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      Covid Hero or ‘Lockdown Ron’? DeSantis and Trump Renew Pandemic Politics

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      The Florida governor has recently highlighted his state’s response to the coronavirus in hopes of striking some distance from Donald Trump.Hank Miller, a 64-year-old Iowa farmer, started paying attention to Gov. Ron DeSantis during the coronavirus pandemic, when the Florida governor was a constant presence on Fox News highlighting the reopening of his state.While Mr. Miller voted for former President Donald J. Trump in 2016 and 2020, he now plans to support Mr. DeSantis, in part, he said, because he was “disappointed” with Mr. Trump for following the advice of the nation’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, whom Mr. DeSantis has said should be prosecuted.“I liked how DeSantis responded to the pandemic,” Mr. Miller said at a coffee shop in Grundy Center, Iowa, where Mr. DeSantis campaigned on Saturday. “He didn’t just shut things down.”Mr. DeSantis, far behind Mr. Trump in the polls in Iowa and nationally, is clearly hoping that such feelings are widespread among Republican primary voters. The governor’s record on Covid-19 provides perhaps his strongest contrast with the former president, whose administration spearheaded the development of the coronavirus vaccines that are now deeply unpopular with the Republican base.The virus could be an important wedge issue for Mr. DeSantis, who at times has struggled to provide voters with a clear case for why he would be a better president than Mr. Trump, the Republican front-runner. But there are questions about whether a pandemic that many Americans see as long over will resonate with the electorate in 2024.Now, a recent resurgence of Covid-19 cases is giving Mr. DeSantis a chance to press the argument. In response to the uptick, a small number of schools, universities and hospitals have told students, patients and employees to wear masks again. Mr. DeSantis and other Republicans have seized on that as evidence that the Covid-19 debate, which they frame as a civil rights battle, is far from over.Mr. DeSantis emphasized that point during his swing through Iowa on Saturday. “When you have people going back to restrictions and mandates, this shows that this issue has not died,” he told reporters outside the coffee shop in Grundy Center. “This shows that if we don’t bring accountability with my administration, they are going to keep trying to do this.”Since returning to the campaign trail after Hurricane Idalia, which hit Florida last month, Mr. DeSantis has seemingly made the virus his No. 1 issue. He has appeared repeatedly this past week on Fox News and other conservative media outlets lauding his pandemic policies, and has done interviews with local news media outlets in Iowa and New Hampshire. He even held a news conference in Jacksonville — in his role as governor — to promote the way he handled the virus.“I can tell you here in Florida, we did not and we will not allow the dystopian visions of paranoid hypochondriacs to control our health policies, let alone our state,” Mr. DeSantis said on Thursday at the event in Jacksonville, which, in the absence of formal policy announcements, had the feel of a campaign rally.Mr. DeSantis is taking advantage of an apparent shift in the national mood on the virus, even among Democrats. Only 12 percent of Americans say they typically wear a mask in public, according to a poll conducted in August by Yahoo News and YouGov.President Biden joked with reporters at the White House about the fact that he was not wearing a mask days after the first lady, Jill Biden, was diagnosed with Covid-19.Al Drago for The New York TimesAfter the first lady, Jill Biden, was recently diagnosed with Covid-19, President Biden joked with reporters at the White House about the fact that he was not wearing a mask. Although he had tested negative, Mr. Biden said he was told he needed to continue masking for 10 days.“Don’t tell them I didn’t have it on when I walked in,” Mr. Biden said, holding up his mask.As Mr. DeSantis has elevated the issue of Covid-19 once more, the Trump campaign has responded by accusing Mr. DeSantis of hypocrisy, pointing out that he did issue shut down orders and at one point praised Dr. Fauci.“Lockdown Ron should take a look in the mirror and ask himself why he’s trying to gaslight voters,” Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesman, said in a statement.But while many Republican governors shut down their states at the pandemic’s start, Mr. DeSantis was early to fully reopen.Mr. Trump, who was always skeptical of masking and other public health measures, has also begun talking about Covid-19 restrictions on the trail.“The radical Democrats are trying hard to restart Covid hysteria,” Mr. Trump said on Friday at a rally in Rapid City, S.D. He has also downplayed the role Dr. Fauci played in his administration.Still, as Republican candidates try to resuscitate the pandemic as a political issue, they may face virus weariness.During Mr. DeSantis’s Saturday bus tour through Iowa, several voters said in interviews that the pandemic was not a top concern for them going into 2024, even if they admired the governor’s record.“We don’t need to hear about it,” said Dave Sweeney, a retired farmer who said he was trying to decide between supporting Mr. DeSantis, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina and the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy. “It’s not really an issue anymore.”It’s possible that audiences in places like New Hampshire, which imposed more stringent public health measures than Iowa, may be more receptive.In the run-up to his presidential campaign, Mr. DeSantis signed a series of public health laws in Florida that he often points to on the trail, including ones banning mask and vaccine mandates. He also instigated a state grand jury investigation into possible “misconduct” by scientists and vaccine manufacturers. (No charges have been brought.)While Mr. DeSantis says his Covid-19 policies protected Floridians from government overreach and kept the economy going, the state suffered a disproportionate number of coronavirus deaths during the Delta wave of the virus in 2021, after Mr. DeSantis stopped preaching the virtues of vaccines, a New York Times investigation found.During Mr. DeSantis’s recent bus tour through Iowa, several voters said in interviews that the pandemic was not a top concern for them going into 2024.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesStill, such criticisms are unlikely to matter in a Republican primary where many voters discount the severity of a virus that has killed more than a million Americans since 2020.“I think it’s a common cold,” said Roger Hibdon, 32, an engineer from Grundy Center. “I’m not worried about it.”Michael Gold More

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      At Iowa’s Biggest Game, Football and Politics Collide

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      Donald J. Trump and Ron DeSantis played off each other at the Iowa-Iowa State game, where the tables appeared to turn on the former president.Two ardent rivals faced off on Saturday. Thousands of fans cheered and jeered from the sidelines. Tension and hope, celebration and outrage all around.There was also a college football game.The event itself was highly anticipated, as is normal for the Iowa-Iowa State game. But this year’s matchup also featured a bitter head-to-head clash of a political kind that started even before kickoff occurred.Former President Donald J. Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, the front-runners in the Republican primary, both appeared at the game: Mr. Trump, in a private suite, and Mr. DeSantis, in the stands alongside the state’s popular governor, Kim Reynolds.It was the first time the two were at the same event since the Iowa State Fair, at which Mr. Trump and his supporters taunted Mr. DeSantis, who was heckled and cursed at as he strolled the fairgrounds with his family.A month later, at Jack Trice Stadium, the roles appeared to be reversed, with Mr. Trump on the receiving end.The former president entered the game to a mix of applause and audible boos, as a plane with a banner reading “Where’s Melania?” flew overhead — a nod to the absence of his wife from the campaign trail. Some attendees gave him the middle finger from the stands while he looked on from the glass-paneled box from which he watched the game.Two people wearing inflatable costumes resembling Mr. Trump and Anthony Fauci, who managed the Covid response during the Trump administration and has been a target of Mr. DeSantis’s — took photos with game attendees.People wearing inflatable costumes resembling Mr. Trump and Anthony Fauci posed for photos with fans.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesStill, Mr. Trump is dominating Iowa in the polls, despite eschewing the town-to-town retail politicking that is tradition in the state.Before kickoff, a crowd of several hundred gathered near the loading dock where Mr. Trump was expected to enter the stadium. Another large group crowded around the suite from which he watched the game during halftime, simply hoping for a glimpse of the former president.While Iowa voted for Mr. Trump in 2020 with an eight-percentage-point margin, the state’s two major college towns — Ames, where the game took place, and Iowa City, home of the rival Iowa Hawkeyes — are quite blue.A crowd gathered to get a glimpse of Mr. Trump arriving at the game.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesThe attacks came out early, before either candidate arrived at the game. Mr. DeSantis’s super PAC, Never Back Down, released a new online ad ahead of the game — which was devised to reach digital devices in the area around the stadium — criticizing the former president’s previous support for transgender women competing in the Miss America pageant as “insanity.” Ripped-up DeSantis posters were strewn across the grounds outside the stadium.Ahead of the game, Mr. DeSantis appeared for roughly 15 minutes at a tailgate for the Iowa State wrestling team, where Cyclones fans played cornhole and sipped beer from red and gold koozies.Asked by a reporter about Mr. Trump, who is leading him by double digits in the state, Mr. DeSantis made a glancing reference to the former president’s four criminal indictments, saying that “Iowans don’t want the campaign to be about the past or to be about the candidates’ issues.” Instead, he continued, “They want it to be about their future and the future of this country. And that’s what I represent.”At the game, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida appeared in the stands alongside the state’s popular governor, Kim Reynolds.Jeffrey Becker/USA Today Sports,via ReutersBut even voters who are strongly considering supporting Mr. DeSantis questioned whether he could beat Mr. Trump.“How do you overcome this deficit?” said Richard Abrams, 38, a middle school teacher from Iowa City. “How do you persuade these Trump voters to come to your side? You’ve got to win some of those people over.”Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis weren’t the only candidates who vied for attention at the game. Vivek Ramaswamy, the political newcomer who has surged in the polls in recent weeks, strolled through the tailgate after several earlier appearances in the state. He garnered some attention, taking a quick shot of water from a “shot ski,” a ski to which shot glasses were attached, and shaking hands as he went. But he didn’t stay for the game, instead trying to jet off to a town hall in New Hampshire that was canceled after his plane was grounded “due to inclement weather.”Vivek Ramaswamy posed for photos with attendees at a tailgate.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesAsa Hutchinson, the former Arkansas governor running on a stridently anti-Trump platform, also appeared briefly at the tailgate. In remarks to reporters, he attacked Mr. Trump’s character and took a swipe at Mr. DeSantis, who allied himself closely with the former president while running for governor in 2018.“Donald Trump’s not going to speak the truth in this election,” said Mr. Hutchinson, who is barely making an impression in the polls. “But America needs to move in a different direction, and we don’t need a ‘Trump-lite,’ either.”Few tailgaters seemed to notice his presence.Asa Hutchinson speaking with reporters at the tailgate.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesThe day was almost a game within a game. The heckling, the fly-over and the anti-Trump ads were reminiscent of the Iowa State Fair in August, when Mr. DeSantis faced taunting from the Trump campaign and its supporters, including with a plane flying a banner that read: “Be likable, Ron!” At a sprint car race later that day, a crowd of 25,000 greeted Mr. DeSantis’s appearance with a chorus of boos.But many in attendance at the Iowa standoff — despite the candidates’ crowds and the hubbub around their arrivals — were far more interested in the rivalry on the field than the one off it.The game itself was highly anticipated, as is normal for the Iowa-Iowa State game.Charlie Neibergall/Associated Press“I just don’t think that the focus should be on them because it’s a rivalry between colleges,” said Melanie Frueh, from St. Charles. “Granted, there’s a lot of people out there, but I just don’t see that there’s that much importance to come here and try to make a name for themselves when people are having fun in this in this context.”Still, the game itself may not have maintained its level of appeal. The score sat at 14-3 at halftime, in favor of the Hawkeyes, who went on to win, 20-13. Scores of crowd members left with half the game still to go. More

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      In Iowa, a Voter Asks DeSantis: Why Should I Choose You Over Trump?

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      The Florida governor was reluctant to attack the former president too directly as he navigated the tricky waters of the Republican primary.In a rural Iowa town, Ethan Masters asked Ron DeSantis the most pressing question of the primary season: Why would he make a better president than Donald Trump?Standing next to a yellow-and-green tractor at J&J Ag Solutions Machine Shop in Estherville, Iowa, Mr. Masters, a 21-year-old real estate agent, was a stand-in for many Republican voters. He went for Mr. Trump in 2020, but he’s open to another candidate. He plans to caucus but did not have time to watch the Republican primary debate on Wednesday night. He’s also not familiar with the details of Mr. Trump’s various criminal cases.Though Mr. Masters’s question on Friday was brief and straightforward, the Florida governor spoke for nearly three minutes, before he was interrupted by another voter, a rarity on Iowa’s normally staid political circuit.A Question for Ron DeSantis“You could probably consider me the average voter. I haven’t done a lot of research on you. I voted for Trump, and I didn’t mind what he did. So I wouldn’t mind either of you getting voted in. So what’s your biggest selling point when I’m in the voting stage and it’s between you and Trump?”The SubtextMr. DeSantis almost never criticizes Mr. Trump, who is leading him by double digits in Iowa and by nearly 40 points nationwide, unless prompted to do so. He has the difficult task of navigating the Trump Triangle, appealing to voters who like Mr. Trump’s policies and brash manner; those who are aligned with his policies, but are tired of his legal troubles; and the Never Trump Republicans who want a return to the pre-Trump party.The question from Mr. Masters was a rare chance for the governor to make his single best argument in one place.DeSantis’s Answer“Well, I think a few things. One is, I think I’m much more likely to actually get elected, which is very important. I could serve two terms. He’d be a lame duck on Day 1 even if he could get elected. I have a track record of appointing really good people to office. I think he appointed a lot of duds to office, and it really hurt his ability to get his agenda done. I also think I’m more likely to follow through on doing what I said I would do. You look in Florida, everything I promised, I did. I never made a promise that I didn’t follow through on, and that’s just how I am. I am not going to sit there and tell you something that you want to hear to try to get your vote, and then get in and just forget that it ever happened.”The SubtextThat was only the first 45 seconds of Mr. DeSantis’s answer, in which he listed not just one of his selling points but many, contrasting his record of success in Florida with Mr. Trump’s failure to build the border wall or “drain the swamp.” But his argument felt more like a series of bullet points than a comprehensive political vision. He went on for much longer, mentioning Mr. Trump’s unrealized promise to “lock up” Hillary Clinton and accusing him of handing over his congressional agenda to Paul Ryan, the former Republican speaker of the House who is now seen by some in the G.O.P. as insufficiently conservative.True to his debate performance and campaign trail events, Mr. DeSantis never delivered a real punch.Why It MattersThe governor’s path to victory is based on a slow-and-steady approach. While Mr. DeSantis may not have had a breakout moment at the debate on Wednesday, Republican voters thought he performed best of all the candidates, according to a snap poll by the Washington Post, FiveThirtyEight and Ipsos. And his campaign said he raised more than $1 million the following day, the most it has raised in 24 hours, apart from the day Mr. DeSantis announced he was running.“Ron DeSantis’s path to victory isn’t going to run through flashy, sugar-high moments that fade in and out of the national narrative,” Andrew Romeo, the campaign’s communications director, said in a statement. “We have challenged the opposition to try to keep up in terms of pace and organization.”Iowa voters listened to Mr. DeSantis speak at Frontier Bank in Rock Rapids, Iowa, on Friday.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesWhat the Voter SaidIn a follow-up interview, Mr. Masters said that he was impressed by Mr. DeSantis overall but not blown away by his answer.“I asked for his biggest selling point, and he gave me a list,” said Mr. Masters. “But it was a pretty good list.” 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 First Big Stop on the Campaign Trail

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      Republican candidates face off tonight in Milwaukee. Times reporters will be watching and writing.Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.The 2024 presidential campaign revs up tonight in Milwaukee, where eight Republican candidates, none of them former President Donald J. Trump, will meet onstage to debate and explain to voters why they believe they should be the party’s standard-bearer.But Nicholas Nehamas has been on the campaign trail since April, when he joined The New York Times as a campaign reporter with a focus on Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. After spending nine years at The Miami Herald, most recently as an investigative reporter, political reporting is still new to him.“The beat requires being very fast, not only in writing and reporting, but also seeing what’s new,” he said.In a phone interview from Milwaukee, Mr. Nehamas explained how he has prepared to cover his first presidential debate for The Times and why debates are important markers during a long campaign. This conversation has been edited.For voters, a presidential debate is an opportunity to see many of the candidates in one place. For the candidates, it gives them an opportunity to resonate in the public eye. As a reporter, what are you watching for?I think what reporters are looking at is not that dissimilar to what voters are looking at. We’ve all seen these candidates give their stump speech. We’ve seen them interact with voters. We’ve seen them go to the Iowa State Fair. But we haven’t seen them in this pressure cooker environment, where they are dealing with one another and answering tough questions on a national stage. They have to project a kind of strength and confidence and belief in their message while under fire. I think that is really important for someone who wants to be president of the United States.How did you prepare for the debate, and what will you do during it and immediately after?The preparation is in trying to get as best a sense as we can of what the candidates want to accomplish. I cover Ron DeSantis, primarily. So I’ve been talking to his supporters and aides to try and get a sense of what they’re expecting and their strategy.During the debate, I’ll be participating in a live chat with a bunch of colleagues from the Politics team. After, we will take a step back and look at who did well, which questions received interesting answers and which questions people stumbled on. What did voters think?Then I go to Iowa, where Governor DeSantis is doing a bus tour over the next couple of days.You’ve been covering Governor DeSantis’s campaign for The Times, and before that you covered him as a reporter at the Miami Herald. Have you seen any change in his approach to politics since he announced he was running for president?It seemed to me, from having covered the governor in Florida and now on the national stage, that he brought a very Florida approach to the beginning of this campaign. And by that I mean, in Florida, you can win an election with TV advertisements, basically. It’s a huge state. Iowa and New Hampshire aren’t like that. You have to meet voters. You have to take voter questions. You need to talk to the media. When DeSantis started running for president, he really wasn’t doing any of that. He was just traveling around and giving big stump speeches. His campaign said, Well, that’s the way he’s going to introduce himself to the country.I think what the campaign found is that voters in Iowa and New Hampshire wanted to ask him questions. They wanted to get more of an interactive sense of him, to see how he dealt with retail politics. So his campaign has very much shifted to that more traditional approach.You just described the difference in campaign styles required for a national politician. Does reporting on campaign politics have to vary, too?Absolutely. In Florida, people are very familiar with Governor DeSantis, who’s on the local news almost every night. Writing about him for a national audience requires a much broader view. You have to put everything in context, how what he said today differs from what he said a year ago. How a new policy he’s proposing fits into his history. There are people around the country who have seen his name in headlines who don’t know much about him. For a national audience, you have to start with the basics of who he is, where he comes from, what he believes and how he fits into today’s modern Republican Party.Are you ready for life on the campaign trail for at least the next 10 to 12 months?I definitely signed up for an experience, and it’s great. I’m seeing parts of the country that I’ve never been to, talking to people that I never would have met otherwise. I live in South Florida, which I love. I definitely miss spending time there, but I’ve got my routine down pretty well at this point. My carry-on bag is always ready to go with gym shorts, sneakers and snacks. I’m starting to adjust to life on the road.It’s also a reminder of how grueling a presidential campaign is for all the people involved. It’s a way of life. It’s a real commitment, which, of course, it should be. More

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      Gov. Chris Sununu: This Is How to Beat Trump

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      This week, Republican primary candidates for president will have a chance to make their case before a national audience — with or without Donald Trump on the debate stage. To win, they must break free of Mr. Trump’s drama, step out of his shadow, go on offense, attack, and present their case. Then they need to see if they can catch fire this fall — and if they can’t, they need to step aside, because winnowing down the field of candidates is the single best chance to stop Mr. Trump. Too much is at stake for us to have wishful candidacies. While the other Republican candidates are running to save America, Mr. Trump is running to save himself.Candidates on the debate stage should not be afraid to attack Donald Trump. While it’s true that Mr. Trump has an iron grip on more than 30 percent of the electorate, the other 60 percent or so is open to moving forward with a new nominee. Mr. Trump’s shortcomings hardly need reciting. Tim Scott, Ron DeSantis, and Vivek Ramaswamy — candidates with compelling stories, records and polling — must show voters they are willing to take on Mr. Trump, show a spark, and not just defend him in absentia. Chris Christie, who has done great work exposing Mr. Trump’s weaknesses, must broaden his message and show voters that he is more than the anti-Trump candidate.If Mr. Trump is the Republican nominee for president in 2024, Republicans will lose up and down the ballot. According to a recent Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll, nearly two-thirds of Americans say they would likely not support Mr. Trump in 2024 — not even Jimmy Carter had re-election numbers that bleak. Every candidate with an (R) next to their name, from school board to the statehouse, will be left to answer for the electoral albatross at the top of the ticket. Instead of going on offense and offering an alternative to Joe Biden’s failing leadership, Republicans will continue to be consumed with responding to Mr. Trump’s constant grievances and lies, turning off every independent suburban voter in America. And Mr. Trump, ever the narcissist, will spend the entire campaign whining about his legal troubles and bilking his supporters of their retirement savings to pay for his lawyers.Donald Trump is beatable, and it starts in Iowa and New Hampshire. Ignore the national polls that show he is leading — they are meaningless. It’s a reflection of the national conversation, name ID, and who is top of mind — not where the momentum is headed.The best indicator of Mr. Trump’s strength is looking to where the voters are paying attention: in states where candidates are campaigning, television ads are running, and there is a wide range of media attention on every candidate.In Iowa and New Hampshire, the first two states that will vote in the 2024 Republican primaries, Mr. Trump is struggling. In both Iowa and New Hampshire, he is consistently polling in the low 40 percent range. The floor of his support may be high, but his ceiling is low.In New Hampshire, more than half of Republican primary voters — our party’s most ardent voters — want someone not named Trump. While he regularly polls above 50 percent nationally, and even closer to 60 percent many times, he has not hit over 50 percent in New Hampshire in the last five months, according to Real Clear Politics.Having won four statewide elections in New Hampshire and earning more votes in 2020 than any candidate in history (outpacing Mr. Trump’s loss by 20 percentage points that year), I know that in New Hampshire, you don’t only win on policy: You win face-to-face, person-to-person. Voters have to look you in the eye and sign off on you as a person before they can sign off on you as a candidate. Prepared remarks behind a podium do not work.Candidates who have gone on to win the New Hampshire primary, best illustrated by former Senator John McCain, become omnipresent in my state. You must listen first, talk second. Talking at voters in New Hampshire does not work. This is why Mr. Trump must face a smaller field. It is only then that his path to victory shrinks. Leaders within the Republican Party — governors, senators, donors and media influencers — have an obligation to help narrow the field.At a minimum, any candidate who does not make the stage for the first two debates must drop out.Anyone who is polling in the low single digits by Christmas must acknowledge that their efforts have fallen short.After the results from Iowa come in, it is paramount that the field must shrink, before the New Hampshire primary, to the top three or four.Candidates who have essentially been running for years, and who have seen little movement in the polls especially in the early states, are particularly in focus. This fall, if their numbers have not improved, tough conversations between donors and their candidates need to happen. Media influencers and leading voices should amplify the Republican message that the longer these candidates stay in the race, the more they are helping Joe Biden — and Kamala Harris — get four more years.Provided the field shrinks by Iowa and New Hampshire, Mr. Trump loses. He will always have his die-hard base, but the majority is up for grabs. Candidates who seize on the opportunity and present a clear contrast to the former president will earn the votes.Candidates cannot continue to let the former president dominate the media like he has for the last six months. They need to be more aggressive about seizing the opportunity to boost their national profiles. There has been positive movement from some candidates, but more needs to be done.It must be said that candidates who stay in this race when they have no viable path should be called out. They are auditioning for a Trump presidency cabinet that will simply never happen. And even if a Trump administration magically materialized, no public humiliation that great is worth the sacrifice.As governor of the first-in-the-nation primary state, I will do everything I can to help narrow the field. I plan to endorse and campaign for the best alternative to Mr. Trump. As of now, it’s anyone’s for the taking.For 20 years straight, the winner of the New Hampshire Republican presidential primary has gone on to secure the party’s nomination. Once the voters of Iowa and New Hampshire are presented a clear alternative to Mr. Trump, his path forward darkens, and the Republican Party’s future begins to take shape. The rest of the country needs to see not just that the emperor has no clothes, but that the Republican Party is able to refocus the conversation where it needs to be, on a nominee dedicated to saving America.Christopher T. Sununu is the governor of New Hampshire.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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      How G.O.P. Views of Biden Are Helping Trump in the Republican Primary

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      In interviews and polling, many Republican voters believe President Biden is so weak that picking the most electable candidate to beat him no longer matters.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has run into a surprising buzz saw in his bid to sell himself as the Republican Party’s most electable standard-bearer in 2024 — and it has more to do with President Biden than it does with Donald J. Trump.For months, Republican voters have consumed such a steady diet of clips of Mr. Biden stumbling, over words and sandbags, that they now see the 80-year-old Democratic incumbent as so frail that he would be beatable by practically any Republican — even a four-times-indicted former president who lost the last election.As Mr. Trump’s rivals take the stage for the first debate of the 2024 primaries on Wednesday, the perceived weaknesses of Mr. Biden have undercut one of the core arguments that Mr. DeSantis and others have made from the start: that the party must turn the page on the past and move beyond Mr. Trump in order to win in 2024.The focus on “electability” — the basic notion of which candidate has the best shot of winning a general election — was most intense in the aftermath of the disappointing 2022 midterms. Republicans were stung by losses of Trump-backed candidates in key swing states like Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania. And the issue offered a way to convince a Republican electorate still very much in the thrall of Mr. Trump to consider throwing its lot in with a fresh face in 2022. It was a permission slip to move on.But nine months later, interviews with pollsters, strategists, elected officials and Republican voters in early-voting states show that the dim Republican opinion of Mr. Biden’s mental faculties and political skills has complicated that case in deep and unexpected ways.“I mean, I would hope anybody could beat Joe Biden at this point,” said Heather Hora, 52, as she waited in line for a photo with Mr. Trump at an Iowa Republican Party dinner, echoing a sentiment expressed in more than 30 interviews with Iowa Republicans in recent weeks.Mr. Trump’s rivals are still pushing an electability case against the former president, but even their advisers and other strategists acknowledge that the diminished views of Mr. Biden have sapped the pressure voters once felt about the need to nominate someone new. When Republican primary voters in a recent New York Times/Siena College poll were asked which candidate was better able to beat Mr. Biden, 58 percent picked Mr. Trump, while 28 percent selected Mr. DeSantis.“The perception that Biden is the weakest possible candidate has lowered the electability question in the calculus of primary voters,” said Josh Holmes, a Republican strategist and a longtime adviser to Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader.Likely Republican voters in Iowa see Donald Trump as “able to beat Joe Biden” more than Mr. DeSantis, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll in the state. Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesThough the urgency of electability has plainly waned, it remains one of the most powerful tools Mr. Trump’s rivals believe they have to peel the party away from him — and some privately hope that Mr. Trump’s growing legal jeopardy will eventually make the issue feel pressing again. For now, the fact that many polls show a razor-thin Biden-Trump contest has made it a tougher sell.Conservative media, led by Fox News, has played a role in shaping G.O.P. views. Fox has often elevated Mr. DeSantis as the future of the Republican Party, coverage that has frustrated the former president. But the network’s persistent harping on Mr. Biden’s frailties may have inadvertently undercut any effort to build up Mr. DeSantis’s campaign.More than two-thirds of Republicans who described Fox News or another conservative outlet as the single source they most often turned to for news thought Mr. Trump was better able to beat Mr. Biden in the Times/Siena College poll, a 40-point advantage over Mr. DeSantis. Those who cited mainstream news outlets also said Mr. Trump was the stronger candidate to beat Mr. Biden, though by less than half the margin.There is little question that Mr. Biden has visibly aged. The president’s slip onstage at an Air Force graduation ceremony in June — his staff subsequently blamed a stray sandbag — is seen as a moment that particularly resonated for Republicans, cementing Mr. Biden’s image as frail, politically and otherwise.Google records show search interest for “Biden old” peaking three times in 2023 — during his State of the Union address in February, when he announced his 2024 run in late April and when he fell onstage in June. The number of searches just for “Biden” was higher after his fall than it was around the time of his re-election kickoff.Interviews with Republican voters in Iowa in recent weeks have revealed a consistent impression of Mr. Biden as weak and deteriorating.“It’s just one gaffe after another,” Joanie Pellett, 55, a retiree in Decatur County, said of Mr. Biden as she settled into her seat in a beer hall at the Iowa State Fair four hours before Mr. Trump was set to speak.“What strength as a candidate? Does he have any?” Rick Danowsky, a financial consultant who lives in Sigourney, Iowa, asked of Mr. Biden as he waited for Mr. DeSantis at a bar in downtown Des Moines earlier this month.“He’s a train wreck,” said Jack Seward, 67, a county supervisor in Washington County, Iowa, who is considering whether to vote for Mr. Trump or Mr. DeSantis.Kevin Munoz, a campaign spokesman for Mr. Biden, said Republican depictions of Mr. Biden as old were “recycled attacks” that had “repeatedly failed.”“Put simply, it’s a losing strategy and they know it,” he said. “Republicans can argue with each other all they want about electability, but every one of them has embraced the losing MAGA agenda.”Some Republicans worry that their voters have been lulled into a false sense of complacency about the challenge of beating a Democratic incumbent president. The last one to lose was Jimmy Carter more than four decades ago.“Electability is more than just beating Biden — Republicans need to choose a candidate who can build a majority coalition, especially with independents, to win both the House and Senate,” said Dave Winston, a Republican pollster.There were always structural challenges to running a primary campaign centered on electability. For more than a decade, Republican voters have tended to care little about which candidate political insiders have deemed to have the best shot at winning — and have tended to revolt against the preferences of the reviled party establishment.Then there are the hurdles specific to Mr. Trump, who was portrayed as unelectable before he won in 2016, and whose 2020 loss has not been accepted by many in the party.In a sign of how far electability has diminished, Republican voters today say they are more likely to support a candidate who agrees with them most on the issues over someone with the best chance to beat Mr. Biden, according to the Times/Siena College poll. They are prioritizing, in other words, policy positions over electability.Mr. DeSantis has sharpened his own electability argument heading into the first debate, calling out Mr. Trump by name. “There’s nothing that the Democratic Party would like better than to relitigate all these things with Donald Trump,” Mr. DeSantis said in a recent radio interview. “That is a loser for us going forward as a party.”The picture is brighter for Mr. DeSantis in Iowa, according to public polling and voter interviews, and that is where he is increasingly banking his candidacy. More than $3.5 million in television ads have aired from one anti-Trump group, Win it Back PAC. Those ads are explicitly aimed at undermining perceptions of Mr. Trump with voter testimonials of nervous former Trump supporters.“For 2024, Trump is not the most electable candidate,” one said in a recent ad. “I don’t know if we can get him elected,” said another.Likely Republican voters in Iowa see Mr. Trump as “able to beat Joe Biden” more than Mr. DeSantis despite that advertising onslaught, according to a separate Times/Siena College Iowa poll. But the margin is far smaller than in the national poll, and a larger share of Iowa Republicans say they would prioritize a candidate who could win.Mr. DeSantis’s improved standing in the state when it comes to electability is heavily shaped by the views of college-educated Republicans. Among that group, Mr. DeSantis is seen as better able to beat Mr. Biden by a 14-point margin compared with Mr. Trump.Republican voters say they are more likely to support a candidate who agrees with them most on the issues over someone with the best chance to beat Mr. Biden — a sign of how far electability has diminished.Pete Marovich for The New York TimesMr. DeSantis faces his own electability headwinds. Some of those same party insiders who are worried about Mr. Trump topping the ticket have expressed concerns that the hard-line stances the governor has taken — especially signing a six-week abortion ban — could repel independent voters.Mr. Danowsky, the financial consultant who was at the bar in downtown Des Moines, worried that Mr. DeSantis was “a little extreme,” including on transgender rights.But more Iowa Republicans volunteered concerns about Mr. Trump’s viability as the top reason to move on from him, even as they saw Mr. Biden as weak.“I might be one out of 1,000, but I don’t think he can beat Biden,” Mike Farwell, 66, a retired construction worker in Indianola, said of Mr. Trump. He added that Mr. Biden “would be an easy president right now to beat” if he faced a strong enough opponent.Don Beebout, 74, a retiree who lives in Sheraton and manages a farm, was worried about Mr. Trump as the party nominee as he waited to hear Mr. DeSantis speak at the state fair. But he also was not sold on any particular alternative.“He may be easy to beat,” he said of Mr. Biden, “if we get the right candidate.”Maggie Haberman More

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      Vivek Ramaswamy Loves Eminem. And He Doesn’t Care If the Feeling Is Mutual.

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      The Republican presidential candidate loves rap music, even if critics say his politics are at odds with its spirit. “There’s no such thing as one rap community,” he says.Vivek Ramaswamy, a Republican presidential candidate and biotech entrepreneur, rapped the song before a largely white crowd at the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines.Stefani Reynolds/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFor some audiences, Vivek Ramaswamy is a biotech entrepreneur who pushed for pharmaceutical breakthroughs before he tried to break into politics. For others, he is a cultural warrior battling “woke” corporations or a crusader for his definition of “truth,” whether it be the sanctity of two genders or the perpetuation of fossil fuels.The identity that the entrepreneur and Republican candidate for president has kept more or less under wraps since his undergraduate days at Harvard is another thing entirely, Da Vek the Rapper.Yet there it was at the Iowa State Fair this month, the 38-year-old shape-shifting presidential candidate, microphone in hand, spitting Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” before a largely white crowd that appeared somewhere between amused and enthused. Beside him onstage was the Iowa governor, Kim Reynolds, who watched with the look of a mother baffled by her child’s latest science fair project.As breakout moments go, Mr. Ramaswamy’s impromptu performance may not rise to the level of Bill Clinton’s saxophone solo on “The Arsenio Hall Show.” But it did separate him culturally from his generally more awkward and older competitors in the still-early race for the presidency.The lyrics — “He opens his mouth, but the words won’t come out” — did not fit the fast-talking, quick-witted candidate in the slightest. The words “he knows when he goes back to this mobile home” do not exactly leap from a wellspring of personal experience for Mr. Ramaswamy, a multimillionaire entrepreneur with a middle-class upbringing, a $2 million mansion in the suburbs of Columbus, Ohio, and a largely self-funded presidential bid.But rap and hip-hop are part of the Ramaswamy story, back to Harvard when his alter ego Da Vek rapped libertarian lyrics in all-black outfits down to a Kangol cap. As a freshman, he performed at an open mic before a Busta Rhymes concert, a moment that has since been exaggerated to make him Busta’s opening act.He told The Harvard Crimson back in 2006 that “Lose Yourself” was his life’s theme song.In an interview on Friday, Mr. Ramaswamy seemed a little sheepish about his return to rap. Theme song? “There are parts of what you say in the past that you recoil from,” he admitted.But he did stick by his identification with Eminem, the unlikely white rapper from working-class Detroit who went on to become, by most measures, the best-selling hip-hop artist of all time.“I did not grow up in the circumstances he did,” said Mr. Ramaswamy, the son of a physician mother and engineer father. “But the idea of being an underdog, people having low expectations of you, that part speaks to me.”Eminem was, Mr. Ramaswamy said, “a guy in every sense who was not supposed to be doing what he did.”The candidate said he did not plan to rap at Iowa’s center stage. Responding to a question that Ms. Reynolds had asked every presidential hopeful at her “fair-side chats,” Mr. Ramaswamy said his favorite “walkout” song for the campaign trail would have to be “Lose Yourself,” an unusual answer in this Republican field but hardly counterculture.“Lose Yourself” was the centerpiece of “8 Mile,” the semi-autobiographical film in which Eminem plays an aspiring rapper struggling to prove himself in a largely Black subculture. The track took best original song at the Academy Awards in 2003, and the next year it won two Grammys, including for best rap song.After his chat with Ms. Reynolds ended, Mr. Ramaswamy was signing autographs when an enterprising sound technician put the song over the loud speaker. The candidate raised his fist, lifted the mic to his mouth, and the rest is, well, not quite history but a nice moment.Mr. Ramaswamy’s venture into hip-hop, a culture synonymous with Black struggle and triumphs, carried risks. Rhymefest, a Chicago rapper who defeated Eminem at a freestyle contest in 1997, noted that Mr. Ramaswamy had called Juneteenth a “useless” holiday and told CNN’s Don Lemon that Black Americans achieved equality only because they secured the right to bear arms, never mind that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. preached nonviolence and armed civil rights leaders like Fred Hampton were gunned down by law enforcement.“It’s the rewriting and manipulation of Black history for Republican talking points that gets me,” Rhymefest said, adding: “Everyone has a right to music. Everyone has a right to express themselves through the culture that helped formulate their passions, and hip-hop is a passionate calling.” But, he said, “he doesn’t understand the words or the meaning.”Soren Baker, a historian of rap, said such conflicts were nothing new for Republican politicians, who have tangled with artists since President Ronald Reagan drew the ire of Bruce Springsteen over “Born in the U.S.A.” in 1984.Mr. Springsteen made clear he didn’t think the president was listening closely to his music’s often bleak portraits of Reagan’s America. Eminem has not commented on Mr. Ramaswamy’s performance. A representative did not respond to a request on Friday.But it’s unlikely the rapper is a Ramaswamy fan. In 2017, Eminem famously performed a freestyle jeremiad against then-President Donald J. Trump, calling him “a kamikaze that’ll probably cause a nuclear holocaust.” Mr. Ramaswamy, in contrast, is steadfastly supportive of Mr. Trump, even as he runs against him for the 2024 G.O.P. nomination.“What Vivek is doing is trying to align himself with the struggle of overcoming adversity,” said Mr. Baker, author of “The History of Gangster Rap.” “From what I know of Vivek’s policies, objectives and goals, they’re not in alignment with Eminem at all.”Mr. Ramaswamy did not shy from the critique. “Is there a risk? There’s a risk in everything we do?” he said. But he added, “There’s no such thing as one rap community,” pointing to Ice Cube, the former leader of N.W.A who worked with the Trump campaign in 2020 on a Contract With Black America.Of course, “Lose Yourself” is hardly a political anthem. It has become more like a frat house pregame rallying cry, or, as Rhymefest put it, “the song that gets the team out on the field.”But Mr. Ramaswamy said it wouldn’t be blasting through his AirPods as he prepares to go onstage Wednesday at the first Republican primary debate of the 2024 cycle.“I’m an adult,” he quipped.Ben Sisario More