Presidential Election of 2024

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      Principles at Stake in Push to Disqualify Trump: Will of Voters and Rule of Law

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      If the Colorado Supreme Court is right that the former president is constitutionally ineligible to run for president, fundamental values are in severe tension.The Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling that Donald J. Trump is constitutionally ineligible to run for president again pits one fundamental value against another: giving voters in a democracy the right to pick their leaders versus ensuring that no one is above the law.Mr. Trump’s status as the Republican front-runner for the presidential nomination, despite his role in the events that culminated in the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, has created severe tensions between those two principles. If the court’s legal reasoning is correct, obeying the rule of law produces an antidemocratic result.That constitutional and political dilemma is likely to land before the U.S. Supreme Court. And while Mr. Trump’s name would stay on the primary ballot as the justices weighed the matter, their decision would have consequences far beyond his opportunity to win Colorado’s 10 Electoral College votes.For one, similar legal challenges to Mr. Trump’s eligibility are pending in at least 16 additional states. Moreover, the precedent the case will set could open or shut the door to the risk that partisans will routinely turn to state courts to try to keep major federal candidates off the ballot.Supreme Court justices have life tenure in the hope that their work will be independent of political influence, and, under the principle of the rule of law, it would be illegitimate for them to torque their interpretation of the Constitution with an eye toward political consequences. Under the rule of law, the Constitution and federal statutes apply equally to everybody, and no one’s power, wealth, political influence or other special status puts him or her above the law.But under the principle of democracy, the government’s legitimacy stems from the fact that voters decided whom to put in charge. The prospect of unelected judges denying voters the opportunity to make their own decision about Mr. Trump’s political future has given pause even to some of his critics who fervently hope Americans will reject him at the ballot box.Stephen I. Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin, said that even if one thinks that Mr. Trump’s actions rendered him unfit for office in line with the 14th Amendment, there are other — and less alarmingly novel — systems that could have addressed that problem before it reached the courts. These would have freed the Republican Party to have a starkly different primary contest, he said.“The problem is that we’re just not set up for this — we’ve run through the safety nets,” Mr. Vladeck said. “We’ve been spared from this problem in the few prior episodes where it could have arisen by different sets of constraints. And so now we’re in this position because those backstops have failed.”Had nine more Republican senators voted to convict Mr. Trump at his Jan. 6 impeachment trial, he would be ineligible to hold future office anyway, said Mr. Vladeck, who wrote a column about the complications of the Colorado court’s ruling titled “The Law and High Politics of Disqualifying President Trump.” And if more Republican voters were repelled by Mr. Trump’s attempt to secure an unelected second term, his political career would be over as a practical matter.The legal dispute turns on a clause of the 14th Amendment, which was added to the Constitution after the Civil War. Its third section says that people who betrayed their government oaths by engaging in an insurrection are ineligible to hold office. Citing Mr. Trump’s actions surrounding the Jan. 6. riot, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that he was an oath-breaking insurrectionist whose name could not lawfully appear on the ballot.Colorado’s Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that the former president was disqualified from holding office again.Stephen Speranza for The New York Times“If the language is clear and unambiguous, then we enforce it as written,” a four-justice majority wrote.But even if a majority of justices on the U.S. Supreme Court privately agree that the disqualification clause, by its plain text, seems clearly to bar Mr. Trump from returning to government power, it will not be surprising if they hesitate at the prospect of issuing a ruling affirming the Colorado court’s decision.If the justices want to overturn the Colorado ruling, they will have numerous potential offramps. Mr. Trump’s lawyers will have technical arguments, like whether the clause in question has legal force by itself or whether Congress would first need to enact a statute for it take effect. His lawyers will also have substantive arguments, like denying that the mob violence of Jan. 6 rose to the level of an “insurrection” in the constitutional sense.The dilemma invites comparisons to the Supreme Court’s intervention in the 2000 election, which overruled Florida’s Supreme Court and ensured that George W. Bush would maintain his narrow lead over Al Gore in that state to win its Electoral College votes and become the next president.A similarity is the risk of the appearance of partisanship. In the Bush v. Gore case, the five most conservative justices ensured that the Republican candidate would prevail. Today, the U.S. Supreme Court is controlled by a supermajority of six Republican appointees, so a decision to overturn the Colorado ruling and help Mr. Trump could also carry partisan overtones.A difference is the implications for democracy. The Florida Supreme Court in 2000 was not itself deciding the fate of the candidates but trying to allow the completion of a recount that would have clarified the will of voters. If the Supreme Court now overturns the Colorado ruling, it will be leaning in the direction of letting voters decide about Mr. Trump; upholding the state court’s ruling would be the opposite.There has always been inherent tension in the American governing system because the Constitution sets certain limits on democracy. For one, most decisions are made by elected representatives, not directly by plebiscites and referendums.The current dilemma invites comparisons to the Supreme Court’s intervention in the 2000 election.Mark Wilson/Newsmakers, via Getty ImagesThe structures of the Senate and the Electoral College system undercut the democratic principle that everyone has an equal say by giving disproportionate power to voters in sparsely populated states — including sometimes enabling the loser of the national popular vote, like Mr. Bush in 2000 and Mr. Trump in 2016, to nevertheless become president.Not everyone who lives in the United States is allowed to vote for government leaders. Noncitizen permanent residents, people under 18 and convicted felons in some states may not participate in elections — all of which conflicts with the principle that the legitimacy of the government stems from the consent of the governed about who will be in charge.Other requirements restrict who is eligible to hold office. The 22nd Amendment bars anyone from being elected president a third time, even if voters want to keep that person in place. It was added after President Franklin D. Roosevelt violated the constitutional norm of retiring after two terms, which President George Washington had established.The Constitution sets age limits: One must be at least 25 years old to be a member of the House, 30 to be a senator and 35 to be president, even if voters would prefer someone who happens to be younger. And the Constitution dictates that to be eligible to be president, a person must be a natural-born citizen. The antidemocratic nature of that rule drew some attention when the actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a naturalized citizen who was born in Austria, was elected governor of California. He could never run for president, no matter how popular he was with voters.The issue of citizenship at birth has also been the subject of political attention. When Senator John McCain ran as the Republican presidential nominee in 2008, there were questions at the fringes about whether he was eligible because he had been born in the Panama Canal Zone, although to American parents.Mr. Trump’s rise to national political prominence was fueled by his lie that President Barack Obama, who was born in Hawaii, might have been born in Kenya. And in the 2016 Republican primary, Mr. Trump attacked a rival, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, over his birth in Canada, similarly seeking to raise doubts about his eligibility for the presidency.But, despite Mr. Trump’s own history of questioning the eligibility of his political adversaries for president, his legal disqualification would risk undermining democratic legitimacy in a society where extreme polarization and partisanship are already raw.The moment calls to mind an ambiguous legal phrase that is often invoked as a rallying cry for courageously following the law but, as Mr. Vladeck pointed out, also carries a grim warning: “Let justice be done though the heavens fall.” More

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      New DeSantis Super PAC Revives Old Casey DeSantis Ad

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      The group emerged as Mr. DeSantis’s original super PAC began canceling its planned TV advertisements in Iowa and New Hampshire.A new super PAC that popped up in support of Gov. Ron DeSantis this week is preparing to air an ad that features Casey DeSantis, his wife, talking about her experience with cancer. The ad is nearly identical to one that was broadcast during his re-election campaign for governor last year, a video of the new spot shows. The group, Good Fight, was formed on Wednesday and soon began shipping copies of the ad to television stations. The Times obtained the ad from a person who received a copy of it, but who requested anonymity in order to share it. The narration of the ad is virtually the same as in the 2022 ad, but the new version features some new images and clips — of his children playing at the Field of Dreams in Iowa, for example — briefly spliced into the middle.Such a move could be considered “republication” of an ad, which the Federal Election Commission has regulations against. For instance, the super PAC supporting the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, later paid a fine related to republishing an ad from Mr. Romney’s 2008 presidential campaign. It is unclear whether those regulations would apply here, since the original spot is from a state campaign and not a federal one. The DeSantis ad features Ms. DeSantis trying to humanize her husband — who is often described as stiff on the campaign trail — as a father and a supportive husband when she faced breast cancer. The version that aired in 2022 had a logo that read “Ron DeSantis Florida Governor” in the upper-right corner; that logo is blurred out in the new spot sent to stations, which ends with a disclaimer that it was paid for by Good Fight.Craig Mareno, an accountant with Crosby Ottenhoff, a firm based in Birmingham, Ala., is listed on documents creating the group that were filed with the F.E.C. Reached by phone, Mr. Mareno declined to answer questions about the group or the ad, and asked for an email that he could forward to another official he said could answer questions. The DeSantis campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Adav Noti of Campaign Legal Center said it was unclear how the F.E.C. would view the use of the old DeSantis ad, since Mr. DeSantis was not a federal candidate at the time. “The entire DeSantis operation, including the campaign and all of the super PACs, have been pushing the legal envelope since the beginning, and this use of prior campaign material to put out presidential campaign ads is another example,” said Mr. Noti, whose group has already filed an F.E.C. complaint accusing Mr. DeSantis’s presidential campaign of coordinating illegally with the original DeSantis super PAC, Never Back Down.Good Fight emerged as Never Back Down, a deep-pocketed but embattled organization, began canceling $2.5 million in planned television advertisements in the early nominating states of Iowa and New Hampshire, according to AdImpact, a media tracking company.Campaigns are not allowed to coordinate directly with super PACs, but the move appears to align with the strategy suggested by the DeSantis campaign in a memo in late November.James Uthmeier, Mr. DeSantis’s campaign manager, wrote in the memo that a new super PAC formed to aid the governor, Fight Right, would air television ads, and Never Back Down would focus on its “field operation and ground game.”Never Back Down has poured millions into an ambitious door-knocking operation in early states, especially in Iowa. But that ground game has sputtered, with Mr. DeSantis’s poll numbers stagnating as former President Donald J. Trump remains far ahead both in Iowa and nationally. And the super PAC itself has been embroiled in turmoil, with a series of top executives and strategists departing over the past month.Fight Right, formed by people with ties to Mr. DeSantis, originated amid internal disagreements over strategy at Never Back Down, which struggled to meld veteran political strategists from a consulting firm with DeSantis loyalists. Mr. DeSantis had also been troubled by the group’s advertising strategy, as The Times previously reported. Fight Right began airing ads in late November attacking former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina.In a statement, Scott Wagner, the chairman of Never Back Down, said the group was “laser focused on its core mission — running the most advanced grass-roots and political caucus operation in this race and helping deliver the G.O.P. nomination for Governor DeSantis.”“We are thrilled to have Fight Right and others covering the air for Governor DeSantis while we work the ground game in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and beyond,” Mr. Wagner added.Taryn Fenske, a spokeswoman for Fight Right, said the group was placing an advertising buy of more than $2.5 million starting Sunday, with $1.3 million behind an anti-Haley ad that is slated to start running in Iowa that day.Never Back Down previously transferred $1 million to Fight Right, which helped precipitate a major leadership shake-up at the original super PAC, where some officials questioned the move. Officials with Never Back Down and Fight Right would not directly answer questions about whether the canceled $2.5 million was being used to fund the new Fight Right ads. Both Fight Right and Good Fight are using the same firm, Digital Media Placement Services, to purchase airtime, according to AdImpact’s records. More

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      Maine’s Secretary of State to Decide Whether Trump Can Stay on Ballot

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      Shenna Bellows, a Democrat, has said she would decide next week whether Maine will join Colorado in disqualifying former President Donald J. Trump from its primary ballot. Maine’s secretary of state is poised to issue a decision next week that could bolster a citizen-led movement to keep former President Donald J. Trump off primary ballots around the country — or contradict a landmark court decision in Colorado this week. In a hearing last week at Maine’s State House in Augusta, Shenna Bellows, the secretary of state, weighed three separate complaints challenging Mr. Trump’s eligibility to appear on the state’s Republican primary ballot. Two are based on the same section of the Constitution that the Colorado Supreme Court cited in its 4-to-3 decision on Tuesday that found Mr. Trump cannot hold office again because his actions leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol amounted to engaging in an insurrection.Some form of challenge to Mr. Trump’s eligibility has been lodged in more than 30 states, but many of those have already been dismissed. Most are unfolding in the courts, but in Maine — because of a quirk in its Constitution — the secretary of state weighs in first, with voters filing petitions, not lawsuits. Her decision can then be appealed to the state’s Superior Court.The Colorado ruling was the first in history to disqualify a presidential candidate from a ballot under the 14th Amendment, which was drafted after the Civil War. One section of the amendment bars those who have taken an oath “to support” the Constitution from holding office if they “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same,” or had “given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”Mr. Trump’s campaign has said it will appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court; should the high court take the case, the other challenges around the country are likely to be put on hold. After the Colorado ruling, Ms. Bellows, an elected Democrat, invited lawyers on both sides in Maine to file supplemental briefs and said that her decision was likely to come next week.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Israel’s Destructive Bombs, and DeSantis’s Costly Ground Game

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      The New York Times Audio app is home to journalism and storytelling, and provides news, depth and serendipity. If you haven’t already, download it here — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter.The Headlines brings you the biggest stories of the day from the Times journalists who are covering them, all in about five minutes.A Times visual investigation reveals that one of Israel’s largest bombs was regularly used in areas designated safe for civilians.The New York Times, Source: Planet LabsOn Today’s Episode:A Times Investigation Tracked Israel’s Use of One of Its Most Destructive Bombs in South Gaza, by Robin Stein, Haley Willis, Ishaan Jhaveri, Danielle Miller, Aaron Byrd and Natalie ReneauAt Least 15 Dead in Czech Republic After Shooting at Prague University, by Andrew Higgins, Jenny Gross and Aric TolerHow DeSantis’s Ambitious, Costly Ground Game Has Sputtered, by Rebecca Davis O’Brien, Nicholas Nehamas and Kellen BrowningCan Ozempic and Weight-Loss Drugs Treat Other Diseases?, by Dani BlumMiniature Livestock Are a Hot-Ticket Item This Holiday Season, by Madison Malone KircherJessica Metzger and More

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      ‘The Daily’: Biden Supports Israel. Does the Rest of America?

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      Olivia Natt and Lexie Diao and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicA New York Times/Siena College poll has found that voters disapprove of President Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza, though voters are split on U.S. policy toward the conflict and whether or not Israel’s military campaign should continue.Jonathan Weisman, a political correspondent for The Times, breaks down the poll and what it means for U.S.-Israeli relations and Biden’s 2024 campaign.On today’s episodeJonathan Weisman, a political correspondent for The New York Times.Maansi Srivastava/The New York TimesBackground readingPoll Finds Wide Disapproval of Biden on Gaza, and Little Room to Shift GearsHow Much Is Biden’s Support of Israel Hurting Him With Young Voters?Amid Dismal Polling and Some Voter Anger, Don’t Expect Biden to Shift His StrategyThere are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.The Daily is made by Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Sydney Harper, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky, John Ketchum, Nina Feldman, Will Reid, Carlos Prieto, Ben Calhoun, Susan Lee, Lexie Diao, Mary Wilson, Alex Stern, Dan Farrell, Sophia Lanman, Shannon Lin, Diane Wong, Devon Taylor, Alyssa Moxley, Summer Thomad, Olivia Natt, Daniel Ramirez and Brendan Klinkenberg.Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Lisa Tobin, Larissa Anderson, Julia Simon, Sofia Milan, Mahima Chablani, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda, Renan Borelli, Maddy Masiello, Isabella Anderson and Nina Lassam. More

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      Barring Trump From the Ballot Would Be a Mistake

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      When Donald Trump appeals the Colorado decision disqualifying him from the ballot in that state’s Republican primary, the Supreme Court should overturn the ruling unanimously.Like many of my fellow liberals, I would love to live in a country where Americans had never elected Mr. Trump — let alone sided with him by the millions in his claims that he won an election he lost, and that he did nothing wrong afterward. But nobody lives in that America. For all the power the institution has arrogated, the Supreme Court cannot bring that fantasy into being. To bar Mr. Trump from the ballot now would be the wrong way to show him to the exits of the political system, after all these years of strife.Some aspects of American election law are perfectly clear — like the rule that prohibits candidates from becoming president before they turn 35 — but many others are invitations to judges to resolve uncertainty as they see fit, based in part on their own politics. Take Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which blocks insurrectionists from running for office, a provision originally aimed at former Confederates in the wake of the Civil War. There may well be some instances in which the very survival of a democratic regime is at stake if noxious candidates or parties are not banned, as in West Germany after World War II. But in this case, what Section 3 requires is far from straightforward. Keeping Mr. Trump off the ballot could put democracy at more risk rather than less.Part of the danger lies in the fact that what actually happened on Jan. 6 — and especially Mr. Trump’s exact role beyond months of election denial and entreaties to government officials to side with him — is still too broadly contested. The Colorado court deferred to a lower court on the facts, but it was a bench trial, meaning that no jury ever assessed what happened, and that many Americans still believe Mr. Trump did nothing wrong. A Supreme Court that affirms the Colorado ruling would have to succeed in constructing a consensual narrative where others — including armies of journalists, the Jan. 6 commission and recent indictments — have failed.The Supreme Court has been asked to weigh in on the fate of presidencies before, and its finer moments in this regard have been when it was a force for stability and reflected the will and interests of voters. Almost 50 years ago, the court faced a choice to end a presidency as it deliberated on Richard Nixon’s high crimes and misdemeanors. But by the time the Supreme Court acted in 1974, a special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, had already won indictments of Nixon’s henchmen and named the president himself before a grand jury as an unindicted co-conspirator. Public opinion was with Jaworski; the American people agreed that the tapes Nixon was trying to shield from prosecutors were material evidence, and elites in both political parties had reached the same conclusion. In deciding against Nixon, the Supreme Court was only reaffirming the political consensus.As the constitutional law professor Josh Chafetz has observed, even United States v. Nixon was suffused with a rhetoric of judicial aggrandizement. But if the Supreme Court were to exclude Mr. Trump from the ballot, seconding the Colorado court on each legal nicety, when so many people still disagree on the facts, it would have disastrous consequences.For one thing, it would strengthen the hand of a Supreme Court that liberals have rightly complained grabs too much power too routinely. Joe Biden came into office calling for a re-examination of whether the Supreme Court needs reform, and there would be considerable irony if he were re-elected after that very body was seen by millions to pre-empt a democratic choice.Worse, it is not obvious how many would accept a Supreme Court decision that erased Mr. Trump’s name from every ballot in the land. Liberals with bad memories of Bush v. Gore, which threw an election to one candidate rather than counting votes, have often regretted accepting that ruling as supinely as they did. And rejecting Mr. Trump’s candidacy could well invite a repeat of the kind of violence that led to the prohibition on insurrectionists in public life in the first place. The purpose of Section 3 was to stabilize the country after a civil war, not to cause another one.As it unfolds, the effort to disqualify Mr. Trump could make him more popular than ever. As harsh experience since 2016 has taught, legalistic maneuvers haven’t hurt him in the polls. And Democrats do nothing to increase their popularity by setting out to “save democracy” when it looks — if their legal basis for proceeding is too flimsy — as if they are afraid of practicing it. That the approval ratings of the Democratic standard-bearer, Mr. Biden, have cratered as prosecutions of Mr. Trump and now this Colorado ruling have accumulated indicates that trying again is a mistake, both of principle and of strategy.Perhaps the worst outcome of all would be for the Supreme Court to split on ideological lines, as it did in Bush v. Gore, hardly its finest hour. Justices have fretted about the damage to their “legitimacy” when their decisions look like political choices. They often are, as so many recent cases have revealed, but when the stakes are this high, the best political choice for the justices is to avoid final judgment on contested matters of fact and law and to let the people decide.In the Nixon era, the justices were shrewd enough to stand together in delivering their decision: It was handed down 8-0, with one recusal. In our moment, the Supreme Court must do the same.This will require considerable diplomacy from Chief Justice John Roberts, and it will define his stewardship as profoundly as cases such as Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, in which his effort to herd his colleagues into consensus failed. In this situation, unlike that one, it will require him to convince his liberal colleagues who might otherwise dissent. For their part, they ought to be able to anticipate the high and unpredictable costs of presuming that judges can save a nation on the brink of breakdown.The truth is that this country has to be allowed to save itself. The Supreme Court must act, but only to place the burden on Mr. Trump’s political opponents to make their case in the political arena. Not just to criticize him for his turpitude, but to argue that their own policies benefit the disaffected voters who side with a charlatan again and again.Samuel Moyn teaches law and history at Yale.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, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads. More

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      How DeSantis’s Ambitious, Costly Ground Game Has Sputtered

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      The Florida governor’s field operation, one of the most expensive in modern political history, has met challenges from the outset, interviews with a range of voters and political officials revealed.Ron DeSantis’s battle plan against Donald J. Trump was always ambitious.This spring, the main super PAC backing Mr. DeSantis laid out a costly organizing operation, including an enormous voter-outreach push with an army of trained, paid door-knockers, that would try to reach every potential DeSantis voter multiple times in early-nominating states.Seven months later, after tens of millions of dollars spent and hundreds of thousands of doors knocked, one of the most expensive ground games in modern political history shows little sign of creating the momentum it had hoped to achieve.Mr. DeSantis’s poll numbers have barely budged. His super PAC, Never Back Down, is unraveling. And Mr. Trump’s hold on Republican primary voters seems as unshakable as ever. With time running out before the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 15, Mr. DeSantis, the governor of Florida, appears in danger of losing the extraordinary bet he made in outsourcing his field operation to a super PAC — a gamble that is testing both the limits of campaign finance law and the power of money to move voter sentiment.Never Back Down has spent at least $30 million on its push to reach voters in person through door-knocking and canvassing in early-primary states, according to a person with knowledge of its efforts — a figure that does not include additional tens of millions in television advertising. The organization has more than 100 full-time, paid canvassers in Iowa, South Carolina and New Hampshire, along with 37,000 volunteers.That ground game has increasingly centered on a do-or-die push in Iowa, where a long-shot victory could redeem the effort. Never Back Down has knocked on doors more than 801,000 times — including repeated visits — in Iowa, according to another person familiar with its work, a staggering number in a state of just 3.2 million people. The group has knocked on the doors of some potential DeSantis voters four times, with a fifth attempt planned before the caucuses, the person said.“I know they are doing the right things,” said Will Rogers, a Republican political organizer in Iowa who said Never Back Down had been to his door several times. But, he added, “it just doesn’t seem to be moving the needle at all.”Interviews with more than three dozen voters, local officials and political strategists across Iowa and beyond revealed that — even setting aside the internal disruptions at Never Back Down — the immense, coordinated effort to identify and mobilize voters for Mr. DeSantis has struggled from the outset.Mr. DeSantis’s decision to outsource his field operation to a super PAC was unusual, and tested the limits of campaign finance law.Christopher Smith for The New York TimesSome voters have been swayed by contact from the super PAC, but many remain unconvinced. Some said the door knockers were indifferent or rude, while others said the full-court press from Never Back Down felt inauthentic. And, in a particularly brutal twist, some of the door knockers openly told Iowans that they themselves were in fact Trump supporters.“From my point of view, it hasn’t been working,” said Cris Christenson, a businessman who lives in Johnston, a Des Moines suburb. Never Back Down has been all over his neighborhood, he said, and has knocked on his door three times.Mr. Christenson said he was “not anti-DeSantis,” describing him as “very bright.” But he is a firm supporter of Mr. Trump.“It really comes down to this — Trump is so wildly popular in the state that DeSantis doesn’t stand a chance,” he said.Spreading the wordJess Szymanski, a spokeswoman for Never Back Down, said the group had built “the largest, most advanced grass-roots and political operation in the history of presidential politics.”“With every voter we interact with on the ground, we constantly find strong support and new voters committing to caucus for Governor DeSantis,” she added. Door knocking is considered a particularly useful way not just to persuade and identify supporters, but above all to mobilize them to get to the caucuses or polls.The field operation is highly organized: Never Back Down has trained hundreds of people at an in-house boot camp in Des Moines that operatives call “Fort Benning.” There, recruits learn about the biography of Mr. DeSantis and his family, study his policies and record as Florida governor, and practice door-knocking techniques.Then, in groups — toting iPads with special software that contains details about likely voters — they spread out across Iowa and other early-nominating states.In Iowa, these paid door knockers have been joined by volunteer “precinct captains” — Never Back Down aims to have at least one captain in each of Iowa’s more than 1,600 caucus precincts by Jan. 15.Attendees at an Iowa Republican Party event in May were given information on Mr. DeSantis.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesNever Back Down is trying to reach Republicans in rural, heavily conservative areas like northwest Iowa, hoping that evangelical voters will embrace an alternative to the profane Mr. Trump.Quality control problemsSome of the challenges on the ground appear to stem from the operation’s size. The fact that it has been run by a super PAC rather than a campaign, and has relied largely on hired hands rather than volunteers, can make the outreach feel inauthentic, interviews with some caucusgoers showed.They described being put off or bemused by DeSantis campaigners who hailed from as far away as California. Douglas Jensen, a 38-year-old potential caucusgoer in rural northwestern Iowa who hasn’t decided which candidate to support, recalled being surprised to have a “very enthusiastic” man from Georgia pitch him on Mr. DeSantis at his house.Loren and Tina DeVries said they’d had door knockers from different campaigns stop by their house in Bettendorf. Some were locals — Ms. DeVries, 54, even knew the young woman who came to her door to stump for Vivek Ramaswamy personally.But the couple didn’t recognize the DeSantis door knockers, and recalled that they had been less than enthusiastic in their pitch.“The people that have come, I’m not sure if they’re there just to check a box or actually have a persuasive conversation,” Mr. DeVries, 53, said. “They’re not really doing a sell.”He still liked Mr. DeSantis, but Ms. DeVries remained undecided.Never Back Down, the super PAC supporting Mr. DeSantis, put out sign-up sheets to endorse him at an Iowa Republican Party event in Cedar Rapids.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesDeSantis campaign materials at a restaurant in Tipton, Iowa.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesNumerous other voters have also reported lackadaisical efforts, fruitless repeat knocking and bad attitudes from door knockers. Over the summer, a paid Never Back Down canvasser in South Carolina was dismissed after he was caught making lewd remarks about a homeowner, The Washington Post reported.The super PAC has dismissed employees and volunteers who failed to meet targets for door knocking and other measures of engagement, according to people who worked with the group.Fierce competition, and a looming favoriteOther campaigns are trying to capitalize. The political network founded by the Koch brothers, Americans for Prosperity Action, which endorsed Nikki Haley last month, is aiming to knock on 100,000 doors in Iowa before the caucuses. The group is hoping that a more finely honed message, spread by the small group of well-trained volunteers and paid staff, will be enough to overcome the flood of outreach from Never Back Down.Tyler Raygor, A.F.P.’s state director, said the fact that Mr. DeSantis had been stagnant in state polls despite the huge canvassing effort cast doubt on how effective his messengers were.“It just begs the question of: ‘Who are you having out on the doors? How well are you training them?’” Mr. Raygor said.The Trump campaign has also put down roots in Iowa, though its efforts have focused more on training its 1,800 caucus captains and pushing them to persuade their friends and neighbors to caucus for Mr. Trump. Still, the campaign has reached several hundred thousand voters in Iowa through mail advertisements and door knocking, according to a person familiar with the efforts.Indeed, it seems possible that no amount of door knocking could surmount Mr. DeSantis’s biggest challenge: He is not Donald Trump.Former President Donald J. Trump still leads in polls of Iowa caucusgoers by double digits. Jordan Gale for The New York TimesJeanette Hudson, 82, of Pella, Iowa, said she and her husband, both loyal Trump supporters, had been visited at home by a “pleasant young woman” who asked if they were going to caucus for Mr. DeSantis. Ms. Hudson said they were not.The woman smiled, thanked them and left.Persuading the unconvincedDavid Polyansky, the DeSantis deputy campaign manager, said door knocking was meant to drive turnout on caucus night, not to juice poll numbers.“It gives you the chance to not only identify who might be a DeSantis supporter, but also to bring them into the fold and make sure they are going to turn out on the 15th,” he said, arguing that it was too soon to judge the effectiveness of Never Back Down’s door-knocking operation.Mr. DeSantis’s allies say that many Iowans remain undecided, and that a major part of the ground game, in the weeks ahead, is to tip them to their side.Rachel Mummey for The New York TimesIn New Hampshire, the way that Mr. DeSantis won the support of Hilary Kilcullen, 76, a physician assistant in Concord, is a model that Never Back Down hopes to emulate.Ms. Kilcullen, a Republican, said a young man had knocked on her door to tell her about Mr. DeSantis. The canvasser, who had flown up from Miami, told Ms. Kilcullen that she could rely on Mr. DeSantis in the event of a terrorist attack or other disaster.The conversation didn’t flip Ms. Kilcullen, who had grown tired of Mr. Trump, into a DeSantis supporter. But she valued the personal touch.“In this day and age, when everything has gone digital and virtual, I was impressed,” Ms. Kilcullen said. “If DeSantis could capture this passionate, young person’s attention, that means something.”Then, after hearing Mr. DeSantis speak in person this month at a town-hall event — and being impressed by his command of policy — she decided he had earned her vote.But others have yet to be convinced.One undecided caucusgoer in Iowa, Edith Hull, a 73-year-old retired farmer from Ottumwa, said she had a positive experience with a DeSantis door knocker recently.“He was a real nice young man,” she said. “And he didn’t pressure me or anything.” When he left, he gave her a large placard to hang on her doorknob, and reminded her to caucus.Asked if she felt any differently about Mr. DeSantis afterward, she said, “About the same.”Reporting was contributed by More

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      Man Accused of Ramaswamy Death Threat Is Charged With Threatening Christie

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      Tyler Anderson of New Hampshire was charged on Wednesday with threatening the lives of Chris Christie and another unnamed presidential candidate.A New Hampshire man who was charged with threatening to kill Vivek Ramaswamy and his supporters at a campaign event has been indicted by a federal grand jury with additional counts for threatening the lives of former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, another unnamed presidential candidate and other people, according to an indictment filed on Wednesday.The man, Tyler Anderson, 30, of Dover, now faces three counts of transmitting threats for having texted death threats to three presidential candidates campaigning in New Hampshire, the authorities say. The text messages were sent in three separate episodes in late November and early December. The last set of messages, sent on Dec. 8, was directed at Mr. Ramaswamy.Karl Rickett, a spokesman for the Christie campaign, confirmed on Thursday that Mr. Christie was the target of the second episode, on Dec. 6. The texts directed at Mr. Christie were found on Mr. Anderson’s phone, according to an F.B.I. affidavit.Mr. Anderson was arrested on Dec. 9 after federal agents tracked text messages threatening Mr. Ramaswamy to his phone and home address, the affidavit said. His phone was seized during the arrest, and the messages directed at Mr. Ramaswamy and Mr. Christie were found on it. Firearms were also seized during Mr. Anderson’s arrest.In an interview with an F.B.I. agent after his arrest, Mr. Anderson acknowledged sending threatening messages to Mr. Ramaswamy and other presidential candidates, according to the affidavit. The messages sent to Mr. Christie’s campaign, photos of which were included in court documents, threatened to kill Mr. Christie and others at a campaign event in a “mass shooting.” Officials redacted information in the photos that would have identified Mr. Christie as the target.The Christie campaign previously declined to say it had been targeted by the threats, but a campaign statement this month thanked law enforcement officials for “moving quickly to address these threats.”Mr. Anderson was released on Dec. 14 on the condition that he avoid contact with presidential candidates and their campaigns. His arraignment is scheduled for Jan. 5.In the first incident, on Nov. 22, Mr. Anderson sent a series of text messages threatening to “impale” and “disembowel” an unnamed presidential candidate, according to the indictment.Mr. Anderson sent additional text messages on Dec. 8 threatening to kill a third presidential candidate — later identified as Mr. Ramaswamy — and attendees of a campaign event scheduled in Portsmouth, federal prosecutors said. Those texts were sent as replies to an automated campaign message, and they implied that the threat would be carried out with a firearm. The threats to Mr. Christie were also sent as replies to an automated campaign message.A staff member for the Ramaswamy campaign reported the texts to the local police, and the F.B.I. conducted the investigation that led to Mr. Anderson’s arrest.Each of the three charges has a maximum sentence of five years in prison and three years of supervised release, and a maximum fine of $250,000. More