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      How Hard Will It Be for DeSantis to Beat Trump? Nixon vs. Reagan in 1968 Offers a Clue.

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      Ron DeSantis, the 44-year-old governor of Florida, has entered the presidential race, establishing himself as the most formidable Republican rival to Donald Trump.Mr. Trump, an inveterate liar who tried to overturn the last election, is alienating to a wide swath of voters, and many establishment Republicans have been happy to hunt out alternatives, particularly in Mr. DeSantis. After a rough midterm for Republicans that included the defeat of several Senate candidates endorsed by Mr. Trump, the former president appeared vulnerable.But since then, it has grown clear that counting him out as the likely Republican presidential nominee is foolhardy. Several factors — among them, the intense support he draws from a sizable chunk of the Republican base and his singular talent for commanding media attention — help explain why Mr. Trump holds a commanding position in the primary. History offers at least one parallel for why it will be so difficult for Mr. DeSantis and other G.O.P. contenders, like Nikki Haley, 51, the Trump administration’s ambassador to the United Nations, and Senator Tim Scott, 57, Ms. Haley’s fellow South Carolinian, to take him down.There was, more than a half century ago, another de facto leader of the Republican Party who reeked of failure. Pundits mocked and dismissed him as a has-been. Rivals across the ideological spectrum no longer feared him and cheered on his slide into irrelevancy.By the end of 1962, few believed there was a future for Richard Nixon, the former vice president. In 1960, he lost one of the closest-ever presidential races to John F. Kennedy, and members of the liberal Republican establishment, including Dwight Eisenhower, were glad to see him fall.After losing to Kennedy, Nixon tried to regroup, entering the 1962 California governor’s race against the well-liked Democratic incumbent, Pat Brown. Nixon, who had served as a representative and senator from the state, was initially expected to triumph and use the governorship as a steppingstone to the presidency. Instead, Brown swatted Nixon away after the former vice president had to endure a bruising primary battle against a Republican who was popular with the sort of movement conservatives who would, in the coming years, seize control of the party.On the morning after his loss to Brown, Nixon famously told the assembled press at the Beverly Hilton Hotel they wouldn’t have him to “kick around anymore.” That November, the journalist Howard K. Smith titled a television segment “The Political Obituary of Richard M. Nixon.”In the wake of these humiliations, Nixon’s tenuous comeback hinged on persuading both Republican voters, who could find more attractive warriors for their cause, and influential party and media elites that he in fact wasn’t completely finished. In 1964, Nixon flirted with running for president but backed away. (Mr. Trump, of course, did not feel chastened for supporting weak and beatable candidates in the midterms last year, and instead waited roughly a week to announce another presidential run.)Nixon decided to support Barry Goldwater, the far-right Arizona senator who lost in a landslide to Lyndon Johnson, the Democratic president. Nixon’s attachment to Goldwater won him some plaudits with the base of the party — he had been one of the few prominent Republicans to stick with the senator — but didn’t help alter the perception that he was a serial loser. To complete his rehabilitation, in the 1966 midterms, he strategically stumped for anti-Johnson Republicans who were poised to ride the white backlash to the Great Society and civil rights programs.By 1968, Nixon had established himself as a foreign policy maven, having undertaken many world tours in the 1960s, and cast himself as an arch, erudite critic of the Johnson administration.His period of vulnerability was briefer, but Mr. Trump today, like mid-’60s Nixon, has reasserted himself as a party kingpin. Now he, too, is contending with a popular governor from a large swing state.In the 1968 G.O.P. primary, Nixon actually had to outflank three prominent Republican governors — George Romney of Michigan, Nelson Rockefeller of New York and Ronald Reagan of California — who could offer, in the immediate term at least, more allure.Reagan, who had defeated the formidable California Governor Brown in 1966, was actually older than Nixon but had the swagger and ease of a much younger man, marrying the sort of sunny optimism Nixon could never muster with the raw appeal to a growing reactionary vote that Nixon craved.Just as Mr. DeSantis, with his wars on critical race theory, “woke” Disney and Covid restrictions, is trying to outmaneuver Mr. Trump on the cultural terrain that’s always been so vital in Republican primaries, Reagan outshone Nixon with his open disdain for Johnson’s landmark civil rights agenda, the burgeoning antiwar movement and the emerging hippie counterculture. He railed against the “small minority of beatniks, radicals, and filthy-speech advocates” upending California and successfully demoralized Brown, who remarked, shellshocked, after Reagan’s triumph that “whether we like it or not, the people want separation of the races.”Nixon rebuffed Reagan and the others in one of the last primaries where delegates and party insiders, rather than the will of voters, played a significant role in determining the nomination.Here the present diverges from history. Nixon was far more introspective, methodical and policy-minded than Trump. He was, by 1968, a significantly stronger general election candidate, winning the most votes — Trump has twice lost the popular vote — despite the segregationist George Wallace’s third-party bid, which ate into Nixon’s support.But just as a divided primary field worked to Nixon’s advantage, so it may for Mr. Trump, especially if several other candidates become viable. In such a scenario, Mr. Trump may need only pluralities in pivotal early states to take the nomination. His core fan base might be enough. Though Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign was often shambolic, it managed a finely tuned nativist, anti-free trade and anti-globalization message that cut through the noise of a chaotic primary season. In Nixonian fashion, Mr. Trump tapped into his party’s reactionaries and delighted the grass roots.The question is whether Mr. Trump can do it again. One of Nixon’s great political strengths was to assume, even at the height of his powers, the position of the aggrieved — to convince a palpable mass of voters that they, and he, were the outsiders. Genuinely self-made, this posture came naturally to Nixon. Mr. Trump, though the son of a millionaire real estate developer, has nevertheless effectively adopted it throughout his political career, once boasting of his love for the “poorly educated.”Mr. DeSantis enters the fray hoping that Mr. Trump’s many flaws, continuing legal troubles and political baggage ultimately render him weaker than he appears today. But looking at the historical parallel, even Reagan, a once-in-a-generation political talent, could not dislodge Nixon. As Mr. DeSantis’s Twitter-launch debacle suggests, he will need to quickly, and considerably, improve his standing. Perhaps then, with the help of a Trump implosion, can he hold out hope for 2024 — or even, as Reagan’s example suggests, a future presidential run.If 1968 is any guide, Mr. Trump will be tough to beat. In a crowded field, among a hungry younger generation of contenders like Mr. DeSantis, he will have to manufacture anew this kind of populism. He might just do it.Ross Barkan is an author and a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine.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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      The G.O.P. Primary: ‘City on a Hill’ or ‘American Carnage’?

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      Michelle Cottle, Ross Douthat, Carlos Lozada and Listen to and follow ‘Matter of Opinion’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicIt’s 77 weeks before Election Day and over half a dozen people have already thrown their hats into the G.O.P race. On our new podcast, “Matter of Opinion,” Michelle Cottle, Ross Douthat, Carlos Lozada and Lydia Polgreen take a tour of the 2024 Republican primary field to understand what it takes to survive in the present-day Republican ecosystem — and maybe even beat the Trump in the room.(A full transcript of the episode will be available midday on the Times website.)Photograph by Scott Olson/GettyThoughts? Email us at matterofopinion@nytimes.com or leave us a voice mail message at (212) 556-7440. We may use excerpts from your message in a future episode.By leaving us a message, you are agreeing to be governed by our reader submission terms and agreeing that we may use and allow others to use your name, voice and message.Follow our hosts on Twitter: Michelle Cottle (@mcottle), Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT), Carlos Lozada (@CarlosNYT) and Lydia Polgreen (@lpolgreen).“Matter of Opinion” was produced this week by Phoebe Lett, Sophia Alvarez Boyd and Derek Arthur. It was edited by Stephanie Joyce and Annie-Rose Strasser. Mixing by Pat McCusker. Original music by Pat McCusker, Sonia Herrero, Isaac Jones and Carole Sabouraud. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker. Special thanks to Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. More

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      Nikki Haley’s Financial Disclosures Show Speaking Fees and Other Income

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      The NewsNikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador, earned at least $1.2 million — and as much as $12 million — from speaking engagements in the year leading up to her entry into the presidential race, according to her personal financial disclosure form.The disclosure, filed Monday with the Federal Election Commission, also shows that Ms. Haley is still on the board of United Homes Group, one of the largest homebuilders in the Southeast and a public company in which she owns stock.On her financial disclosure forms, Nikki Haley listed a dozen speaking engagements, each with a reported honorarium between $100,001 and $1 million.Brian Snyder/ReutersWhy It Matters: Avoiding appearances of conflicts.The filing shows how Ms. Haley parlayed her experience in the Trump administration and the governor’s office into lucrative opportunities in the private sector, and how those commitments have carried over into her presidential campaign.Presidential candidates typically resign from corporate boards soon after entering the race, to avoid the appearance of any conflicts.A spokeswoman for Ms. Haley did not comment on the filing, or on Ms. Haley’s continued service on the United Homes board.Ms. Haley listed a dozen speaking engagements, for each of which she reported an honorarium between $100,001 and $1 million. They included events at the Center for Israel and Jewish Affairs in Montreal, Barclays Services Corporation in New York, and Water Street Healthcare Partners in Chicago.The Wall Street Journal reported last month that Ms. Haley had received stock options from United Homes worth close to $300,000 on March 30, about six weeks after she entered the presidential race.In the filing, Ms. Haley reported owning between $250,000 and $500,000 worth of stock in Great Southern Homes, which became United Homes when it went public through a merger.Other Disclosures: A book, consulting fees and Boeing stock.Ms. Haley’s filing also showed she earned $100,000 to $1 million in royalties for the book she wrote in late 2022, “If You Want Something Done,” which is a series of vignettes of women who inspired her. She reported no royalties on two previous books.Ms. Haley also reported that she is a senior adviser at Prism Global Management, which is described on its LinkedIn page as a “US-based investment platform targeting growth-stage disruptive innovators in US and Asia.”She reported between $100,000 and $1 million in consulting fees from Prism.The filing shows that Ms. Haley also owns up to $250,000 in stock in Boeing, the aerospace giant on whose board she served for about a year after leaving the Trump administration. She resigned from the Boeing board in March 2020, saying she disagreed with the company’s decision to seek Covid-related federal aid.Shane Goldmacher More

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      Nikki Haley Says Pledging a Federal Abortion Ban Wouldn’t Be ‘Honest’

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      “I think the media has tried to divide them by saying we have to decide certain weeks,” Ms. Haley said in an interview on CBS News. “In states, yes. At the federal level, it’s not realistic.”The Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley refused on Sunday to endorse a federal abortion ban at a specific number of weeks’ gestation, saying that to do so would be to lie to the American people about what is politically possible.“I think the media has tried to divide them by saying we have to decide certain weeks,” Ms. Haley said in an interview on CBS News’s “Face the Nation.” “In states, yes. At the federal level, it’s not realistic. It’s not being honest with the American people.”She was responding to a question from her interviewer, Margaret Brennan, about why she would not join another likely candidate, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, in endorsing a 20-week national ban.Ms. Haley has said — and she repeated in the interview — that the Senate filibuster makes it impossible to pass a federal abortion ban as strict as the ones that many Republican-led states have passed since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, and that any anti-abortion president will therefore need to find a “national consensus.” (A Republican Senate majority could, if it chose, remove the filibuster.) But her comments on Sunday stood out for the explicitness of her rejection of committing to a gestational limit.That refusal is particularly noteworthy because just last month one of the nation’s most prominent anti-abortion groups praised her for, it said, indicating that she would support a federal ban at 15 weeks. The group, S.B.A. Pro-Life America, has said it will not endorse a candidate who doesn’t pledge to go at least that far.At no point had Ms. Haley made such a commitment publicly; in a speech at S.B.A. headquarters on April 25, she stuck to her “national consensus” line. But at the time the group told a reporter for The Hill that it had been “assured she would set national consensus at 15 weeks.”In a statement late Sunday afternoon, Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of S.B.A., claimed there was a consensus for a 15-week ban — something that has not been evident in elections or consistently in polls — and said: “The pro-life movement must have a nominee who will boldly advocate for this consensus, and as president will work tirelessly to gather the votes necessary in Congress. Dismissing this task as unrealistic is not acceptable.”Ms. Haley, who signed a 20-week ban as the governor of South Carolina, is far from the only Republican trying to avoid specifics on abortion.Former President Donald J. Trump’s campaign has said he wants to leave the issue to states. Former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas has called himself “pro-life” while hedging on details. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who is likely to enter the presidential race soon, recently signed a six-week ban in his state but has not gotten behind anything similar at the federal level.One potential candidate, Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, went in the opposite direction on Sunday. In an interview on MSNBC’s “Inside With Jen Psaki,” Mr. Sununu, who describes himself as pro-choice but who signed a ban on most abortions after 24 weeks in his state, said the federal government should not be involved at all.“Not only would I not sign a national abortion ban, but nobody should be talking about signing a national abortion ban,” he said.Most candidates are walking a tightrope between social conservatives — who are an influential part of the Republican base and have been waiting decades for the opportunity to ban abortion nationwide — and the political reality that the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling and the wave of state-level bans that followed have turned anti-abortion policies into serious liabilities among Americans at large.That has been made clear through a series of election results, starting with Kansas voters’ overwhelming rejection last August of an anti-abortion constitutional amendment and continuing through Wisconsin voters’ election last month of a liberal Supreme Court justice who pledged to support abortion rights. More

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      It’s Beginning to Feel a Lot Like 2016 Again

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      Around the time that Donald Trump announced his presidential campaign, there was a lot of chatter about how anti-Trump Republicans were poised to repeat the failures of 2016, by declining to take on Trump directly and letting him walk unscathed to the nomination.This take seemed wrong in two ways. First, unlike in 2016, anti-Trump Republicans had a singular, popular alternative in Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, whose polling was competitive with Trump’s and way ahead of any other rival. Second, unlike in 2016, most Republican primary voters have now supported Trump in two national elections, making them poor targets for sweeping broadsides against his unfitness for the presidency.Combine those two realities, and the anti-Trump path seemed clear enough: Unite behind DeSantis early, run on Trump fatigue, and hope for the slow fade rather than the dramatic knockout.But I will admit, watching DeSantis sag in the primary polls — and watching the Republican and media reaction to that sag — has triggered flashbacks to the 2016 race. Seven years later, it’s clear that many of the underlying dynamics that made Trump the nominee are still in play.Let’s count off a few of them. First, there’s the limits of ideological box-checking in a campaign against Trump. This is my colleague Nate Cohn’s main point in his assessment of DeSantis’s recent struggles, and it’s a good one: DeSantis has spent the year to date accumulating legislative victories that match up with official right-wing orthodoxy, but we already saw in Ted Cruz’s 2016 campaign the limits of ideological correctness. There are Republican primary voters who cast ballots with a matrix of conservative positions in their heads, but not enough to overcome the appeal of the Trump persona, and a campaign against him won’t prosper if its main selling point is just True Conservatism 2.0.Second, there’s the mismatch between cultural conservatism and the anti-Trump donor class. Part of DeSantis’s advantage now, compared with Cruz’s situation in 2016, is that he has seemed more congenial to the party’s bigger-money donors. But many of those donors don’t really like the culture war; they’ll go along with a generic anti-wokeness, but they hate the Disney battles and they’re usually pro-choice. So socially conservative moves that DeSantis can’t refuse, like signing Florida’s six-week abortion ban, yield instant stories about how his potential donors are thinking about closing up their checkbooks, with a palpable undercurrent of: “Why can’t we have Nikki Haley or even Glenn Youngkin instead?”This leads to the third dynamic that could repeat itself: The G.O.P coordination problem, a.k.a. the South Carolina pileup. Remember how smoothly all of Joe Biden’s rivals suddenly exited the presidential race when it was time to stop Bernie Sanders? Remember how nothing remotely like that happened among Republicans in 2016? Well, if you have an anti-Trump donor base dissatisfied with DeSantis and willing to sustain long-shot rivals, and if two of those rivals, Haley and Senator Tim Scott, hail from the early primary state of South Carolina, it’s easy enough to see how they talk themselves into hanging around long enough to hand Trump exactly the sort of narrow wins that eventually gave him unstoppable momentum in 2016.But then again, a certain cast of mind has declared Trump to have unstoppable momentum already. This reflects another tendency that helped elect him the first time, the weird fatalism of professional Republicans. In 2016 many of them passed from “he can’t win” to “he can’t be stopped” with barely a way station in between. A rough month for DeSantis has already surfaced the same spirit — as in a piece by Politico’s Jonathan Martin, which quoted one strategist saying resignedly, “We’re just going to have to go into the basement, ride out the tornado and come back up when it’s over to rebuild the neighborhood.”Influencing this perspective, again as in 2016, is the assumption that Trump can’t win the general election, so if the G.O.P. just lets him lose it will finally be rid of him. Of course that assumption was completely wrong before, it could be wrong again; and even if it’s not, how do you know he won’t be back in 2028?Then, the final returning dynamic: The media still wants Trump. This is not offered as an excuse for G.O.P. primary voters choosing him; if the former president is renominated in spite of all his sins, it’s ultimately on them and them alone.But I still feel a certain vibe, in the eager coverage of DeSantis’s sag, suggesting that at some half-conscious level the mainstream press really wants the Trump return. They want to enjoy the Trump Show’s ratings, they want the G.O.P. defined by Trumpism while they define themselves as democracy’s defenders.And so Trump’s rivals will have to struggle, not only against the wattage of the man himself, but also against an impulse already apparent — to call the race for Trump before a single vote is cast.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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      Nikki Haley, on the Trail in South Carolina, Says, ‘Yes, I Am in My Prime’

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      Nikki Haley drew a rally crowd’s applause with a reference to Don Lemon’s remarks about women and age as she struggled to gain ground against Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis in the Republican field.Nikki Haley’s supporters are quick to repeat a theme that has become central to her campaign: She has been underestimated before.So when Ms. Haley, the former South Carolina governor and ambassador to the United Nations, recounted on Thursday evening what the former CNN anchor Don Lemon had said about her during a recent broadcast, the crowd of hundreds who had gathered to hear her speak erupted in applause.Ms. Haley, who has couched her campaign message in a call for “a new generation of leaders,” encouraged the crowd to “leave the drama of the past” behind — a thinly veiled allusion to former President Donald J. Trump’s administration. And she repeated her calls for term limits and mental competency tests for elected leaders, adding that she was willing to be flexible about age ranges.“We’ve got to make sure that these people are ready to fight — and I don’t care if you do it for ages 50 and over,” she told the crowd in Greer, in the northwest corner of South Carolina. “Because yes, I am in my prime.”She added: “God bless Don Lemon. I just want to say, ‘Who’s in their prime now?’”Ms. Haley, 51, was alluding to a moment in February when Mr. Lemon said that he was “uncomfortable” about Ms. Haley’s raising the question of age and mental competency among political leaders.Ms. Haley “isn’t in her prime, sorry,” Mr. Lemon said. “A woman is considered to be in her prime in her 20s and 30s and maybe 40s.”Mr. Lemon later apologized for the remarks. He was ousted from CNN last week.The energy that Ms. Haley can capture on the campaign trail contrasts with her struggle to build national momentum.Meg Kinnard/Associated PressThe line resonated in particular with women in the crowd, and several attendees said they saw Ms. Haley’s response to Mr. Lemon as a creative means of pointing out — and making fun of — a moment of sexism.Yet, the energy that Ms. Haley can capture in a room like the one in Greer contrasts with her struggle to build national momentum in an increasingly crowded Republican primary field. She will most likely soon have to contend with the entry of a fellow South Carolinian, Senator Tim Scott, into the race, as well as with the two candidates who are garnering the most attention and the bulk of the support in polls: Mr. Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.After her stump speech, as Ms. Haley greeted supporters and took photos with them, Rachel Dankel, a real estate agent in her 50s who is based in Greenville, S.C., said she had told Ms. Haley how much she appreciated her pushing back on Mr. Lemon’s words. When she first heard about his comment, she said, “I wanted to throw up.”“I thought that was, to me, the worst thing that somebody could say,” she said. “That’s so degrading. You have men in their 80s, and they’re not over — they’re not too old?”Ms. Haley, who was the first Republican presidential candidate to challenge Mr. Trump in the current campaign, has aimed to separate herself from the pack by taking early stances on issues like age limits among political leaders. Last week, she suggested in an interview with Fox News that President Biden, who is 80, would not live until the end of his second term if re-elected.Ms. Haley has also raised money off Mr. Lemon’s comments. Her campaign website sells a beverage koozie that reads: “Past my prime? Hold my beer”Ms. Haley’s campaign is counting on her in-state bona fides — she was a longtime State House member in a district close to the State Capitol and the first woman to serve as governor — to bolster her standing in the Palmetto State. The South Carolina primary is third on the Republican calendar, after Iowa and New Hampshire, and it is the Haley campaign’s belief that her home-state electorate will propel her to the top of the primary field.And while she is polling in the low single digits in most national surveys, an April poll conducted by Winthrop University showed her with her 18 percent support in her home state, well behind Mr. Trump but within striking distance of Mr. DeSantis.“There’s a certain segment out there that’s very excited about her running, and then there’s the hard-core Trumpists who are mad at her for running,” said Chip Felkel, a South Carolina Republican political strategist.At the rally on Thursday, Christy Willis, 50, a teacher who is still undecided about whom she will support in 2024, said she had not heard about Mr. Lemon’s comments before hearing Ms. Haley repeat them on Thursday at the Cannon Center, an event space. After learning of the context, she said she had found the back-and-forth intriguing.“It does open a discussion about ageism and sexism and feminism,” she said, referring to Mr. Biden’s age. “He’s allowed to do things that a woman probably would not be able to do.” More

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      How Nikki Haley’s Campaign Inflated Her Fund-Raising Haul

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      This month, her campaign said she had raised $11 million in the opening six weeks of her bid for the Republican presidential nomination. But the real figure appears to be about $8.3 million.Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador, has staked her presidential run on an image as a straight shooter, with experience and drama-free competence.This weekend, though, it became clear that the impressive early fund-raising numbers her campaign promoted this month had been inflated, apparently because of double-counted money.The campaign had broadcast an $11 million haul in its opening six weeks, through the end of the first-quarter filing period on March 31. But when three of her affiliated committees filed reports on Saturday, the math did not add up.Instead, the three committees appeared to have taken in about $8.3 million, including $2.7 million that one of the committees transferred to two other committees and that was double-counted in the overall figure.On Saturday, a spokeswoman for Ms. Haley said other campaigns had accounted for their money similarly in the past.How can this happen?The muddied accounting exposes the risks of building a campaign-finance operation with a patchwork of committees, which has become standard for presidential candidates. Ms. Haley is backed by four affiliated entities registered with the Federal Election Commission, three of which made filings on Saturday.Team Stand for America, her joint fund-raising committee, solicits contributions that are then divided between three entities: her presidential campaign committee, a multicandidate political action committee and a hybrid PAC (which did not file on Saturday).According to its filing on Saturday, Team Stand for America raised nearly $4.3 million in contributions in the first quarter. It also transferred $2.7 million to affiliated committees, and here is where the math got tricky. Without those transfers, the total raised by the three committees was $8.3 million, not $11 million.More details, pleaseMs. Haley’s principal campaign committee — Nikki Haley for President — disclosed that it had taken in $5.1 million in receipts. But only $3.3 million of that sum came from contributions: The remaining $1.8 million came from Team Stand for America in two transfers recorded on March 31, the filings show.Stand for America PAC, a group that supports her but can also raise money for other candidates, reported $1.5 million in receipts — but just $600,000 of that came from contributions, the filing shows. The PAC received $886,000 in transferred money from Team Stand for America on March 31.In offering the original $11 million figure, the campaign added up the total receipts for the three groups — $5.1 million, $4.3 million and $1.5 million — without accounting for the fact that $2.7 million was being moved between the groups.What does it mean?Not much. There is nothing inaccurate about the filings themselves — they appear to add up — and there is nothing new about campaigns overhyping their fund-raising.And $8.3 million is still a sizable haul for the first six weeks of a presidential campaign. In comparison, former President Donald J. Trump’s campaign disclosed $9.5 million in receipts in January for the first six weeks of his official bid.A spokeswoman for Ms. Haley did not respond to a request for comment on Monday.In 2021, Mr. Trump’s advisers announced, inaccurately, that his affiliated political committees had raised nearly $82 million in the first six months of the year. That figure improperly counted at least $23 million in transfers to new political action committees from other accounts, The New York Times found.Mr. Trump’s joint campaign committee — which has been the main vessel for his fund-raising this election cycle — raised $18.8 million in the first quarter, his campaign has said. It transferred $14 million to his principle campaign committee, according to filings Saturday. More

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      The 2024 Presidential Campaign is Finally Kicking into Gear

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      Candidates are visiting early primary states, attending cattle calls and holding donor summits. The nascent campaign seems to be kicking into gear.From small towns in Iowa and New Hampshire to the grand stages of interest groups’ conventions, the 2024 presidential campaign is underway, whether or not Americans are ready.The past week has brought at least four declared or likely candidates to New Hampshire, three to Iowa and one to South Carolina. Nine addressed the National Rifle Association’s annual forum in Indianapolis, and three attended a Republican donor retreat in Nashville.The formal choreography of the campaign is falling into place. Last Tuesday, the Democratic National Committee chose Chicago to host its convention next August. On Wednesday, the Republican National Committee, in a surprise to no one, chose Fox News to host the party’s first debate this August.The declared candidates filed their quarterly fund-raising reports late this week, revealing the first big campaign finance error of the season. The campaign of Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador, exaggerated her fund-raising total by more than $2 million by double-counting sums transferred between different committees.Five major candidates have officially announced campaigns: four Republicans (former President Donald J. Trump, Ms. Haley, former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas and Vivek Ramaswamy, a multimillionaire entrepreneur and author) and one Democrat (the self-help author and 2020 candidate Marianne Williamson).But on the campaign trail, it seems like more.Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, who announced an exploratory committee on Wednesday, had a particularly packed week, with trips to Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. A tour of Alex’s Restaurant in Goose Creek, S.C., on Friday had the look and feel of a full-blown campaign stop, with supporters holding signs and the number of reporters rivaling the number of diners.Mr. Scott talked with voters and restaurant staff before heading outside to take questions from reporters — walking a thin line between being a declared candidate and one in waiting.“The message is resonating,” he said, underlining his belief that his conservative talking points with religious overtones will appeal to a broad swath of Republican voters. Asked if he had made up his mind about running for president, he said: “I’m getting closer. Without any question.”He added that he would return to Iowa and New Hampshire in the coming days and had plans to stop in Nevada, another early-voting state.While Mr. Scott was in South Carolina, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida — the top challenger to Mr. Trump in early polls, though not officially in the race — spoke at Liberty University in Virginia and then flew to New Hampshire. Mr. DeSantis addressed a crowd of 500 at a state Republican Party dinner in Manchester.The event raised $250,000 for the state party, with the party chairman saying Mr. DeSantis had directed his own donors to give an additional $132,000.After his nearly 40-minute speech, Mr. DeSantis spent just as long methodically working his way through the crowd, visiting all 50 tables for handshakes, backslaps, photos and small talk. “Did you get it?” he asked picture takers. “County chairman for where?”The low-stakes interactions appeared designed to dispel criticism that Mr. DeSantis was unwilling to engage in the traditional retail campaigning that political activists in early-voting states like Iowa and New Hampshire value. On Saturday, he also stopped by an airport diner.The governor of New Hampshire, Chris Sununu, was in Nashville, far away from home, testing out his own possible campaign at the Republican National Committee’s private donor retreat. There he spoke at a luncheon on Saturday and implicitly blamed Mr. Trump for the party’s underwhelming performance in the midterm elections. (Data backs him up: A New York Times analysis found that candidates Mr. Trump supported in primaries performed about five percentage points worse than other Republicans did in the general election.)Mr. Trump was at the retreat, too, casting himself against that evidence as the only candidate who could win a general election. So was his former vice president, Mike Pence, whom Trump supporters declared their desire to hang when they stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.“The old Republican Party is gone, and it’s never coming back,” Mr. Trump said in a speech Saturday, less than two weeks after he was arraigned in New York on 34 felony charges of falsifying business records. “Instead of being the party of the establishment class, we are now the party of the working class, the party of all Americans.”The evening before, Mr. Pence cast the 2024 election as a fight between “one vision grounded in traditional Republican principles, and another vision that grasps what some think the American people want to hear.” He took repeated but indirect aim at Mr. Trump, noting that in 2022, “candidates that were focused on the past, particularly those focused on relitigating the last election, did not do well.”On Sunday, Mr. Hutchinson, the former Arkansas governor who announced his campaign this month and was in Iowa a few days ago, partook in another campaign staple: the Sunday morning talk show interview.Appearing on CBS News’ “Face the Nation,” Mr. Hutchinson gave the usual answer to the question of why he was running — “because we need leadership that brings out the best of America and doesn’t appeal to our worst instincts.” Then the host, Margaret Brennan, pressed him on how he would respond to the country’s bleak parade of mass shootings.He did not endorse any new federal legislation and expressed skepticism about whether red-flag laws — which allow the removal of guns from people deemed to pose a danger to themselves or to others — protected due process. At the same time, he urged states to make greater use of existing laws that allow the institutionalization of people deemed to pose a danger to themselves or to others.There has been much less activity across the aisle, where President Biden is inching toward formally declaring a re-election campaign that he has already said was definite. (“We’ll announce it relatively soon,” he said on Friday.)No one with a large support base has risen to challenge him. But he does have one official competitor, Ms. Williamson, who has been traversing New Hampshire since Friday, hitting Dover, Henniker, Keene, Lancaster and Littleton.A second challenger, the anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., plans to announce his campaign this Wednesday.The election will be just 566 days away.Rebecca Davis O’Brien More