitting multimillionaires pick a candidate — quite like a powerful showing on the debate stage.After landing some lines at the first debate, Ms. Haley boasted of raising more than $1 million in the next 72 hours. Mr. DeSantis raised $1 million in 24 hours, his campaign said. And Mr. Scott, who struggled for airtime, was among those not to say anything about his post-debate haul.Gov. Ron DeSantis has slipped in recent polling.Desiree Rios for The New York TimesFor Mr. DeSantis, a superlative showing could quiet the chorus of critics who worry he doesn’t have what it takes to stop Mr. Trump, despite a $130 million super PAC and his standing as the next-most-popular Republican candidate. For others, like Ms. Haley, whom some of the party’s most influential donors are said to be taking a fresh look at after the first debate, it is a chance to try to supplant Mr. DeSantis’s persistent second-place standing.“You need the field to narrow, so this debate and every debate is important because people are getting to see the options they have,” said Jay Zeidman, a DeSantis donor and fund-raiser in Texas who hosted a recent event for the governor.Mr. Zeidman’s father, Fred, a veteran fund-raiser in several presidential races, has been an early backer of Ms. Haley, underscoring the divide among donors who would like to see an alternative to Mr. Trump as the nominee.“Nobody really paid attention to her or knew who she was until the first debate,” said the elder Mr. Zeidman, a fixture in G.O.P. fund-raising circles who was appointed by President George W. Bush as chairman of the U.S. Holocaust Museum.“I was with her in New York at a fund-raiser last week and it was a room packed with major New York donors who were really hearing her for the first time,” he added. “This is a pivotal week.”Still, there are questions about how much money will even matter in a race that Mr. Trump leads by so large a margin that many G.O.P. donors have grown fatalistic about the final result.Campaigning in South Carolina on Monday, Mr. Trump said his opponents “ought to stop wasting their time.” He added: “They’re wasting a lot of time with these ridiculous debates that nobody’s watching.”Donald Trump campaigning on Monday in South Carolina.Doug Mills/The New York TimesAnother key factor in shaping the size of the field will be the Republican National Committee’s debate criteria. Candidates must hit a 3 percent polling threshold to be on the stage in California and have amassed 50,000 donors. One candidate at the last debate, former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, failed to qualify on Wednesday.The debate thresholds will rise to 4 percent in polling and 70,000 donors for a Nov. 8 debate in Miami.Ms. Haley has ticked up in the polls in both Iowa and New Hampshire in recent weeks but that rise could be as much about a television advertising blitz from her super PAC as her showing in the first debate. In the last two months, her super PAC was the biggest advertiser in both states, spending $6.5 million in Iowa and close to $5 million in New Hampshire — more than her closest competitors, according to data from AdImpact, a media-tracking firm.She capitalized on the perception of a rising candidate as she went on a fund-raising spree through New York, Florida and Texas, where she has made inroads with some of the same donors who backed Mr. Bush and his father, according to people who have attended her events and are familiar with her fund-raising. She has support from the state’s prosperous Indian American community and from major figures in the energy sector. Texans supporting her include members of the oil-rich Hunt family, the textiles magnate Arun Agarwal and the real estate developer Harlan Crow, who was revealed recently as a longtime benefactor of Justice Clarence Thomas.Such busy fund-raising trips, however, illustrate an unseen advantage that Mr. Trump holds: He raises all his money online — which requires virtually nothing from the candidate himself — while the rest of the field is making mad dashes across the nation to attend fund-raisers.Mr. Pence, according to an adviser, spent 15 days in September raising money — more than half the month. And Mr. DeSantis, who had multiple events across Texas last week, is following up the debate with a trip to Northern California to raise more money ahead of the crucial Sept. 30 deadline.Nikki Haley is looking to build on her momentum from the first debate.Travis Dove for The New York TimesStill, even if Ms. Haley delivers another donor-approved performance on Wednesday night, there’s little chance the field will narrow as much as Republican donors and leaders are hoping. And this is good news for Mr. Trump, who benefits from a large field dividing up the non-Trump vote.Campaigns have been lobbying aggressively for favorable rules in future debates both publicly and behind the scenes. Mr. Scott, for instance, has argued that stage placement should be determined by a candidate’s standing in early state polling, not national surveys. The DeSantis team has pressed for even higher polling thresholds — even 8 percent — to further narrow the stage as the primaries near.Debate rules can make a big impact in how television audiences perceive the candidates. In Milwaukee at the first debate, Mr. Christie faced audible boos in the audience after he was critical of Mr. Trump. But the crowd will be much different, and much smaller, in California. A person familiar with the event planning said around 700 people would attend on Wednesday.Mr. Christie has signaled to several people that he plans to make Mr. Trump more central to his argument at this debate. At the last one, he spent more time trading barbs with Mr. Ramaswamy when the moderators generally avoided mentioning Mr. Trump’s name, calling him “the elephant not in the room.”Tim Scott campaigning in New Hampshire in early September. His team said he intended to take a more aggressive approach at the next debate.Mel Musto for The New York TimesMr. Scott, who had an underwhelming first debate and is polling in the single digits in both national and early state polls, is still raising plenty of campaign cash, including from a New York fund-raising event last week hosted by the billionaire Stanley Druckenmiller. Mr. Scott will be saturating the airwaves over the fall — his super PAC has already reserved $40 million in advertising, the most of any candidate in the primary.Mr. Scott’s team has signaled he will take a more aggressive approach in the second debate. In the first debate, Mr. Scott declined to take shots at his competitors. Since then, he has called out Mr. Trump, Ms. Haley and Mr. DeSantis over their positions on abortion and has said that Mr. Ramaswamy has taken the “wrong” positions on U.S. foreign policy toward Israel and Taiwan.But a more confrontational posture would be out of character for Mr. Scott, who told the radio host Hugh Hewitt to expect the “same optimistic, positive approach to debating” in an interview last week. “If we’re going to have a food fight, someone has to bring us back to the issues that are germane to the American people,” Mr. Scott said.Anjali Huynh More

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      When Is the Next Republican Debate? Time, Channel and How to Watch

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      The debate, hosted by Fox Business Network, will be held from 9 to 11 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday night at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif.The second debate of the Republican presidential primary is on Wednesday, Sept. 27, from 9 to 11 p.m. Eastern time.The debate, sanctioned by the Republican National Committee and hosted by Fox Business Network, will take place at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif.Where can I watch it?There are several ways to watch.Fox Business Network will broadcast the debate. Coverage beforehand will start at 6 p.m. Eastern, and post-debate coverage will run through 1 a.m., at which point a rerun of the debate will be shown.The debate will be broadcast simultaneously on Fox News, with programming starting at 8:30 p.m. Fox Nation, the channel’s streaming network, will carry it as well.Univision will show the debate in Spanish and livestream it at UnivisionNoticias.com. Its streaming platform, ViX, will also have live coverage.The streaming platform Rumble will also show the debate.Which candidates will be onstage?Seven candidates have qualified for the debate:Gov. Doug Burgum of North DakotaFormer Gov. Chris Christie of New JerseyGov. Ron DeSantis of FloridaNikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and former United Nations ambassadorFormer Vice President Mike PenceThe entrepreneur Vivek RamaswamySenator Tim Scott of South CarolinaFor these candidates, time is running short to gain on the front-runner in the race, former President Donald J. Trump. They will need to seize on moments like debates, with national audiences, if they hope to be competitive in the early contests in Iowa and New Hampshire. Mr. Trump’s closest rival, Mr. DeSantis, has slipped in polling lately, and the other candidates have largely been stuck in single digits in national surveys.This debate will have one fewer participant than the first debate, which drew nearly 13 million viewers and was also the most-watched cable telecast of the year outside of sports. Former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas failed to meet the increased requirements for the second debate, which demanded 50,000 individual donors (up from 40,000) and 3 percent in a minimum of two national polls accepted by the R.N.C. (up from 1 percent), or in one national poll plus two polls from early-voting states.No one who missed the first debate qualified for the second.Where the Republican Presidential Candidates Stand on the IssuesAs the Republican presidential candidates campaign under the shadow of a front-runner facing dozens of felony charges, The New York Times examined their stances on 11 key issues.Who is moderating the debate?Two Fox News anchors — Dana Perino and Stuart Varney — will moderate alongside Ilia Calderón of Univision.What about Trump?Just like last time, he will skip the debate. He easily met the donor and polling thresholds, but he has refused to sign a required pledge to support the Republican nominee no matter who it is.Instead, he will deliver a prime-time speech to current and former union members in Detroit, inserting himself into the dispute between automakers and the striking United Automobile Workers union. More

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      7 Candidates Qualify for Second Republican Debate; Trump Won’t Attend

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      The Republican National Committee announced the lineup Monday night: Doug Burgum, Chris Christie, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Mike Pence, Vivek Ramaswamy and Tim Scott.Seven candidates qualified for the second Republican presidential debate, the Republican National Committee announced Monday night, just one fewer than participated in the first debate last month.The event, scheduled for Wednesday from 9 to 11 p.m. Eastern time, will include:Gov. Doug Burgum of North DakotaFormer Gov. Chris Christie of New JerseyGov. Ron DeSantis of FloridaNikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and former United Nations ambassadorFormer Vice President Mike PenceThe entrepreneur Vivek RamaswamySenator Tim Scott of South CarolinaWhere the Republican Presidential Candidates Stand on the IssuesAs the Republican presidential candidates campaign under the shadow of a front-runner facing dozens of felony charges, The New York Times examined their stances on 11 key issues.While former President Donald J. Trump, the runaway front-runner in polls, easily exceeded the donor and polling requirements for participation, he is planning to skip the debate. He also skipped the first debate, which still managed to draw nearly 13 million viewers and was also the most-watched cable telecast of the year outside of sports.For his rivals, time is running short to gain ground on the leader. Mr. Trump’s closest rival, Mr. DeSantis, has fallen in recent polling, and the other candidates have been unable to make substantial breakthroughs. They will need to seize on moments like debates, with national audiences, to make noise in early contests in Iowa and New Hampshire.Former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, who qualified for the first debate, failed to meet the tougher requirements for the second. He needed 50,000 donors (up from 40,000 last month) and 3 percent (up from 1 percent) in at least two national polls accepted by the R.N.C., or in one national poll plus two polls from early-voting states.It is unclear whether he missed both requirements or just one. He did not meet the new polling threshold, according to a New York Times analysis, but his campaign did not respond to requests to confirm whether he had met the donor threshold.The Lineup for the Second Republican Presidential DebateSeven candidates have made the cut for the next debate. Donald J. Trump will not participate.No one who missed the first debate qualified for the second. Most of the lesser-known candidates — including former Representative Will Hurd of Texas, the talk-show host Larry Elder, the businessman and pastor Ryan Binkley and the businessman Perry Johnson — reported having met the increased donor requirement, but 3 percent in multiple polls was a bridge too far.Like last month, when Mr. Trump recorded an interview with the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson to be released while his rivals were on the debate stage, Mr. Trump has his own counterprogramming plan. He will be in Detroit to give a prime-time speech to current and former union workers as members of the United Automobile Workers near the two-week mark on their strike.Mr. Trump has also refused to sign a pledge to support the Republican nominee regardless of who it is, which is a requirement for debate participation. More

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      How Dana Perino, G.O.P. Debate Moderator, Walks a Fine Line at Fox News

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      The former press secretary in the Bush White House will moderate the next Republican debate. She’s managed to rise at Fox without being a Trump supplicant.Dana Perino can punch and parry with the best of them. But she could be better at ducking.In 2008, when Ms. Perino was the White House press secretary for President George W. Bush, she got clocked in the face with a boom microphone in the scuffle that broke out after a journalist threw his shoes at Mr. Bush.“I had a black eye for six weeks,” Ms. Perino, now an anchor for Fox News, said in an interview last week from her sun-dappled Upper West Side apartment.That kind of fracas — and the nearly two years she spent taking questions from reporters in the White House briefing room — may be good preparation for her next act: moderating the Republican presidential debate on Wednesday in Simi Valley, Calif.It will be the biggest moment for Ms. Perino at Fox News since she began co-hosting “The Five” in 2011. Not known for being as provocative or partisan as many of her colleagues behind the desk, Ms. Perino, 51, has spent a good part of the last decade trying to thrive as a Bush Republican working for a network where loyalty to former President Donald J. Trump is often the ticket to high ratings and the career advancement that accompanies them.Ms. Perino, who also co-hosts the two-hour morning news show “America’s Newsroom,” is one of the relatively few White House aides to make the leap from politics to news anchor. She says she modeled her transition after two other former West Wing staff members who had made the transition — George Stephanopoulos, the ABC News anchor who served as Bill Clinton’s communications director, and Diane Sawyer, also of ABC, who was an assistant to Richard M. Nixon.Ms. Perino at her final briefing as the White House press secretary for President George W. Bush on Jan. 16, 2009.Doug Mills/The New York TimesCurrent and former colleagues said that she has managed to persevere at Fox by being neither a Trump supplicant nor fierce critic. During the raucous discussions on “The Five,” she can often be seen ducking the fray, flashing a knowing smile as her co-hosts mock Mr. Trump’s liberal antagonists.And she feels no need to deliver the pro-Trump monologues that other conservative hosts have made a staple of their programs.“If she tried to fake it, she knows people would see through her,” said Tony Fratto, a former Bush administration official who worked with Ms. Perino in the White House and remains a friend. Mr. Fratto said that Ms. Perino’s independence was something she was determined to keep while working her way up at the network.“She’s very rational and respectful of people with different views,” he said.Ms. Perino is one of the few Fox anchors to have never interviewed Mr. Trump. And she doesn’t appear especially eager to do so.When Dominion Voting Systems sued Fox News over its promotion of conspiracy theories relating to Mr. Trump’s loss in 2020, some of Ms. Perino texts with her colleagues became public, revealing how little she thought of the former president and his claims that extensive voter fraud cost him the election. She said as much on air as well and told Mr. Fratto, who was representing Dominion at the time, in one text exchange how she was being threatened. “The maga people are crushing me for it,” she wrote, “and I even have death threats now.”Asked last week whether she would prefer it if Mr. Trump participated in this week’s debate — he will skip it, as he did the debate last month in Milwaukee — Ms. Perino wasn’t exactly brimming with enthusiasm.“Sure,” she said. If she were advising Mr. Trump, she said, she would encourage him to go. But she also said she believed his absence presents his rivals with opportunities to break out in ways that have eluded them so far.She said she believed that the last debate, which was hosted by her Fox News colleagues Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, was not particularly successful for the candidates because they spent so much time interrupting each other.“The candidates made a decision to break the rules, and to talk over each other,” she said.She will not shy away from interrupting them if they do the same, she said. And she does not fear playing the role of schoolmarm if she needs to. (Her co-moderator in the debate, Stuart Varney of Fox Business, is no shrinking violet either.)Ms. Perino, the co-host of the morning news show “America’s Newsroom,” is one of the relatively few White House aides to make the leap from politics to news anchor.Amir Hamja/The New York Times“I’m happy to be that,” she said, adding that she hopes that isn’t necessary. “I think that for them, they should not want that either, right, because it didn’t help them. If you think about that debate, there was no consensus of who won.”Preparing for the debate can be a thankless task, as many moderators before her have discovered. The candidates often dismiss the carefully drafted questions the moderators have written.Friends and former colleagues said that Ms. Perino has a knack for preparedness that exceeds most.“When she would prepare President Bush for press conferences, you’d go through the anticipated questions,” said Ed Gillespie, who served as counselor to the president during Mr. Bush’s second term. “A question would come, and it would be one that Dana said would come. And then there would be another that Dana said would come. And a third. And every single question would be one that Dana said would come.”President George W. Bush with Ms. Perino in the White House briefing room in August 2007, after announcing that she would be taking over as press secretary.Doug Mills/The New York TimesHer Fox colleague Greg Gutfeld, a fellow host on “The Five,” said he pokes fun at her for how she comes to the show armed with a notebook full of ideas based on the news articles that are driving the day. “Unlike me, she reads the articles. She’s like the grade-A student in your class,” Mr. Gutfeld said. “She doesn’t throw it in your face. But she’s prepared.”Former colleagues said that Ms. Perino wasn’t one to pull her punches when it came to briefing the president, which she always came to extensively prepped.“If you’re preparing the president, you have to do it nicely, of course, since he’s the one who was elected,” said Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state during Mr. Bush’s second term. “But you also have to be willing to say, ‘Mr. President, that answer isn’t going to fly.’ Dana did that. And I think President Bush respected her for it.”Ms. Perino’s second act as a news anchor puts her back where she started her career right out of college. After working as a disc jockey on the overnight shift at a country music station in Pueblo, Colo., she graduated from the University of Southern Colorado and moved to the Midwest, eventually landing a job as a reporter for a television station in Champaign, Ill. She decided a life of covering local news — holiday parades, municipal government meetings — wasn’t for her.“I didn’t see how you could get ahead quickly. And I had an ambition,” she explained, adding that she never saw herself becoming “the replacement for Tom Brokaw.” When she left local news, she said, she thought that would be the end of her time in television news. “I really thought if I do this I’ll never work in TV again.”Her first big job in the Bush White House came in 2006 when, after holding a series of communications jobs throughout Washington, she was hired at age 34 as the deputy press secretary under Tony Snow, a former host of “Fox News Sunday.” He stepped down in 2007, after being diagnosed with colon cancer. Mr. Bush named Ms. Perino as the new press secretary.“She can handle you all,” the former president told the room of journalists. Now, she is the journalist. And the G.O.P. presidential candidates will have to handle her. More

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      Doug Burgum and Asa Hutchinson May Not Make the Next GOP Debate

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      Low poll numbers could keep the long-shot Republicans off the stage next Wednesday in the second presidential primary debate.After eking their way into the first Republican presidential debate last month, Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, long-shot candidates, appear to be in jeopardy of failing to qualify for the party’s second debate next week.Both have been registering support in the low single digits in national polls and in the polls from early nominating states that the Republican National Committee uses to determine eligibility.The threshold is higher for this debate, happening on Wednesday at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif. Several better-known G.O.P. rivals are expected to make the cut — but the candidate who is perhaps best known, former President Donald J. Trump, is again planning to skip the debate.Mr. Trump, who remains the overwhelming front-runner for the party’s nomination despite a maelstrom of indictments against him, will instead give a speech to striking union autoworkers in Michigan.Who Has Qualified for the Second Republican Presidential Debate?Six candidates appear to have made the cut for the next debate. Donald J. Trump is not expected to attend.Some of Mr. Trump’s harshest critics in the G.O.P. have stepped up calls for the party’s bottom-tier candidates to leave the crowded race, consolidating support for a more viable alternative to the former president.Lance Trover, a spokesman for the Burgum campaign, contended in an email on Wednesday that Mr. Burgum was still positioned to qualify for the debate. Mr. Hutchinson’s campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment.Emma Vaughn, a spokeswoman for the R.N.C., said in an email on Wednesday that candidates have until 48 hours before the debate to qualify. She declined to comment further about which ones had already done so.Before the first debate on Aug. 23, the R.N.C. announced it was raising its polling and fund-raising thresholds to qualify for the second debate, which will be televised by Fox Business. Candidates must now register at least 3 percent support in a minimum of two national polls accepted by the R.N.C. The threshold for the first debate was 1 percent.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.“While debate stages are nice, we know there is no such thing as a national primary,” Mr. Trover said in a statement, adding, “Voters in Iowa and New Hampshire are the real people that narrow the field.”Mr. Burgum’s campaign has a plan to give him a boost just before the debate, Mr. Trover added, targeting certain Republicans and conservative-leaning independents through video text messages. A super PAC supporting Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who is running a distant second to Mr. Trump in Republican polls, has used a similar text messaging strategy.Mr. Burgum, a former software executive, is also harnessing his wealth to introduce himself to Republicans through television — and at considerable expense. Since the first debate, a super PAC aligned with him has booked about $8 million in national broadcast, live sports and radio advertising, including a $2 million infusion last week, according to Mr. Burgum’s campaign, which is a separate entity. His TV ads appeared during Monday Night Football on ESPN.As of Wednesday, there were six Republicans who appeared to be meeting the national polling requirement, according to FiveThirtyEight, a polling aggregation site.That list was led by Mr. Trump, who is ahead of Mr. DeSantis by an average of more than 40 percentage points. The list also includes the multimillionaire entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy; Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and Mr. Trump’s United Nations ambassador; former Vice President Mike Pence; and former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey.And while Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina was averaging only 2.4 percent support nationally as of Wednesday, he is also expected to make the debate stage by relying on a combination of national and early nominating state polls to qualify.Mr. Scott has performed better in places like Iowa and his home state than in national polls, and his campaign has pressed the R.N.C. to place more emphasis on early nominating states.The R.N.C. also lifted its fund-raising benchmarks for the second debate. Only candidates who have received financial support from 50,000 donors will make the debate stage — 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.While Mr. Burgum’s campaign said that it had reached the fund-raising threshold, it was not immediately clear whether Mr. Hutchinson had.Both candidates resorted to some unusual tactics to qualify for the first debate.Mr. Burgum 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.Candidates will still be required to sign a loyalty pledge promising to support the eventual Republican nominee, something that Mr. Trump refused to do before skipping the first debate.Shane Goldmacher More

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      Trump Planning Detroit Visit During Second GOP Debate

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      Looking past the Republican primary, Donald Trump and his campaign are already gearing up for a possible rematch with President Biden.Former President Donald J. Trump is planning to travel to Detroit on the day of the next Republican primary debate, according to two Trump advisers with knowledge of the plans, injecting himself into the labor dispute between striking autoworkers and the nation’s leading auto manufacturers.The trip, which will include a prime-time speech before current and former union members, is the second consecutive primary debate that Mr. Trump is skipping to instead hold his own counterprogramming. He sat for an interview with the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson that posted online during the first G.O.P. presidential debate in August.The decision to go to Michigan just days after the United Auto Workers went on strike shows the extent to which Mr. Trump wants to be seen as looking past his primary rivals — and the reality that both he and his political apparatus are already focused on the possibility of a rematch with President Biden.So instead of attending the next G.O.P. debate — on Sept. 27 in California at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum — Mr. Trump intends to speak to over 500 workers, with his campaign planning to fill the room with plumbers, pipe-fitters, electricians, as well as autoworkers, according to one of the Trump advisers familiar with the planning. Mr. Trump has not directly addressed the wage demands of striking workers and has attacked the union leadership, but he has tried to more broadly cast himself on the side of autoworkers.The campaign is also considering the possibility of having Mr. Trump make an appearance at the picket line, although the adviser said such a visit, which could involve difficult logistics given the former president’s security protections, is unlikely.The former president has long prided himself on his appeal to rank-and-file union workers — even as most union leaders have remained hostile to him, and as Mr. Biden has called himself the most pro-union president in history. In the 2016 campaign, an adviser to Mr. Trump, Paul Manafort, sought to establish a back channel with organized labor in Michigan and Wisconsin in the hopes the A.F.L.-C.I.O. would scale back its efforts to help the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton. It did not appear to go anywhere, but underscored the areas that Mr. Trump considered vital in the general election.Mr. Trump won Michigan in the 2016 election, one of the states in the so-called blue wall that crumbled for Democrats that year. But Mr. Biden carried Michigan by more than 150,000 votes in 2020, and it is seen as a critical state for Democrats in 2024.The Trump campaign has produced a radio ad that will begin running on Tuesday in Detroit and Toledo, Ohio, trying to cast Mr. Trump as aligned with autoworkers. The same Trump adviser said the ad targeted union workers and men, and will air on sports and rock-themed stations.“All they’ve ever wanted is to compete fairly worldwide and get their fair share of the American dream,” the narrator says in the ad. “Donald Trump calls them great Americans and has always had their backs.”Mr. Trump has repeatedly criticized the transition to electric vehicles, and in a post on his social media site Truth Social over the weekend, he called it an “Electric Car SCAM.” The radio ad also uses the Biden administration’s support for the transition to electric vehicles to attack Mr. Biden.The ad does not specifically mention the strike, which began last week against all big three Detroit automakers, and in which the union is seeking a 40 percent wage increase over four years.Ammar Moussa, a press officer for Mr. Biden’s campaign, said in a statement, “Donald Trump is going to Michigan next week to lie to Michigan workers and pretend he didn’t spend his entire failed presidency selling them out at every turn.”Mr. Biden has sided with the striking workers, sending two top aides to Detroit and saying at the White House hours after the strike began that “workers deserve a fair share of the benefits they helped create.”The United Auto Workers pointedly decided not to endorse Mr. Biden this spring ahead of the current labor clash, with the union’s new president, Shawn Fain, expressing concern about the labor elements of the transition to electric vehicles. At the same time, in a memo, Mr. Fain said Mr. Trump would be a “disaster” if he returned to the White House.In an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” broadcast over the weekend, Mr. Trump was critical of Mr. Fain, saying workers had been “sold down the river by their leadership.”“I don’t know the gentleman, but I know his name very well, and I think he’s not doing a good job in representing his union,” Mr. Trump said. “Because he’s not going to have a union in three years from now. Those jobs are all going to be gone, because all of those electric cars are going to be made in China.”In a statement after The New York Times reported on Mr. Trump’s Detroit plans, Mr. Fain said that “every fiber of our union is being poured into fighting the billionaire class and an economy that enriches people like Donald Trump at the expense of workers.”“We can’t keep electing billionaires and millionaires that don’t have any understanding what it is like to live paycheck to paycheck and struggle to get by and expecting them to solve the problems of the working class,” he said. More