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    Some Republicans Have a Message for Chris Christie: Drop Out

    Several anti-Trump Republican donors and strategists are pushing Mr. Christie to end his presidential campaign and back Nikki Haley.Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, has traveled the world in his quest to stop Donald J. Trump’s march to the Republican nomination. In New Hampshire living rooms as well as the charred homes of Israeli families killed by Hamas, he has assailed the former president as being unfit to lead, antidemocratic and an aspiring dictator.But now, six months into Mr. Christie’s presidential primary bid, Republicans who share his goal of defeating Mr. Trump are suggesting an entirely different approach for the long-shot candidate.Quitting.Republican donors, strategists and pundits are publicly pressuring Mr. Christie to follow the lead of Tim Scott and Mike Pence and formally end his campaign. Many would like him to throw his support behind Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor who has risen in the polls in early-voting states in recent weeks.The focus on Mr. Christie’s bid reflects the anxiety that has consumed anti-Trump Republicans as the race moves into the final weeks before the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 15. Despite three debates, tens of millions of dollars and many months of campaigning, none of the six candidates still challenging Mr. Trump have made much of a dent in his double-digit lead. And they are rapidly running out of time.“The people who are supporting Chris are not supporting him because they love Chris Christie — they want someone to take on Trump,” said Rick Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator who dropped out of the presidential race in 2012 after failing to gain enough traction to win the nomination. “He has a really important decision to make as to whether to back out and let his votes go to somebody else, or whether he’s going to actually improve Trump’s chances by staying in.”But the dynamic this year reminds other Republicans of 2016, when Mr. Trump benefited from the large field, allowing him to divide the voters who preferred other candidates. Mr. Christie remained in that race until he finished sixth in the New Hampshire primary. He endorsed Mr. Trump 17 days later.“Time is a flat circle, and everyone insists we relive, beat for beat, the 2016 election,” said Sarah Longwell, a Republican strategist who has spent years working to defeat Mr. Trump. “The main thing that Christie could do to make a difference this time is to drop out.”Mr. Christie views that race differently, saying the candidates running against Mr. Trump — including himself — failed to take the threat of his candidacy seriously enough.“We all thought, ‘well, at some point he’ll drop out or at some point fade away.’ And we all waited. Hope is not a strategy,” he said, in an interview on Fox News on Monday. “If you want to beat someone, you need to go out and tell people why he’s not right for the job and why you are.”Yet in a race in which Mr. Trump has maintained an expansive lead, Mr. Christie’s small foothold on the New Hampshire electorate may not make that great a difference.Patrick Murray, a New Jersey pollster who is the director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute, said his data indicated that only about half of Mr. Christie’s support in New Hampshire would go to Ms. Haley, while the rest would be distributed among the other candidates. The five or six points that Ms. Haley would earn would not be enough for her to come close to Mr. Trump, who leads New Hampshire by nearly 30 points.“It would help her be a closer second-place finisher,” Mr. Murray said. “It’s just not big enough to make the difference.”Surrogates for Ms. Haley have been more hesitant to call on Mr. Christie to drop out. Katon Dawson, a former chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party who now serves as an adviser to the Haley campaign in the state, said that decision would be solely “up to Chris Christie.”“We can’t control what Chris Christie does after New Hampshire or before New Hampshire,” he said. “We can’t control what Ron DeSantis does. All we can do is watch who is raising the money and Nikki Haley is raising money.”Don Bolduc, a retired Army general who unsuccessfully ran for the Senate in 2022 and has warmed up crowds for Ms. Haley at town halls in New Hampshire, was more blunt when posed the question. “I think it’s time for all of them to drop out and just let Nikki have the passing lane and just go right into the presidency,” he said.Mr. Christie’s advisers argue that he is playing an important role by being the only candidate willing to take direct and frequent shots at Mr. Trump. Mike DuHaime, one of Mr. Christie’s top strategists, said a case could be made for any of the candidates other than Mr. Trump to drop out, given that none have been able to break the 20 percent mark in polling.“Whatever case people make to you about Christie, the other two have no path either,” Mr. DuHaime said, referring to Ms. Haley and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. “Should everybody just drop out, or should we try to beat the guy?”Mr. Christie has been more direct in his criticism of former President Donald J. Trump than Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesMr. Christie has run a relatively low-budget campaign, powered by a small staff and frequent television appearances. He has largely ignored Iowa to burrow into New Hampshire, a state where independent voters can cast ballots in the primary. Mr. Christie has made an aggressive push for those voters, who are more open to his anti-Trump message. This fall, organizations aligned with his campaign ran ads urging Democrats in the state to become “undeclared” voters and back his bid.But as the deadline to switch party registration has passed, Mr. Christie has shown signs of weakness. In recent weeks, he has barely cracked 10 percent in polling in New Hampshire. It remains unclear whether he will be on the ballot in every state. Last week, officials said he had failed to collect enough signatures to qualify to be on the ballot in Maine. Mr. Christie plans to appeal the ruling.Campaigning in New Hampshire, Mr. Christie said his path to the nomination would involve winning the state and then focusing on Michigan, which holds its primary in late February. He pointed to Mr. McCain’s 2008 campaign in New Hampshire as the model for victory. “All he did was come to New Hampshire, get in a Suburban and went from town to town to town, into town hall meetings, and he went on to win,” he said.As Mr. Christie cracked jokes and took questions from voters, he remained adamant that he was in the race to win the nomination. The other candidates, he said, were “battling like animals to be in second place” — a line that drew chuckles from the crowd gathered in a packed reception room at a small restaurant in Concord.“You know what we call second place in New Jersey? The first loser,” Mr. Christie said, as voters shouted out the answer in unison with him. “If you want to win, you got to beat the guy who’s in front of you.”His appeal won support from some independent New Hampshire voters and even Trump Republicans. “He’s the only one that shows, in my mind, the strength and fortitude needed to run this country,” said Ralph Mecheau, 69, an independent voter who met Mr. Christie at a gathering of a state employees’ union. “If you can’t stand up to Trump, then how are you going to stand up to others?”Gary Morrison, a 27-year-old Trump voter, who is a member of the state employee union, said he came out of the union town hall as a Christie supporter, and liked Mr. Christie’s policies on gun violence that focused on enforcement of laws already on the books and increased support for mental health care instead of adding more gun control laws.“The way I look at it is just making sure that they can’t just take away stuff,” Mr. Morrison said. Mr. Christie said that if he failed to notch a big victory in New Hampshire he would rethink his pledge to keep his campaign going until the Republican convention in July.That’s far too long for some strategists, who said they wanted Mr. Christie to consider a much shorter timetable.“He probably has the toughest path to the nomination, and you just have to face that reality sooner than later,” said Kevin Madden, a Republican strategist who worked on Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign. “Ideally, it would have been facing that reality yesterday, or a month or two months ago.”Jazmine Ulloa More

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    Nikki Haley’s First TV Ad Calls to Move Beyond ‘the Chaos of the Past’

    The 30-second spot, part of a $10 million advertising effort in Iowa and New Hampshire, does not mention her front-running rival, Donald Trump, or President Biden.Nikki Haley’s presidential campaign released its first ad of the Republican primary race on Thursday, a spot that calls for “a new generation of conservative leadership” and presents her as a steady hand in the face of domestic and international threats.The ad, titled “Moral Clarity,” comes as Ms. Haley, the former United Nations ambassador and South Carolina governor, aims to build on her momentum in the polls ahead of the first nominating contests in January. Former President Donald J. Trump, however, maintains a wide lead in surveys.The 30-second ad, part of a $10 million purchase in Iowa and New Hampshire, will air on broadcast and cable TV starting Friday. A super PAC backing Ms. Haley, SFA Fund Inc., has spent more than $20 million on television advertising time, including reserved spots well into January.Ms. Haley narrates the ad, and she does not mention Mr. Trump or President Biden. She twice refers to “chaos” — “chaos on our streets and college campuses,” and a need to leave behind “the chaos of the past,” reflecting concerns about Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump that have animated centrist Republicans.To drive home the point, the ad shows security-camera footage of hooded figures shooting guns on a street as well as images of pro-Palestinian protests and American flags being burned.Buoyed by strong debate performances, Ms. Haley has emerged in recent weeks as a challenger to Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida for the No. 2 spot in the primary field as both seek to dislodge Mr. Trump. She has largely sought to stake out nuanced positions on domestic issues like abortion (which she does not mention in the ad), while taking a hard-line stance on foreign policy, particularly China, Russia and Iran (which she does mention).Mr. Trump’s campaign has told supporters it expects to air its first broadcast TV ads in Iowa and New Hampshire starting on Friday. He has previously focused on national ads attacking Mr. Biden. More

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    Top Ramaswamy Aide Resigns to Join the Trump Campaign

    The aide, Brian Swensen, had been focused on building Vivek Ramaswamy’s New Hampshire operation.Vivek Ramaswamy’s national political director is switching Republican teams and heading to former President Donald J. Trump’s campaign.The political director, Brian Swensen, has resigned and plans to join Mr. Trump’s re-election effort, a spokeswoman for Mr. Ramaswamy said on Wednesday. The news was first reported by The Messenger.The move came as Mr. Ramaswamy, whose campaign for the 2024 Republican nomination has plateaued in the polls, is barnstorming the early primary states in the final weeks before the start of the primary season in Iowa and New Hampshire in January. Mr. Swensen was with Mr. Ramaswamy in New Hampshire over the weekend. In the coming weeks, he will assist with the Trump campaign’s operation in Nevada ahead of the state’s caucuses in February. Tricia McLaughlin, the Ramaswamy campaign’s spokeswoman, said that Mr. Swensen had left on good terms and that the move had been “in the process for a while.” Mr. Ramaswamy has repeatedly praised Mr. Trump, the Republican front-runner, whom he trails by double digits, often calling him the “best president of the 21st century.”“We love Brian, and we just want him to be happy in life and in his career,” Ms. McLaughlin said, adding, “Everyone saw it very much as not a surprise and also as a positive move for Brian to take a different path.”Mr. Swensen did not respond to requests for comment.Mr. Swensen is a longtime Republican consultant. He worked on Ron DeSantis’s campaign for Florida governor in 2018 and served as deputy campaign manager for Senator Marco Rubio’s 2016 re-election campaign. He had moved to New Hampshire to focus on the Ramaswamy campaign’s operation there several months ago, long before Mr. Ramaswamy moved his campaign headquarters and full-time staff members from Ohio to Iowa and New Hampshire this month.His previous duties will be taken over by Mike Biundo, who was a former senior adviser to Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign and who previously ran Rick Santorum’s 2012 presidential campaign. Mr. Biundo joined the Ramaswamy campaign a month and a half ago and has overseen much of the campaign’s New Hampshire operation since he came on board, Ms. McLaughlin said. More

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    Can Nikki Haley Beat Trump?

    It’s time to admit that I underestimated Nikki Haley.When she began her presidential campaign, she seemed caught betwixt and between: too much of a throwback to pre-Trump conservatism to challenge Ron DeSantis for the leadership of a Trumpified party, but also too entangled with Trump after her service in his administration to offer the fresh start that anti-Trump Republicans would be seeking.If you wanted someone to attack Trump head-on with relish, Chris Christie was probably your guy. If you wanted someone with pre-Trump Republican politics but without much Trump-era baggage, Tim Scott seemed like the fresher face.But now Scott is gone, Christie has a modest New Hampshire constituency and not much else, and Haley is having her moment. She’s in second place in New Hampshire, tied with DeSantis in the most recent Des Moines Register-led poll in Iowa, and leading Joe Biden by more than either DeSantis or Trump in national polls. Big donors are fluttering her way, and there’s an emerging media narrative about how she’s proving the DeSantis campaign theory wrong and showing that you can thrive as a Republican without surrendering to Trumpism.To be clear, I do not think Haley has proved the DeSantis theory wrong. She is not polling anywhere close to the highs DeSantis hit during his stint as the Trump-slayer, and if you use the Register-led poll to game out a future winnowing, you see that her own voters would mostly go to DeSantis if she were to drop out — but if DeSantis drops out, a lot of his voters would go to Trump.As long as that’s the case, Haley might be able to consolidate 30 or 35 percent of the party, but the path to actually winning would be closed. Which could make her ascent at DeSantis’s expense another study in the political futility of anti-Trump conservatism, its inability to wrestle successfully with the populism that might make Trump the nominee and the president again.But credit where it’s due: Haley has knocked out Scott, passed Christie and challenged DeSantis by succeeding at a core aspect of presidential politics — presenting yourself as an appealing and charismatic leader who can pick public fights and come out the winner (at least when Vivek Ramaswamy is your foil).So in the spirit of not underestimating her, let’s try to imagine a scenario where Haley actually wins the nomination.First, assume that ideological analysis of party politics is overrated, and that a candidate’s contingent success can yield irresistible momentum, stampeding voters in a way that polls alone cannot anticipate.For Haley, the stampede scenario requires winning outright in New Hampshire. The difficulty is that even on the upswing, she still trails Trump 46-19 in the current RealClearPolitics Average. But assume that Christie drops out and his support swings her way, assume that the current polling underestimates how many independents vote in the G.O.P. primary, assume a slight sag for Trump and a little last-moment Nikkimentum, and you can imagine your way to a screaming upset — Haley 42, Trump 40.Then assume that defeat forces Trump to actually debate in the long February lull (broken only by the Nevada caucus) between New Hampshire and the primary in Haley’s own South Carolina. Assume that the front-runner comes across as some combination of rusty and insane, Haley handles him coolly and then wins her home state primary. Assume that polls still show her beating Biden, Fox News has rallied to her fully, endorsements flood in — and finally, finally, enough voters who like Trump because he’s a winner swing her way to clear a path to the nomination.You’ll notice, though, that this story skips over Iowa. That’s because I’m not sure what Haley needs there. Victory seems implausible, but does she want to surge so impressively that it knocks DeSantis out of the race? Or, as the Dispatch’s Nick Catoggio has suggested, does the fact that DeSantis’s voters mostly have Trump as a second choice mean that Haley actually needs DeSantis to stay in the race through the early states, so that Trump can’t consolidate his own potential support? In which case maybe Haley needs an Iowa result where both she and DeSantis overperform their current polling, setting her up for New Hampshire but also giving the Florida governor a reason to hang around.This dilemma connects to my earlier argument that beating Trump requires a joining of the Haley and DeSantis factions, an alliance of the kind contemplated by Trump’s opponents in 2016 but never operationalized. But I doubt Haley is interested in such an alliance at the moment; after all, people are talking about her path to victory — and here I am, doing it myself!Fundamentally, though, I still believe that Haley’s destiny is anticipated by the biting, “congrats, Nikki,” quote from a DeSantis ally in New York Magazine: “You won the Never Trump primary. Your prize is nothing.”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 New Hampshire Primary Will Be Jan. 23

    The date, announced by state officials, defies the Democratic National Committee’s decision to have South Carolina vote first.New Hampshire’s presidential primary will be held Jan. 23, state officials announced on Wednesday.The date had been in contention since the Democratic National Committee decided earlier this year to change its nominating calendar, which had long given New Hampshire the first primary slot after the Iowa caucuses. The new Democratic calendar puts South Carolina first, followed by New Hampshire and Nevada together on one day, then Georgia, then Michigan.But New Hampshire officials have made clear that they will refuse to abide by the D.N.C.’s decision. The state has a law requiring it to hold the first-in-the-nation primary, and additionally, the Republican Party still has the state in its traditional position in the early lineup of Iowa first, New Hampshire second, and then South Carolina and Nevada.“We will be holding our primary first,” Ray Buckley, the chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party, said last year after initial reports that the D.N.C. intended to change the schedule.In a statement after the date was announced, Mr. Buckley said, “For more than 100 years, presidential candidates of both parties have come to the Granite State time and again because, no matter who they are, where they come from, or how much money they have, they know they will get a fair shot from Granite Staters.”New Hampshire’s secretary of state has the authority to set its primary date, and the state law says its presidential primary must be held on either the second Tuesday in March or “seven days or more immediately preceding the date on which any other state shall hold a similar election, whichever is earlier.” The secretary of state, David Scanlan, is a Republican and had previously indicated that he intended to follow that law.Because New Hampshire is violating the D.N.C.’s edict, President Biden did not put his name on the ballot there. Some of his supporters are running a write-in campaign on his behalf, but it is not officially sanctioned. Party leaders could also penalize the state by refusing to count its delegates at the Democratic convention. More

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    Trump Takes Veterans Day Speech in a Very Different Direction

    The former president said that threats from abroad were less concerning than liberal “threats from within” and that he was a “very proud election denier.”Former President Donald J. Trump, on a day set aside to celebrate those who have defended the United States in uniform, promised to honor veterans in part by assailing what he portrayed as America’s greatest foe: the political left.Using incendiary and dehumanizing language to refer to his opponents, Mr. Trump vowed to “root out” what he called “the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.”“The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous and grave than the threat from within,” Mr. Trump said Saturday in a nearly two-hour Veterans Day address in Claremont, N.H.Mr. Trump accused Democrats and President Biden of trying to roll back his efforts to expand veteran access to health care, causing soaring inflation, pushing the country to the brink of World War III, endangering the troops in Afghanistan and of lying and rigging elections.He also promised to care for America’s veterans, reviving a hyperbolic claim that he made throughout his 2016 campaign that Democrats “treat the illegal aliens just pouring into our country better than they treat our veterans.”And he said he would divert money currently earmarked “for the shelter and transport of illegal aliens” to instead provide shelter and treatment for homeless military veterans.Here are some of the more notable elements of Mr. Trump’s Veterans Day speech.Courtroom CamerasMr. Trump, who is facing a civil fraud trial in New York and four criminal indictments, said in a radio interview earlier this week that he would welcome cameras in the courtroom. He went further on Saturday.“I want this trial to be seen by everybody in the world,” Mr. Trump said to a cheering crowd, referring to his federal election trial in Washington. “The prosecution wishes to continue this travesty in darkness, and I want sunlight.”Mr. Trump, who has denounced the prosecutions he faces as politically motivated and accused Mr. Biden of weaponizing the Justice Department, said that he was convinced Americans who watched the trial would reach his view.“Every person in America and beyond should have the opportunity to study this case firsthand,” he said.Mr. Trump’s remarks came the day after his lawyers in the case filed papers arguing those proceedings should be televised, backing a similar push by other media organizations.It was a rare instance in which the former president found common ground with the mainstream media, which Mr. Trump attacked repeatedly on Saturday.Hands RaisedAs he has before, Mr. Trump again called for executing drug dealers, praising China for making drug trafficking a capital offense. But in New Hampshire, a state where the opioid crisis has hit particularly hard, he turned to an informal straw poll to strengthen his case.“Let’s have a vote,” Mr. Trump said to the crowd. “Who would be in favor of the death penalty — now, wait, don’t go yet — knowing that it will solve the problem?”A majority of the crowd raised their hands.Fewer hands went up when Mr. Trump asked who would oppose such a move. When one woman raised her hand emphatically, Mr. Trump looked at her with a small smile and asked, “Are you a liberal?”She wildly shook her head to the contrary.Facts FloutedMr. Trump also repeated lies, falsehoods, exaggerations and half-truths that he has told routinely on a number of subjects, including on gas prices, U.S. energy independence, election fraud and the 2020 elections.“I’m a very proud election denier,” Mr. Trump said.Insults HurledMr. Trump had previously refrained from commenting on the persistent rumors about whether Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida wears heel lifts in his cowboy boots — the subject of late-night jokes and social media gossip. But on Saturday he finally couldn’t resist.After mocking Mr. DeSantis for courting farmers in Iowa, Mr. Trump made an aside: “I’m not wearing lifts, either, by the way. I don’t have six-inch heels!” The comment was an echo of a slight by Vivek Ramaswamy in Wednesday’s debate, where the entrepreneur and author made a dig at the Florida governor.He then did a clownish impression of Mr. DeSantis walking off the stage at Wednesday night’s debate that looked ripped from Monty Python’s Ministry of Silly Walks. “I thought he was wearing ice skates,” Mr. Trump joked.Mr. Trump also derided Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, a Republican who has said Mr. Trump cannot win next year; Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic former House speaker; Hillary Clinton, his 2016 opponent; and Mr. Biden.Compliments GivenMr. Trump lauded Dana White, the president of the Ultimate Fighting Championship. “There’s a guy I’d like to make my defense chief,” he said. “I wouldn’t call him my defense chief, I’d call him my offense chief.”And he complimented President Xi Jinping of China, of whom he said, “He’s like Central Casting. There’s nobody in Hollywood that can play the role of President Xi — the look, the strength, the voice.” More

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    Nikki Haley Is Gaining Ground

    A long time ago in South Carolina, as Nikki Haley recalls when she talks to voters in New Hampshire and Iowa, she ran campaigns that nobody thought much of until, unexpectedly, suddenly, she was winning them. Is that what’s happening here? Is this real?She is gaining in the places that matter. And she is running the campaign she’s run before: hard-core conservative on fiscal matters and immigration, kitchen-table pragmatic on basically everything else. A plaintive quality in Ms. Haley’s voice joins up well with the grim statistics she shares about kids’ reading and math proficiency post-pandemic, and about what happens to veterans after they come home. She spends a good deal of time talking about U.S. support for Ukraine (and Israel) as bulwarks against further deterioration of the world order, while also outlining a hawkish “peace through strength” approach toward China.There’s a hundred little switches that would need to flip from now, in a big mousetrap-style path, toward victory. If a bloc of Republican voters’ support for Mr. Trump is as soft as some polling indicates, and if Ms. Haley could somehow continue to elevate herself the rest of the way, the race for the G.O.P. nomination would turn brutal — and volatile confrontation with Mr. Trump would be inevitable. Survivors of such moments have been rare, but for those who do, like Brian Kemp, the Georgia governor, survival becomes a position of strength. Maybe people forgot Ms. Haley’s early campaigns in favor of the easy relationship she had with Mr. Trump, but they might prove instructive.In person, her campaign feels different than Mr. Trump’s and those of the other challengers; if she agrees with them on immigration, the tone and emphasis on much of the rest differ. This includes her general impulse toward knocking Washington (both Republicans and Democrats) rather than the cultural Marxists that animate most Republican visions of what ails the country. You are, in general, unlikely to hear at another national Republican event answers about access to contraceptives, the importance of attracting and training more mental health counselors or even a slight openness to the idea of businesses transitioning to the use of electric vehicles (if on a longer time frame than the Biden administration’s, and only after Ms. Haley goes on a long riff about calling out China and India). In Nikki Haley, these things flow fluidly alongside outlines of her plan to raise the retirement age for the youngest generation, or extended and hard comments about the border, including a reactionary “it only takes one” warning about terrorism.Ms. Haley remains the governor who, after promising during a campaign to keep the Confederate flag on state grounds, later leaned on Republicans to take it down, who signed a state law requiring businesses to check the federal E-Verify immigration status program and who gave a State of the Union response about the value and honor of immigrants that doubled as a rebuke to Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign. She then served in Mr. Trump’s administration, where she pursued sanctions on Russia. Depending on how you view Ms. Haley, these are evidence of a lack of core, or the subtleties of a realist with a long game. Either way, it’s indisputable that her career runs toward brisk, business-friendly sobriety and that she hasn’t lost before.Winning is on the mind of this campaign. The strategy looks like: Ms. Haley walking slow, subtle figure eights encircled by voters on a Thursday evening in Nashua, N.H. She spoke for 33 minutes in a well-lit space inside a building that’s seen better days; answered questions for 23 minutes; shook hands; signed posters and posed for photos with older couples in puffy jackets gently touching her back for at least another half-hour; stood and worked the room again until, essentially, she was the last person in it, touching up her own makeup to do a TV interview in the near dark as staff members broke down and packed up the remaining gear. That’s the logistical play here: grinding out fractions of percentage points, voter by voter, event by event, with low overhead and a distinct tone, elevated here and there by pointed moments on television.Ms. Haley speaking at a diner in Londonderry, N.H., on Thursday.Jacob Hannah for The New York TimesMs. Haley has said that a presidential election is about relationships and trust.Jacob Hannah for The New York Times“Eight years ago, it was good to have a leader who broke things,” she told the Republican Jewish Coalition late last month, part of a highly pro-Israel speech that drew some attention. “But right now, we need a leader who also knows how to put things back together.”From here, Ms. Haley would need to continue accruing steady, modest gains; serious money would have to come through to pay for TV ads that really land; donors would have to give up their eternal dream of Glenn Youngkin, the Virginia governor who a number of Republican donors envision as the candidate to wait for. More current candidates, and especially Chris Christie, would need to drop out before, not after, the New Hampshire primary. She’d need to flip some senators, governors or conservative talk radio types — who knows who — into believers and for their belief to be persuasive with a real segment of Trump-leaning conservatives. Independents and, because every vote counts, the Romney-to-Biden crowd would need to prioritize her candidacy in states where they can vote in primaries like New Hampshire and South Carolina, and in many of the Super Tuesday states.She’d need to continue dominating debates; she’d need to not fade or completely lose it when Mr. Trump turns a real attack on her; and more than anything she’d need a substantive critique, even if gently delivered, of Mr. Trump to feel true and land with people. Maybe it’s that idea of putting things back together, which she did not repeat in New Hampshire last week, that has the virtue of matching Ms. Haley’s vibe, while also responding to the widespread feeling the earth is falling apart. A win in Iowa or New Hampshire for Ms. Haley would reset the entire primary.This, or some array of similar conditions, still seems very unlikely. But it’s a lot less unlikely than it was six months ago. And it’s more or less what happened, on a smaller scale, for Ms. Haley in 2004 and 2010 when she ran for the South Carolina Legislature and then for governor. Those campaigns started off seeming ridiculous and involved Ms. Haley, holding doughnuts, knocking on doors for votes (though that is what it looks like when someone runs against a longtime incumbent). Then those campaigns gradually caught on, brought in such disparate backers as Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney, and — though she didn’t mention it when she talked about those campaigns last week — when they became competitive, the campaigns ended in brutal attacks on her, and Haley wins.Last winter, when she announced, a lot of people considered her campaign a waste of time. Even more, they argued that her glossy corporateness was out of touch with today’s G.O.P.; that she must be running for vice president. That response likely derived from the ridiculous period after Jan. 6, when Ms. Haley criticized Mr. Trump harshly, then seemed to dial it back. Part of it is the smooth, pain-free way Ms. Haley entered and extricated herself from the Trump administration, after criticizing him in 2016 and endorsing Marco Rubio. Some of it’s the fluid way she talks and the clothes, too, even if they likely harken back to a not-Ivy-League facet of her life: growing up working in a clothing store in the small-town South. This picture of Ms. Haley culminated in Vivek Ramaswamy congratulating her on her future on the Raytheon board.But the full Haley story has a lot of brutal moments in it; hers is not a soft career. She really brings something out in people: guys who used slurs to describe her; the former Democratic Party official who in 2013 compared her to Eva Braun and said she should go back where she came from, then clarified to say he meant “being an accountant in her parents’ dress shop”; Rex Tillerson, who used a sexist term to describe her, according to the writer Tim Alberta. There have been people who have said she lies about her religion. The political consultant Stuart Stevens recently told The New Yorker that the only difference between Ms. Haley and Marjorie Taylor Greene was “purely aesthetic.”In 2004, when she was running for the state legislature, people sent racist mailers about her parents, who had lived in South Carolina for 30 years, had painted an American flag on the ceiling of their clothing store and had organized a local international night and science programs in their small town. Except voters in the district felt as if they knew her. “By that point, Nikki had already met every single voter who got those mailers,” the former state party chairman Katon Dawson told Mr. Alberta. “They all had talked to her. It made a lot of those people angry on her behalf.”When she ran for governor, multiple men claimed to have had affairs with Ms. Haley, who denied this. Voters felt as if she got a bad shake. In this way, one consistency in the Haley story is the way pain can be transformed into a political weapon — used to prevail in elections, or push another Republican to vote to take the Confederate flag down.It’s a hypothetical on top of a hypothetical to think about what would happen if Mr. Trump attacked a candidate who’s polling, at best, 19 percent in New Hampshire right now. But there’s no total glide path to defeating Mr. Trump; he will force confrontation, and Ms. Haley’s campaign seems engineered to bring that about, but only at the end. Would it work the same way as before for her?There is the possibility that no matter what Ms. Haley does, this ends with an emphatic defeat, with voters primed to have their better impulses wrecked by Mr. Trump, with people in media and politics waiting to have every suspicion about her oscillations affirmed. Maybe this moment is the ceiling, and Ms. Haley fades. Maybe she’ll pull up stakes and endorse Mr. Trump in the end, accepting reality but invalidating the interest and trust people on one side of the party might have in her. Or it’s the others: Candidates won’t drop out; the money and endorsements don’t come through; voters won’t take the chance.But, perhaps, the alchemy works the same way: The candidate keeps gaining and doesn’t fold at the decisive moment, and people walk away more secure in their vote and even protective. That happened with Mr. Kemp in Georgia, and it’s happened with Ms. Haley before.And yes, this is all horse race — who’s up, who’s down, about winning the presidency over being president. But resolving the Trump candidacy through political, persuasive means is actually an important civic project, one that could end with an imitation of Mr. Trump, or someone else. Ms. Haley clearly thinks there’s a way to do this that combines enough of what hard-line and moderate conservatives care about in real life, that joins the hard-liners’ desire to win and the moderates’ desire to move on from Mr. Trump. The biggest enemy she will have to defeat is people’s idea of what other people want from politics now.In a diner in Londonderry, N.H., last week, a voter asked Ms. Haley for her help in his defending her against some specific claims. “Absolutely,” she said. “First of all, you need to think of a presidential election — at least the way I look at it — it’s about relationships and trust. Right?”Katherine Miller is a staff writer and editor in Opinion.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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    Dean Phillips Announces Last-Minute Bid to Challenge Biden

    The Minnesota congressman made his presidential bid official in New Hampshire before a crowd of a few dozen people composed largely of journalists and campaign staff.On the last possible day to do so, Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota walked into the New Hampshire Statehouse on Friday through a side door and submitted paperwork to put his name on the state’s primary ballot.He then went downstairs to the visitors center, where he placed a pin for his newborn presidential campaign on a wall of historical campaign pins next to Hubert Humphrey, whom he called “my hero,” and removed a pin featuring former President Donald J. Trump from his desired spot to do so.“By the way, this is a metaphor,” he joked.Then the Democrat walked out into an unseasonably warm morning, stood at a lectern in front of a crowd of a few dozen people, composed largely of journalists and campaign staff, and formally declared that he was challenging President Biden.It was, he acknowledged to reporters earlier, the longest of long shots. Mr. Biden’s re-election campaign has the near-unanimous support of Democratic leaders, who are less than pleased to see Mr. Phillips running. And with the first primaries only about three months away, the hour is late. He has already missed the filing deadline to appear on the ballot in Nevada, an important early-voting state.“I’m at a massive disadvantage,” he said, before citing the Miracle on Ice in the time-honored tradition of underdog candidates everywhere. “This is the country of long shots.”Mr. Phillips — a onetime Biden ally who has repeatedly praised the president even as he says he shouldn’t run again — has made no secret of the animating principle of his campaign: Mr. Biden’s 80 years of age, and what he sees as his party’s refusal to grapple with voters who have, in survey after survey, expressed significant concerns. In remarks making his bid official, Mr. Phillips, 54, called for generational change, warning of dire electoral consequences should the party refuse the debate he hopes his candidacy will force.Mr. Phillips filed paperwork to put his name on the New Hampshire primary ballot with Secretary of State David Scanlan on Friday.Reba Saldanha/Reuters“It is time for the torch to be passed to a new generation of American leaders,” he said.Among the sparse crowd in front of the statehouse in Concord, N.H., were some who agreed.Tracy Tanner Craig, 49, of Peterborough, N.H., said that while she generally voted for Democrats in national elections, she had been disillusioned with the party since the Great Recession. She and her husband, Matt Craig, 51, heard about Mr. Phillips five days ago, immediately began researching him and liked what they saw.“Age matters,” Ms. Tanner Craig said, expressing dismay that her two children — who, for the first time, are both eligible to vote in a presidential election — might have to choose next November between an 81-year-old, Mr. Biden, and a 78-year-old, Mr. Trump. “What hope does that give them for a future? What inspiration is there? Last time we felt inspired was ’08 with Obama.”She and Mr. Craig said they liked that Mr. Phillips was moderate, and did not like that Democrats had largely circled the wagons around the incumbent. (Mr. Biden will technically not appear on the New Hampshire primary ballot.)“We need options,” she said. “Part of democracy is we should have choices.”“Good candidates, a diverse set of candidates,” Mr. Craig added. “Instead of, ‘OK, we’re going with Trump again,’ ‘OK, we’re going with Biden again.’”Dan Kipphut, 66, of Concord, said Mr. Biden “should take the last four years as a big win and move on.” He has done “pretty well,” Mr. Kipphut said, but “I think the country could stand to have some new direction with a new generation.”Others were there simply out of curiosity — willing to consider Mr. Phillips, but not sure they supported him yet.“Considering all of the other stuff happening, I think he’s doing somewhat of a good job,” Nick Hadshi, 32, of Concord, said of Mr. Biden. “It could be better, it could be worse.”He was open to alternatives, he said.Mr. Biden’s campaign said in a statement that it was “proud of the historic, unified support he has” and added: “The stakes of next year’s election could not be higher for the American people, and the campaign is hard at work mobilizing the winning coalition that President Biden can uniquely bring together to once again beat the MAGA Republicans next November.”While Mr. Phillips outlined a number of issues that he would focus on — including the affordability of health care and child care, and the accessibility of guns after the mass shootings in Lewiston, Me., this week — he did not cite any policy disagreements with Mr. Biden. He did, however, mention disagreements with some of his fellow Democrats in general and suggested, without elaborating much, that they saw issues as too black and white.“Two things not only can be true at once, they usually are true at once,” he said. “We need border security, and we need immigration reform. It’s humane, and it’s the economic choice. Every issue, from gun violence prevention to reproductive rights to any policy of substance we need right now — every one of them, two things are true at once.”Mr. Phillips told reporters that he saw preventing Mr. Trump from winning the 2024 election as an “existential” necessity, and that this was why he was running. But he also said unequivocally that he would fall in line if Mr. Biden won the primary.“If you care about democracy, if you care about freedom, I think it’s terribly important that a Democrat win this election,” he said. “And I will do anything, I will give everything I have, every moment of my time, every ounce of my energy, to ensure that that nominee — whether it be me, of course, President Biden or somebody else — becomes president.” More