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      New Hampshire Voters Like Ramaswamy, but More as a No. 2

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      At campaign stops across the state, the political newcomer has drawn big crowds and praise from voters. But some wonder if he needs more political seasoning.Vivek Ramaswamy, the only top-polling presidential candidate to hit the campaign trail over Labor Day weekend, is enjoying the attention of his newfound status.Across five events in New Hampshire on Saturday, part of an 11-stop swing in the Granite State, Mr. Ramaswamy drew hundreds of attendees, often exceeding the number of seats or the space provided at venues from a state fair in Contoocook to a country store in Hooksett.But the crowds and attention being showered on the 38-year-old political newcomer come with something of a caveat: Many of those showing up at his events and driving his rise in the polls see him as a possible vice president or a great future president — but not necessarily a president yet.“I have socks older than him,” said Pamela Coffey, 69, who came from Peterborough, N.H., to see the candidate in person.Mr. Ramaswamy, who entered the race in February with little name recognition and no political experience, has campaigned at a grueling pace in early states and adopted an everywhere-all-the-time media strategy that in recent weeks has propelled him to third place in the race, just behind Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.A combative performance in the first Republican presidential debate last month, in which he was attacked more than any other candidate onstage, put a spotlight on him that translated into heightened attendance at his campaign events. But some voters in New Hampshire said they still had reservations about Mr. Ramaswamy’s youth and inexperience.Mr. Ramaswamy has used his status as the first millennial to run as a Republican candidate to lament his generation’s being “hungry for a cause” — primarily to older audiences. One of the most reliable applause lines at his New Hampshire events was his controversial proposal to require that high schoolers pass a civics test before they can vote.Mr. Ramaswamy drew big crowds at his Saturday events, including one at the Hopkinton State Fair in Contoocook, N.H.Sophie Park for The New York TimesMr. Ramaswamy’s “America First” platform and outsider standing are fashioned after former President Donald J. Trump’s, down to his predisposition toward falsehoods. Like Mr. Trump, for example, Mr. Ramaswamy has expressed disdain for President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine: He scoffed at “Zelenskyism” and called the president the “pied piper of Hamelin in cargo pants” as cows mooed in the background at an event in Dublin, N.H.Pat Cameron of Goffstown, N.H., said he saw Mr. Ramaswamy as a “great candidate” with “a lot of really good ideas grounded in what this country really believes in.” But he added: “I honestly believe that Trump would be the best. Personally, I would have loved to see President Trump take him as his running mate for vice president.”And Mr. Trump himself complimented Mr. Ramaswamy last week, spurring questions about whether the Republican presidential front-runner would consider Mr. Ramaswamy to run as No. 2 on his ticket if he wins the nomination.On Tuesday, the former president told the conservative commentator Glenn Beck that he thought Mr. Ramaswamy was “a very, very intelligent person.”“He’s got good energy,” Mr. Trump continued. “He could be some form of something.”But Mr. Ramaswamy, who has said repeatedly that he is not running to be second in command, reiterated that stance on Saturday. “I think President Trump and I share this in common: Neither of us would do well in a No. 2 position,” he said at a town hall in Newport, N.H., just after calling Mr. Trump, as he did in the Republican debate, the “best president of the century.”Despite Mr. Ramaswamy’s frequent praise for Mr. Trump — and repeated promises to pardon him, if he wins the presidency — he has sought to differentiate himself in subtle ways. While Mr. Trump has continued to invoke the 2020 election and the indictments he faces, Mr. Ramaswamy calls for a forward-thinking vision of the United States as a “nation in our ascent” with revived patriotism under a drastically altered executive branch.And Mr. Ramaswamy has recently alluded to questions of Mr. Trump’s electability, saying on Saturday that the “America First movement does not belong to one man” and that 2024 “can’t be another 50.1 election.”“I’m the only candidate in this race who can win in a landslide that reunites this country, that brings young people along,” he said in Dublin.Mr. Ramaswamy greeted voters after a house party in Dublin, N.H., on Saturday, one of the day’s five campaign events.Sophie Park for The New York TimesNonetheless, many voters who came to hear him speak in New Hampshire uttered his name with that of Mr. Trump, unprompted.“I like that he’s not like a normal politician,” said Reed Beauchesne, 54, of Concord, N.H. “He reminds me of Trump, in a way. I think he and Trump would be great together, actually.”And for the voters searching for an alternative to Mr. Trump, not being a “normal politician” can be interpreted as a hindrance.“He’s got some points that resonate with everybody, so that’s wonderful, but my biggest concern is his lack of experience,” said David Leak, 63, who added that he preferred Mr. DeSantis. “Every politician talks great on the stump, the speeches are well rehearsed, but what do they do after they get in?” More

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      N.H. GOP Fights 14th Amendment Bid to Bar Trump From Ballot

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      In New Hampshire, Republicans are feuding over whether the 14th Amendment bars Donald J. Trump from running for president. Other states are watching closely.New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary is quickly becoming the leading edge for an unproven legal theory that Donald J. Trump is disqualified from appearing on the ballot under the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.A long-shot presidential candidate has filed a lawsuit in state court seeking an injunction to keep Mr. Trump off the ballot. And a former Republican candidate for Senate is urging the secretary of state to bring a case that could put the issue before the U.S. Supreme Court.On Wednesday, Free Speech for the People, a liberal-leaning group that unsuccessfully tried to strike House Republicans from the ballot in 2022, sent a letter to the secretaries of state in New Hampshire, as well as Florida, New Mexico, Ohio and Wisconsin, urging them to bar Mr. Trump from the ballot under the 14th Amendment.These efforts employ a theory that has been gaining traction among liberals and anti-Trump conservatives: that Mr. Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021, disqualify him under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which bars people from holding office if they took an oath to support the Constitution and later “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”The theory has been gaining momentum since two prominent conservative law professors published an article this month concluding that Mr. Trump is constitutionally disqualified from running for office.But even advocates of the disqualification theory say it is a legal long shot. If a secretary of state strikes Mr. Trump’s name or a voter lawsuit advances, Mr. Trump’s campaign is sure to appeal, possibly all the way to the Supreme Court, where the 6-3 conservative majority includes three justices nominated by Mr. Trump.“When it gets to the Supreme Court, as it surely will, this will test the dedication of the justices to principles of law, more than almost anything has for a very long time,” said Laurence H. Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard who believes the insurrection disqualification clearly applies to Mr. Trump, “because they will obviously realize that telling the leading candidate of one major political party, ‘no, no way, you’re not eligible’ is no small matter.”However long the odds of success, discussion of the amendment is bubbling up across the country. In Arizona, the secretary of state said he had heard from “concerned citizens” about the issue, and the Michigan secretary of state said she was “taking it seriously.” In Georgia, officials are looking at precedent set by a failed attempt to use the 14th Amendment to disqualify Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene from the ballot in the 2022 midterms.But New Hampshire has jumped out as the early hotbed of the fight.The New Hampshire Republican Party said this week that it would challenge any effort to remove Mr. Trump, or any other candidates who have met requirements, from the ballot.“There’s no question that we will fight, and we’ll use all of the tools available to us to fight anyone’s access being denied on the ballot,” said Chris Ager, a Republican state committeeman in New Hampshire. “And if there’s a lawsuit, we are likely to intervene on behalf of the candidate to make sure that they have access. So we take it very seriously that the people of New Hampshire should decide who the nominee is, not a judge, not a justice system.”Chris Ager, a Republican state committeeman in New Hampshire, shaking Mr. Trump’s hand at the state party meeting in January.Doug Mills/The New York TimesLate last week, Bryant Messner, a former Trump-endorsed candidate for U.S. Senate, who goes by Corky, met with New Hampshire’s secretary of state, David M. Scanlan, to urge him to seek legal guidance on the issue. After Politico first reported the meeting, Mr. Scanlan and John M. Formella, the state’s attorney general, issued a joint statement saying that “the attorney general’s office is now carefully reviewing the legal issues involved.”Other secretaries of state have also been seeking legal guidance.“We’re taking a very cautious approach to the issue,” Arizona’s secretary of state, Adrian Fontes, said in an interview. “We’re going to be consulting with lawyers in our office and other folks who will eventually have to deal with this in the courts as well. We don’t anticipate that any decision that I or any other election administrator might make will be the final decision. This will get ultimately decided by the courts.”Adrian Fontes, Arizona’s secretary of state, said his office had already heard from “concerned citizens” regarding Mr. Trump’s eligibility under the 14th Amendment.Rebecca Noble for The New York TimesThough the argument is particularly appealing to liberals who view Mr. Trump as a grave threat, most of the recent momentum on this topic has come from conservative circles.Mr. Messner, a self-described “constitutional conservative,” said he was seeking to create case law around the issue. He said he had not yet filed a legal challenge because he first wanted the secretary of state to open up the candidate filing period and decide whether he would accept Mr. Trump’s filing. He argued that the lawsuit filed on Sunday by a Republican candidate, John Anthony Castro, was unlikely to advance because the filing period has not yet opened.“Section 3 has not been interpreted,” Mr. Messner said in an interview. “So, my position is let’s find a way for this to get into the court system as soon as possible. And then hopefully we can expedite through the legal system, to get it to the Supreme Court as soon as possible.”The precedent is by no means settled. A case filed against then-Representative Madison Cawthorn, Republican of North Carolina, ended with Judge Richard E. Myers II of U.S. District Court, an appointee of Mr. Trump, siding with Mr. Cawthorn. The judge ruled that the final clause of Section 3 allowed for a vote in Congress to “remove” the disqualification and that the passage of the Amnesty Act of 1872 effectively nullified the ban on insurrectionists.But on appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit overruled that argument, saying the Amnesty Act clearly applied only to confederates, not future insurrectionists. The case was declared moot after Mr. Cawthorn lost his re-election in the 2022 primaries.Other cases may also come into play. An administrative law judge in Georgia ruled that plaintiffs failed to prove that Ms. Greene, Republican of Georgia, was in fact an insurrectionist. And cases against Representatives Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs, Republicans of Arizona, were similarly dropped.Advocates of the disqualification clause fear that judges and secretaries of state could decide that any case against Mr. Trump will have to wait until a jury, either in Fulton County, Ga., or Washington, D.C., renders judgment in the two criminal cases charging that Mr. Trump had tried to overturn the 2020 election.Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger of Georgia indicated that previous cases involving Ms. Greene would continue to guide his office, and that “as secretary of state of Georgia, I have been clear that I believe voters are smart and deserve the right to decide elections.”“In Georgia, there is a specific statutory process to follow when a candidate’s qualifications for office are challenged,” Mr. Raffensperger said in a statement. “The secretary of state’s office has and will continue to follow the appropriate procedures in state law for any candidate challenges.”There has been one settled case since Jan. 6 that invoked the 14th Amendment. In September, a judge in New Mexico ordered a county commissioner convicted of participating in the Jan. 6 riot removed from office under the 14th Amendment. He was the first public official in more than a century to be barred from serving under a constitutional ban on insurrectionists holding office. 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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      DeSantis Tweaks His Messaging and Tactics After a Tough Campaign Stretch

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      The Florida governor, who has been losing ground in polls and dealing with staffing, spending and messaging issues, looks to right his campaign in New Hampshire.The NewsOn a weekend tour through New Hampshire, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida debuted a noticeably revamped version of his stump speech that focused more on the economy and border security — issues that voters in the Republican presidential primary say they care about deeply — while leaning less heavily on his reputation as a culture warrior and his record leading his home state.Gov. Ron DeSantis speaking on Saturday in Newport, N.H. He has adjusted his campaign tactics after struggling to gain much momentum.Joe Buglewicz for The New York TimesWhat changed: The speech was more human and less boilerplate.Mr. DeSantis offered a more personal touch, opening one speech with an anecdote about his first visit to Fenway Park during his time on the Yale baseball team and told the crowd at another event about a stranger buying him an elaborate meal at a steakhouse where he got to wear his dress-white Navy uniform out in public for the first time.Both reflected a marked change from his usual, more generic introduction, which remains in the speech, about sending President Biden “back to his basement.” Even the music at his events seemed more fitting. Before a town hall, his team played the New England earworm “Sweet Caroline.”The crowd clapped and sang along.Why It Matters: The latest DeSantis reset looks to be about more than staff changes.Mr. DeSantis is in the midst of rebooting a presidential campaign. In the last few weeks, his campaign has laid off more than a third of its staff, replaced his campaign manager and dealt with the fallout from a leaked memo about debate strategy.The tactics of his campaign already have shifted to include smaller events, more interactions with voters and the news media, and a grueling travel schedule — an effort more suited to a candidate who remains well behind former President Donald J. Trump in national polls.Now, Mr. DeSantis is adjusting his messaging as well to focus more on kitchen-tables issues and policy proposals, a shift that a campaign adviser said has long been part of the governor’s strategy. Mr. DeSantis also spent less time in his New Hampshire speeches this weekend attacking the liberal ideology that he calls “wokeness” than he has at previous events. But he did make more of an effort to explain why fighting it should matter to voters.“In law enforcement, in criminal justice, they overtake these prosecutor offices,” Mr. DeSantis claimed of liberal reformers, “and the average person ends up less safe as a result of that.”And he kept his focus on meeting and talking with voters.On Saturday, Mr. DeSantis frequently slowed down the pace of a parade in Londonderry, N.H., by stopping to shake hands with onlookers and pose for selfies. Later on, he opened an appearance by energetically shouting “Live free or die,” New Hampshire’s state motto, and made sure to ask the names of voters questioning him at the town hall.“He’s doing the retail politics thing, connecting with folks,” Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, a Republican who has clashed with Mr. Trump, said of Mr. DeSantis after the two governors met briefly at the parade. “I think he’s got a huge opportunity here.”What’s Next: A big debate … without Donald Trump.Mr. DeSantis faces the biggest test of his campaign on Wednesday: the first Republican presidential primary debate of the 2024 race, in Milwaukee.Mr. Trump appears to be skipping the debate, handing Mr. DeSantis an opportunity to take the spotlight. But the former president’s absence also means Mr. DeSantis, as the stand-in front-runner, will most likely come under withering fire from rival candidates. How he handles those attacks could define his image in the eyes of many voters tuning into the primary race for the first time.Never Back Down, the super PAC supporting his bid, had suggested in a leaked memo that Mr. DeSantis go on the offensive during the debate. But on Saturday, Mr. DeSantis’s new campaign manager, James Uthmeier, sent out a memo of his own, first reported by Axios, that suggested the governor would take a more measured approach focused on President Biden and his own policy vision.For his part, Mr. DeSantis told reporters over the weekend that he had not read the memo from the super PAC and that it would not influence his strategy. More

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      ‘America First 2.0’: Vivek Ramaswamy pitches to be Republicans’ next Trump

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      Vivek Ramaswamy was at the Iowa state fair, a must-visit destination for any presidential candidate, when he decided to rap.Wearing a red cap and a baggy white polo shirt, the millennial founder of a biotech company launched into a spirited rendition of Eminem’s Lose Yourself, as the governor of Iowa, Kim Reynolds, edged further and further towards the edge of their shared stage.“The whole crowd goes so loud, when he opens his mouth,” Ramaswamy rapped. The largely white crowd watched on politely.“But the words won’t come out. He’s choking, how, everybody’s joking now but the clock’s run out time’s up, over, blaow!”It was not a scene one usually associated with a Republican presidential candidate – especially a rightwing, deeply conservative one. But then again, the era of Donald Trump has upended almost all norms in US politics.Getting his words out has rarely been a problem for Ramaswamy, who is the youngest candidate running for the Republican nomination. The 38-year-old son of Indian immigrants has given scores of interviews since he entered the race, and has spent more time wooing people in the early-voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire than any other candidate.It’s working too. In some recent polls, Ramaswamy has now started to appear second only to the dominant frontrunner of Trump himself.Before demonstrating his musical abilities, Ramaswamy had sat down with Reynolds for a “fair-side chat”, where he said as president he would fire 75% of federal employees and abolish a raft of government agencies including the FBI, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – which handled much of the US response to the Covid-19 pandemic – and the Department of Education.As president he would “revive our national identity”, Ramaswamy said. For good measure, he declared “the climate change agenda” a “hoax”.Hours after his appearance with Reynolds, Ramaswamy repeated much of the same things at the Des Moines Register newspaper’s “political soapbox”.Onlookers seemed enthused by Ramaswamy’s combination of extreme rightwing populism and youthful energy – and by his ready willingness to engage with them directly.“I like what he has to bring to us. He is on the same lines of where I’m at where there’s no reason to hide behind computers; actually speak to people and have open debates and talk real to people instead of being fake the way most of the world is now,” said John Meyers, a service director at a car dealership.Meyers, 54, agreed with Ramaswamy on climate change, adding: “I believe it is a hoax. I don’t believe it’s happening in the way everybody feels it is.”For someone who turned 38 in early August, Ramaswamy certainly has some extreme ideas: beyond just his head-in-the-sand approach to the cataclysmic environmental change happening on our planet.He rails against “the cult of radical gender ideology” – a term which he seems to use to qualify his opposition to trans rights. Ramaswamy wants to ban “addictive social media” for under-16s, while under his leadership the federal workers whom he has not fired would see remote working – which Ramaswamy calls “pro-lazy” – brought to an end.Like barroom bores across the country, he thinks the US has lost its “civic pride, civic identity, civic duty”. He has said affirmative action – the effort designed to ensure colleges and businesses offer equal opportunities to people of color, and people of all genders and sexual orientation – is “a cancer on our national soul”. His opposition to affirmative action, however, invariably lands on policies which may benefit Black or Latino Americans.“Top companies now regularly disfavor qualified applicants who happen to be white or Asian,” he tweeted in June. “Time to restore colorblind meritocracy once and for all.”Ramaswamy did not provide any evidence for his claim and did not respond to a question on the topic from the Guardian. Last year, a report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found that “one of the most durable and defining features of the US labor market is the 2-to-1 disparity in unemployment that exists between black and white workers”.“African Americans have made considerable gains in high school and college completion over the last four and a half decades – both in absolute terms as well as relative to whites – and those gains have had virtually no effect on equalizing employment outcomes,” the EPI wrote.Ramaswamy has also called Juneteenth, a federal holiday which recognizes the emancipation of Black people from slavery, a “useless” holiday.Strikingly, he wants to strip the vote from people under 25; they can avoid being disfranchised if they agree to serve in the military or as a first responder (he did neither).Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, Ramaswamy studied at Harvard and Yale before becoming a venture capitalist and investing in pharmaceutical companies, some of which focused on pharmaceutical drug development. It has made him very wealthy – his net worth is in the hundreds of millions of dollars – and as of late June he had loaned his own campaign $15m.While Ramaswamy has pledged to use his business prowess to lead the US to fiscal glory, in part through revitalizing the coal industry, it is the ongoing American culture war where he has focused much of his attention.A particular bugbear is “wokeism”. He wrote a book about the subject, and according to his website, education, capitalism, big tech companies, American Express and Mother’s Day have all been infected by wokeness, which he defines as “obsessing about race, gender and sexual orientation”.Probably not coincidentally, all of Ramaswamy’s shtick fits in with current rightwing Republican dogma, and Trump’s agenda.Billing his plan as “America First 2.0”, he has clung tightly to Trump’s lengthy coattails, defending the former president against the four indictments he faces. In Iowa he said Trump was the “most successful president in our century”.What Ramaswamy offers, in his telling, is Trumpism, but with more competence, and with a youthful vigor.He has leaned into his youth – as well as the rap he frequently mentions his prowess on the tennis court – as a point of difference from both Trump and Biden. He is also not short on confidence: in Iowa he went so far as to compare himself to the US founding fathers.“Thomas Jefferson was 30 years old when he wrote the Declaration of Independence. Alexander Hamilton was 24 at the time. Years later, he wrote the Federalist Papers, along with John Jay and James Madison. So do I think those guys were too young to set this nation into motion? You’re darned right they weren’t,” Ramaswamy said.Jefferson was actually 33 when he wrote the Declaration of Independence, while Hamilton, who was 19, had nothing to do with the famous breakup text, but in any case Ramaswamy’s tender years are not the only obstacle he faces.It remains unclear whether a person of Indian descent can charm Republican voters, 85% of whom are white. In Iowa, Ramaswamy was asked by the Guardian about his experience of racial discrimination.“I have faced racial discrimination in my life. It has come from people of diverse races. I don’t think racism is limited to one race, actually, but I also don’t let it ruin my life. Have I stubbed my toe? Yes, I have. Is it pleasant when your toe is stubbed? No, it is not but you don’t let it ruin your life. So hardship is something that happens to you; victimhood is a choice,” he said.Hopefully Ramaswamy does not spend too much time on Truth Social, the social media network established by Trump as a safe space for his supporters to rant and rave.On the rightwing platform Ramaswamy’s eligibility to run, as a child of immigrants, has been questioned (Ramaswamy is eligible to serve as president), while Trumpers frequently draw attention to Ramaswamy’s Indian heritage, and his Hindu faith.Moreover, he is running in a party that undeniably has a racism problem.A Trump supporter was arrested last week after threatening to kill Tanya Chutkan, the judge who is overseeing the election interference case against Trump in Washington. The threat against Chutkan, who is Black, included racist terms. Fani Willis, the Fulton county district attorney in Georgia who is prosecuting Trump over alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, has also received racist threats, while this week Trump himself used the word “riggers” in a social media post – which a former Trump aide described as a racial “bullhorn”.As for Ramaswamy’s chances of winning the Republican nomination, they – along with all other candidates not named Trump – seem small at the moment.Trump has a 40-point lead over his Republican rivals in an average of national polling, with 54.6% of party members planning to vote for the twice-impeached former president. Ramaswamy is in third place, at 6.7%, but has gone from an unknown to a near ever-present face, and on Wednesday one poll put him in second place among Republican primary voters – albeit 47 points behind Trump.He has so far thrown everything at the key early voting states of Iowa – where he has spent at least 26 days, far more than his rivals – and New Hampshire, but it remains to be seen if ubiquity will be enough.“He has no political background, which in this day and age could be a very big plus,” said Steffen Schmidt, professor emeritus in the department of political science at Iowa State University.“People are tired of professional politicians. He seems to have an outgoing, engaging personality, which is what you need to have when you’re going and meeting people who have no idea who the hell you are.”There’s no rest for a presidential candidate, and on Sunday, fresh from the fair, Ramaswamy traveled to New Hampshire, where he won applause as he railed against the “rotten, corrupt federal bureaucratic state” at a “No BS BBQ”.The next night, Ramaswamy, who frequently pops up on the influential Fox News, was the focus of a town hall hosted by NewsNation, a far-right channel popular among Trump supporters, as he tries to expand his national profile.“He will talk to any media who will have him,” said Dante Scala, a political scientist at the University of New Hampshire.“That’s all part of the game now. You can’t just rely on Iowa and New Hampshire catapulting you. Because in some ways if you wait until then, the catapult is too late.”People tend to like Ramaswamy. In New Hampshire, he has the highest approval rating of any Republican candidate, and people who come to his events invariably have good things to say. But Scala pointed to an old political adage that people in early-voting states “will date candidates, but marry someone else”.“I think Ramaswamy’s dilemma is he’s generating a lot of good word of mouth, and people like what they see,” he said.“But ultimately will they go beyond dating to actually marrying – especially if that means abandoning someone like Trump?” More

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      Trump Stronghold Is Unbothered by Indictments, But Worried About Winning

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      Republicans in Alton, N.H., still love the former president. But some are rethinking their loyalty, fearing Mr. Trump might not prevail in the general election.Follow our live updates on the Trump investigation in Georgia.Donald J. Trump has amassed a load of legal baggage that is hard to ignore: three indictments and 78 felony counts, including four for conspiring to overturn the 2020 election. More charges could be imminent this week in Fulton County, Ga. Yet polls show his supporters have so far been unfazed.Republicans in small-town Alton, N.H., seem to be no exception. In interviews this month with more than 20 residents who voted for Mr. Trump in 2016 and 2020, all but two dismissed the indictments as manufactured political theater.But in a twist that hints at burgeoning complexity within Republican circles, roughly half of the Trump voters interviewed here in recent days also said that while the indictments don’t bother them, they are increasingly concerned that Mr. Trump may not be able to win the general election.“Trump had a great opportunity and he did a lot of work, but the guy’s an idiot, he’s narcissistic and it’s too much to risk,” Roger Sample, a builder and member of the local planning board, said one recent morning outside the Alton McDonald’s. He was drinking coffee with a group of men; most of them agreed with his assessment.Many acknowledged that they still admired the former president. But his failure to win a second term, combined with their deepening despair at the country’s direction under President Biden, led them to a reckoning, they said. More mindful that Mr. Trump’s personal attacks and “second-grade stuff,” as one put it, repel some voters, they are considering other candidates.While Mr. Trump’s lack of filter raised doubts, the criminal cases did not. On the day when prosecutors in Washington laid out the most serious charges against Mr. Trump, the coffee drinkers outside McDonald’s rolled their eyes at the accusation that Mr. Trump had plotted to overthrow democracy. It was just more political nonsense, they said — the same sort of petty infighting that drove them to embrace Mr. Trump in the first place.“It’s like little kids on the playground — ‘You stole my marbles!’” said Rick Finethy, 61, a Trump loyalist who plans to stick with the former president.“That’s the swamp,” agreed Brian Mitchell, 69, another Trump supporter.From left, Rick Finethy, Roger Sample, Gary Nickerson and Brian Mitchell are among the men who meet daily for coffee at the McDonald’s in Alton. John Tully for The New York TimesWhat concerns them more than legal wrangling, Alton Republicans said, is Mr. Trump’s tendency to speak before he thinks on social media or in debates, causing controversy and diminishing the public’s perception of him as a capable leader. Mr. Trump’s loss in 2020 shook their confidence in his ability to overcome that behavior — and in voters’ willingness to overlook it.Mr. Mitchell said he would like to see Mr. Trump and his closest rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, team up on one ticket, a strategy he thought could shore up Mr. Trump’s electability. “DeSantis is more politically correct,” he said. “He doesn’t fly off the handle.”Few places in New Hampshire have backed Mr. Trump as strongly as Alton, a conservative stronghold of about 6,000 people at the southern tip of Lake Winnipesaukee, near the center of the state in Belknap County. It was one of only two New Hampshire counties won by Mr. Trump in 2020. In Alton, he defeated Mr. Biden 62 to 37 percent.Among voters who plan to vote for Mr. Trump again, Nicholas Kalamvokis, 58, said he liked the former president’s “regular people” persona and was willing to overlook his role in the events of Jan. 6, which he did not believe rose to the level of a crime.“I think he encouraged it, but I don’t believe he incited it, and I don’t think he expected it to be as violent as it was,” said Mr. Kalamvokis, who moved to Alton from Massachusetts last year and works three part-time jobs. “I can see his motivation for it. It was selfish, but also for the betterment of the country.”Few places in New Hampshire have backed Mr. Trump as strongly as Alton, a conservative stronghold of about 6,000 people at the southern tip of Lake Winnipesaukee, and the surrounding Belknap County.John Tully for The New York TimesOnce humming with industry at its sawmills and shoe factories — as well as a corkscrew plant that produced tens of millions of the utensils in the early 20th century — the town, like many others in New England, now relies heavily on tourism for its economy. Drive north from Main Street, on a winding road where American flags fly from every utility pole, into the lakefront village of Alton Bay, and modest, middle-class neighborhoods give way to more imposing homes with docks and boats.The challenges of the seasonal economy, with its long dormant stretches, take a toll on year-round residents.Mr. Mitchell, a Massachusetts native whose father fought in World War II, felt that strain firsthand after moving to Alton 20 years ago and buying a country store on the shore of the lake.“People here recognize that when we lose manufacturing, we become a weaker nation, economically and militarily,” said State Representative Peter Varney, a Republican and lifelong Alton resident who represents the town.John Tully for The New York TimesAfter a decade, they sold the business, weary of trying to make a year’s living in three or four months.State Representative Peter Varney, a Republican and lifelong Alton resident who represents the town in the legislature, said New Hampshire’s lost industry — and its ongoing struggle to attract new jobs and stabilize its population — looms large. “People here recognize that when we lose manufacturing, we become a weaker nation, economically and militarily,” he said.Mr. Varney, who voted for Mr. Trump twice, said he was supporting another candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy, for now to help the 38-year-old entrepreneur build name recognition in the state. Mr. Varney said he was not bothered by the indictments against Mr. Trump. But he hoped that Mr. Ramaswamy’s youth, enthusiasm and business know-how would drive voters his way and make him a contender.“I’m looking at the long game here,” said Mr. Varney, 69, who serves as fire chief in nearby New Durham and owns an Alton gun shop and an engineering firm.Other Republicans who backed Mr. Trump in the past said they, too, were considering their options.Renee and Jim Miller, a couple in Alton, said their newfound support for Mr. Ramaswamy was not a reaction to the indictments but a product of their attendance at one of his campaign events, where they said they were drawn in by the candidate’s empathy, eloquence and hopefulness.The Millers, like other Republicans planning to cast their primary ballots for other candidates, pledged to support Mr. Trump in 2024 if he were to be the nominee. But their clear preference for a fresh contender hints at an uptick in strategic thinking, at least in New Hampshire, a swing state that plays a prominent role in presidential politics with the first Republican primary in the nation.Ron Stevens, 75, a former Navy aircraft mechanic and retired auto body repair teacher, said he may also vote for Mr. Ramaswamy, a son of Indian immigrants who Mr. Stevens described as “very Trump-like.”Among the issues that matter deeply to him, Mr. Stevens said, is illegal immigration, partly because of his grandparents’ struggles as immigrants from Italy and Ireland.“I have nothing against immigrants personally; some of them work like hell,” he said. But “knowing what my relatives had to go through,” he added, he finds it hard to stomach generous handouts for people who don’t follow the rules.In the coffee circle at McDonald’s, the shift away from Mr. Trump has left Mr. Finethy outnumbered as he makes his case for the former president. A builder who started working on his family’s garbage truck when he was a 6-year-old boy in Alton, he said his biggest concern is China’s growing power and the threat it poses to the United States — a threat made more ominous, in his view, by revelations of financial ties between the Biden family and Chinese executives.(Mr. Biden recently announced new restrictions on U.S. investment in China.)“Do I think Trump is an idiot who doesn’t know when to shut up? Yes,” Mr. Finethy said. “But I don’t want to go back to a politician who’s just using the government to get rich. It’s what he does, not what he says, that matters. And this is a guy they can’t buy off.” More