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      5 Applause Lines From Nikki Haley’s Stump Speech

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      In her stump speech, the former governor calls for common sense and experience in the White House, leaving crowds wanting more.Nikki Haley is not as loud or fiery as some of her pulpit-pounding rivals for the Republican presidential nomination. But her pleas for common sense and experience in the White House often leave crowds wanting more.Ms. Haley, 51, the former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador, has been on the campaign trail in Iowa and New Hampshire as she seeks to challenge Donald J. Trump, the front-runner.Her stump speeches often stick to core Republican themes. Here are five of her most reliable applause lines in recent appearances.“When I’m president, we will no longer give foreign aid to countries that hate America. That’s a promise.”Ms. Haley, the only Republican woman running in the presidential race, has sought to lean into hawkish stances on China and her foreign policy credentials in an attempt to break out of a crowded field. A favorite anecdote on the stump tells of her tenure under Mr. Trump when she compiled a book revealing that the United States was giving money to countries that often did not support its interests. The story’s function is twofold, positioning her as a tough-talking envoy willing to break from the Washington establishment and someone not afraid to tell Mr. Trump harsh truths.“Instead of 87,000 I.R.S. agents, we’ll put 25,000 Border Patrol and ICE agents on the ground, and we will let them do their job.”The promise — and its reception — underscore the fixation of the Republican base with the nation’s Southwestern border. She also echoes misleading claims from Republican lawmakers that Democrats are seeking to hire an army of tax auditors under the Internal Revenue Service to scrutinize the financial filings of middle-class families. Like many of the other Republican candidates, Ms. Haley sides with Mr. Trump on border and immigration policy, pledging to build a wall, defund sanctuary cities and bring back a Trump-era program requiring asylum seekers to wait out their cases in Mexico. “Because guess what? Nobody wants to remain in Mexico,” she adds, sometimes garnering laughs.“We will make sure that every member of Congress has to get their health care through the V.A. You watch how fast it gets fixed.”Perhaps no other line in Ms. Haley’s stump speech draws a more passionate response from audiences than this one. She has pledged to tackle veteran homelessness and high suicide rates and to improve veterans’ access to health care. The issues are personal for Ms. Haley, whose husband, Michael, is a major in the South Carolina Army National Guard and served in Afghanistan in 2013. This summer, Ms. Haley joined other military spouses in seeing their partners off, as they deployed to Africa with the Army National Guard. The military tour is expected to last a year and for most of the G.O.P. primary race.“Don’t you think it’s time we have term limits in Congress? We have to do it. We have to have term limits in Congress, and I think we need to have mental health competency tests for anyone over the age of 75.”Ms. Haley, who has couched her campaign message in a call for “a new generation of leaders,” long sought to distinguish herself from competitors by taking an early stance on the issue of age limits among political leaders. Her shots are most directly aimed at President Biden, 80, whose age is cited as a top concern, as he seeks re-election. In an interview with Fox News, she suggested that Mr. Biden, would not live until the end of his second term if re-elected. On the stump, she often suggests that a vote for Mr. Biden is a vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.“No more gender pronoun classes in the military. It is demoralizing to make them do that.”Ms. Haley has faced blowback from Democrats, women’s rights groups and transgender rights activists for proposing that transgender girls playing in school sports is the “women’s issue of our time,” and for appearing to suggest that allowing “biological boys” in girls’ locker rooms was connected with the high rate of teenage girls who have considered suicide. She has since modified her statements so as not to link the two separate issues, but she has not dropped her focus on gender issues and implications that women are being erased. “Johns Hopkins recently came out and defined what a woman was,” she said in Hollis, referring to the research university. “Did you see it? A ‘nonman.’” More

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      Trump and DeSantis Collide for First Time in Iowa, as Fortunes Diverge

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      A contest once viewed as a two-man race between Donald J. Trump and Ron DeSantis has settled into a new dynamic: Mr. Trump versus everyone else.When former President Donald J. Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida shared the same stage at an Iowa Republican Party dinner on Friday, their appearances seemed to capture the basic dynamics of the 2024 presidential primary.Mr. Trump played headliner. Mr. DeSantis was reduced to an opening act.Even as Mr. Trump has been hit with two criminal indictments, with more possibly coming, he has only consolidated support in recent months, flashing the same resilience in Iowa that he has nationally.Mr. Trump’s rivals have long circled Iowa as the early state where Mr. Trump, who finished a disappointing second in the 2016 Iowa caucuses, might be most vulnerable in 2024. But although some influential leaders have signaled their eagerness for an alternative, Mr. Trump arrived on Friday for one of his episodic visits as the undisputed front-runner, as Republicans look past his political and legal liabilities.His mere appearance generated some of the evening’s loudest applause. Like the 12 other candidates who spoke, he entered to snippets of “Only in America” by Brooks & Dunn. The lyrics that blared as he took the stage were:One could end up going to prison. One just might be president.Mr. DeSantis arrived in Des Moines after a two-day bus tour that was aimed at stabilizing his campaign amid two successive rounds of staff cutbacks and demonstrating his investment in the state, which comes first on the nominating calendar. There were public displays of humility — small-town stops, shopping for snacks at a gas station (he bought a protein bar), taking questions from voters and reporters — that were previously missing from the governor’s once higher-flying campaign.Gov. Ron DeSantis, Republican of Florida, speaking at the dinner on Friday night after a more humble bus tour of Iowa.Jordan Gale for The New York Times“Six months ago, you would have said there were two tiers: Trump and DeSantis, and then everyone else,” Craig Robinson, an Iowa Republican strategist, said. Now, he said, “you have Donald Trump in a tier by himself and you have everyone else trying to be the alternative to Trump.”While Mr. DeSantis is stuck trying to reset his campaign, former Vice President Mike Pence is facing the possibility of not even qualifying for the first debate next month. The rest of the field is straining for voters to pay any attention at all.Mr. Trump has certainly provided openings for his rivals in Iowa. Against his own team’s wishes, he criticized the popular Republican governor of Iowa, Kim Reynolds, this month. (He did not mention her on Friday.) And in a state that has often rewarded frequent visits, Mr. Trump has campaigned only sporadically.On Friday, Mr. Trump stayed for an hour after his speech to shake hands and take pictures with supporters. Mr. DeSantis mingled with a crowd down the hall with a Coors Light in hand.Mr. Trump’s growing strength in national polling — he has surged above 50 percent in many surveys — has reinforced an emerging dynamic in which he is being treated as the de facto incumbent, both by party insiders with years of reluctantly falling into line under their belt and by risk-averse donors, according to interviews with numerous Republican strategists and officials.Mr. Trump greeting supporters at his new Iowa campaign headquarters on Friday.Christopher Smith for The New York TimesThe first primary debate, scheduled for late August, is widely viewed as the critical next date for Mr. DeSantis or anyone else to upend the current dynamic, even if Mr. Trump does not attend.For now, outside groups looking to slow down Mr. Trump have focused on Iowa. The new political action committee Win It Back, which is tied to the Club for Growth, has run negative television ads worth $3.5 million this month in Iowa and South Carolina.The ads themselves reveal much about the current state of the race. Each features testimonials from Republican voters describing both their affection for the former president and their interest in moving on.“I love what he did,” the narrator in one ad says. “He definitely was the right man in 2016,” the narrator in another says, before pivoting, “It’s just time for new blood.”Mr. Trump’s enduring popularity with the Republican base has meant that even his competitors often sandwich the gentlest of criticism with praise. Few of his rivals mentioned his name on Friday, while Mr. Trump repeatedly used a derisive nickname for Mr. DeSantis. “I wouldn’t take a chance on that one,” he said.One rival who addressed Mr. Trump directly was Will Hurd, a former Texas congressman running a long-shot campaign. He declared that Mr. Trump was running for president again to avoid prison. He was booed as he exited the stage.Former Representative Will Hurd was booed as he left the stage for suggesting that Mr. Trump was running for president again just to avoid prison.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesMr. DeSantis himself has generally avoided direct criticism of Mr. Trump.He did not say the former president’s name on Friday, and when he was asked about the criminal charges facing Mr. Trump in an interview with CBS News on Thursday, Mr. DeSantis answered with only a vague generality: “I think voters have to make this decision on that.”Some prominent Trump critics have questioned such a delicate approach, especially as his criminal problems have mounted.“If you’re down 20 points in the polls to anybody, you’ve got to be able to hit them,” said Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, who decided against a 2024 run for president but attended the dinner in Iowa.Mr. Trump has been indicted by the Manhattan district attorney and a Justice Department special counsel already this year, and he may face another special counsel indictment for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. A separate investigation into efforts to interfere with the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia could result in yet another charge.Many Republicans who are leery of entering another turbulent cycle with Mr. Trump atop the ticket remain intrigued by the Florida governor but not yet sold.“I think people are just waiting for DeSantis to close the deal for them,” said David Kerr, a DeSantis supporter who attended an event in Osceola with the governor at a distillery this week.Mr. DeSantis during a stop at a center for wounded and disabled veterans in Albia, Iowa, on his bus tour on Friday.Christopher Smith for The New York TimesMr. DeSantis has now committed to visiting all 99 of Iowa’s counties (he is at 17, according to a campaign aide), an arduous task for a candidate who is trying to compete across all the early states and must travel the country to fund-raise for a campaign supported heavily by big-money bundlers.“This caucus demands that you earn it,” Mr. DeSantis said on Friday. Mr. Trump has mostly focused on visiting more populous areas rather than every county.For Mr. DeSantis, the goal is to come in first — or a strong enough second to prove that Mr. Trump can be beat and narrow the contest to a two-person race. But some of Mr. DeSantis’s allies worry that the heavy emphasis on Iowa could prove a self-inflicted knockout punch — that after investing so much, his campaign will have a less than compelling case to carry on if he falters badly in the opening state.Kathy Kooiker, a Republican activist in Clark County, Iowa, had a Trump flag in her yard for years but said she had folded it folded up and put it away. She is trying to explore the other candidates to decide whom to support instead of Mr. Trump, and she went to the DeSantis event in Osceola.“He hasn’t been in Iowa as much as the other candidates, so I’m glad to see — I think it’s a mistake not to do that,” Ms. Kooiker said.Republicans in Iowa, both those who support Mr. Trump and those who oppose him, see the race there as at least slightly more competitive than national polls would suggest.Amy Sinclair, the president of the Iowa State Senate, who has endorsed Mr. DeSantis, acknowledged, “it’s a tough uphill battle to fight against a machine like Donald Trump.”But she said Mr. Trump’s swipe at Ms. Reynolds had damaged him. “He’s not doing himself any favors if he wants to win Iowa behaving that way,” she said. “You don’t insult our family.”Ryan Rhodes, who served as Iowa state director for Ben Carson’s presidential campaign in 2016, agreed that the episode had broken through among conservative activists.“Trump needs to get out there and talk to Iowans again,” Mr. Rhodes said.Mr. Trump may not yet have personally worked aggressively for votes in Iowa, but he has professionalized what in 2016 was a scattershot political operation. His campaign had secured its keynote slot on Friday night by being the fastest to confirm its attendance with the state party. More

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      Rep. Dean Phillips Says He Is Considering a Run Against Biden

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      Mr. Phillips, a Minnesota Democrat, has received attention for his outspoken calls for aging members of the Democratic Party to step aside.Representative Dean Phillips, a Minnesota Democrat who has for months been saying in public what many in his party only whisper in private — that the 80-year-old President Biden should not seek re-election because of his age — said he was considering challenging Mr. Biden in next year’s primary.Mr. Phillips, 54, is in his third term in Congress representing a district that includes the suburbs west of Minneapolis. In a text message, he confirmed his interest in running but declined a request to be interviewed. He said he had “been overwhelmed with outreach and encouragement” and needed to assess his next steps.Mr. Phillips would be an extreme long shot if he were to challenge Mr. Biden. Polls show that Democrats, who were once wary about Mr. Biden seeking re-election, have coalesced behind him. The party’s major donor class is backing the president, who raised $72 million with the Democratic National Committee and his joint fund-raising committee during the three-month reporting period that ended June 30.Mr. Phillips had $277,000 in his congressional fund-raising account at the end of June.An heir to a Minnesota liquor fortune who showcased himself driving a gelato truck in his first House campaign, Mr. Phillips has been known in Congress for embracing the moderate suburban politics that were at the core of the general election coalition that propelled Mr. Biden’s 2020 victory. He was first elected in 2018, when he and dozens of fellow Democrats flipped Republican-held districts as suburban voters turned against President Donald J. Trump.In Congress, Mr. Phillips has received attention for his outspoken calls for aging members of the Democratic Party to step aside. He said last year that Mr. Biden should not seek re-election, and he has called for the resignation of Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, whose health has visibly deteriorated in recent months.The Biden campaign and the D.N.C. have so far declined to comment about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Marianne Williamson, who began their own primary campaigns against Mr. Biden this year. Officials from both the D.N.C. and the Biden campaign declined to speak about Mr. Phillips. More

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      With DeSantis Reeling, What About Tim Scott?

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      Last Sunday, I argued that despite his stagnation in the polls, for Republicans (and non-Republicans) who would prefer that Donald Trump not be renominated for the presidency, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida remains pretty much the only possible alternative.Naturally the week that followed was the worst yet for DeSantis, beginning with a campaign staff purge that featured a Nazi-symbol subplot and ending with the candidate doing damage control for his suggestion that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. might run his Food and Drug Administration.The worst news for DeSantis, though, was new polls out of Iowa showing Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina creeping up on him, with around 10 percent support, to the governor’s roughly 15 percent.One of my arguments a week ago was that no other Republican, Scott included, had yet shown any capacity to build the support that even a stagnant DeSantis enjoys. But if the governor falls into a sustained battle for second place, he’s probably finished, and Trump can probably just cruise.Unless that battle results in a DeSantis collapse and a chance for someone else to go up against the front-runner. After all, why should DeSantis be the only non-Trump hope just because he seemed potent early on? Why not, well, Tim Scott?Say this for Scott: He has an obvious asset that DeSantis is missing, a fundamental good cheer that Americans favor in their presidents. Say this as well: He has the profile of a potent general-election candidate, an African American and youthful-seeming generic Republican to set against Joe Biden’s senescence. Say this, finally: Scott sits in the sweet spot for the Republican donor class, as a George W. Bush-style conservative untouched by the rabble-rousing and edgelord memes of Trump-era populism.But all of these strengths are connected to primary-campaign weaknesses. To beat Trump, you eventually need around half the Republican electorate to vote for you (depending on the wrinkles of delegate allocation). And there’s no indication that half of Republican primary voters want to return to pre-2016 conservatism, that they would favor a generic-Republican alternative to Trump’s crush-your-enemies style or that they especially value winsomeness and optimism, as opposed to a style suited to a pessimistic mood.The reason that DeSantis seemed like the best hope against Trump was a record and persona that seemed to meet Republican voters where they are. His success was built after Trump’s election, on issues that mattered to current G.O.P. voters, not those of 30 years ago. He could claim to be better at the pugilistic style than Trump — with more to show for his battles substantively and more political success as well. On certain issues, Covid policy especially, he could claim to represent the views of Trump’s supporters better than Trump himself. And with DeSantis’s war on Disney, nobody would confuse him for a creature of the donor class.All this set up a plausible strategy for pulling some Trump voters to DeSantis’s side by casting himself as the fulfiller of Trump’s promise — more competent, more politically able, bolder, younger and better suited to the times.This strategy was working five months ago, and now it’s failing. But its failure doesn’t reveal an alternative pitch, and certainly Scott doesn’t appear to have one. Indeed, as The Bulwark’s Jonathan Last points out, Scott isn’t really casting himself as a Trump alternative; he’s mostly been “positioning himself as an attractive running mate for Trump, should the Almighty not intervene” and remove the former president from the race.So for him to surpass DeSantis and become Trump’s main adversary could be what Last describes as a “catastrophic success.” It might lead to a weird sacrificial-lamb campaign, in which Scott contents himself with the quarter of the primary electorate that currently supports him in head-to-head polling against Trump. Or it could push him to come up with a pitch to be Trump’s successor. But it’s hard to see what would make that pitch stronger than the one that isn’t currently working for DeSantis.After all, the governor has a substantial record of policy victories; Scott has rather fewer. DeSantis has been successful in a contested political environment; Scott is a safe-seat senator. DeSantis was arguably as important a Republican as Trump during the crucial months of the Covid era; Scott was insignificant. DeSantis has struggled to expand his policy pitch beyond Covid and anti-wokeness; Scott doesn’t even have that kind of base to build on.For DeSantis to defeat Trump would make sense in light of the G.O.P. landscape as we know it. For Scott to win would require a total re-evaluation of what we think we know about Republicans today.Such re-evaluations happen, or else Trump himself wouldn’t have been president. Success creates unexpected conditions; if Scott surpasses DeSantis, he will have the chance to make the most of them.But for now, his climb in the polls looks like a modest victory for his own campaign and a bigger one for Trump’s.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTOpinion) and Instagram. More

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      How Did We Do? A Review of 2022 Before Our First Poll of 2023.

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      Trying to learn from a strong midterm run as we start surveying the G.O.P. primary.It was a good year. Getty ImagesHere’s a list of survey results of the 2022 midterm elections, all from the same pollster. As you read them, think about whether you think this pollster’s results were good or bad or whatever adjective you’d like.Poll: D+6; result: D+2.4Poll: R+4; result R+1.5Poll: D+5, result D+4.9Poll: R+5; result R+7.5Poll: EVEN; result D+0.8Poll: D+3, result D+1All right, what did you think?I hope you thought they were at least good, because this is a sample of about half of our final New York Times/Siena College polls in 2022. On average, the final Times/Siena polls differed from the actual results by 1.9 percentage points — the most accurate our polls have ever been. Believe it or not, they’re the most accurate results by any pollster with at least 10 final survey results in the FiveThirtyEight database dating to 1998. We were already an A+ pollster by its measure, but now we’ve been deemed the best pollster in the country.My hope is that most of you thought those poll results were good, but I’d guess you didn’t think they were incredible. They’re not perfect, after all. And I can imagine many reasonable standards by which these polls might not be considered especially accurate. They certainly weren’t objective truth, which we might usually think of as the standard for Times journalism.Even so, this level of accuracy is about as good as it can get in political polling. We may never be this accurate again. There may be room to debate whether “great for political polling” is the same as “great,” but if you’re judging polls against perfection it may be worth scaling back your expectations. Even perfectly designed surveys will not yield perfect results.Nonetheless, we try to be perfect anyway. With the data from 2022 in and final, we’ve been poring over the data — including our experiment in Wisconsin — to identify opportunities for improvement. I must admit this has been a less urgent (and more pleasant!) experience than similar exercises after prior election cycles, which have felt more like an “autopsy” or “post-mortem” than a routine doctor’s visit.Still, I did make sure to get our polls in for their biennial checkup ahead of our first national survey of the cycle, which is in the field as I type. More on that later, but for today here’s the good news and some bad news from our dive into last year’s polling.Good newsOur polls were right for the right reasons. With one interesting exception (which we’ll discuss later), they nailed the composition of the electorate, the geographic breakdown of the results and the apparent results by subgroup.The raw data was quite a bit cleaner, for lack of a better word, than it was in 2020. Back then, the statistical adjustments we made to ensure a representative sample made a big difference; without them, our polls would have been far worse. This time, the final results were only about a point different from our raw data. It’s hard to tell whether that’s because of refinements to our sampling or because survey respondents have become more representative in the wake of the pandemic or with Donald J. Trump off the ballot, but it’s a nice change either way.The big Wisconsin mail experiment — where we paid voters up to $25 dollars to take a mail survey — didn’t reveal anything especially alarming about our typical Times/Siena polls. There was no evidence to support many of our deepest fears, like the idea that polls only reach voters who are high in social trust. There was no sign of the MAGA base abstaining from polling, either. On many measures — gun ownership, evangelical Christianity, vaccination status — the Times/Siena poll looked more conservative than the mail poll.OK, now the bad newsThe Wisconsin study didn’t offer easy answers to the problems in polling. Yes, it’s good news that the problems aren’t as bad as we feared, but we went to the doctor’s office for a reason — the state of polling isn’t completely healthy, and we’re looking to get better. We may have ruled out many worst-case diagnoses, but a clearer diagnosis and a prescription would have been nice.The Wisconsin study did offer ambiguous evidence that Times/Siena phone respondents lean a bit farther to the left than the respondents to the mail survey. I say ambiguous partly because the Times/Siena telephone survey isn’t large enough to be sure, and partly because it doesn’t show up in the top-line numbers. But if you account for the extra tools at the disposal of the Times/Siena survey (like ensuring the right number of absentee vs. mail voters), the mail data does lean more conservative — enough to feel justified in going to the doctor.This modest tilt toward the left appears mostly explained by two factors I’ve written about before. One: The less politically engaged voters lured by a financial incentive appear to be ever so slightly more conservative than highly engaged voters. Two: People who provide their telephone numbers when they register to vote are ever so slightly more Democratic than those who do not, and they respond to surveys at disproportionate rates as well. It’s not clear whether these issues would be so problematic in other states where there’s additional information on the partisanship of a voter compared with Wisconsin.We did get lucky in one big case: Kansas’ Third District. Our respondents there wound up being far too liberal, yet our overall result was mostly saved by grossly underestimating the vigor of the Democratic turnout. In a higher-turnout election in 2024 — when there’s far less room for turnout to surprise — we wouldn’t be so lucky.Mr. Trump wasn’t on the ballot. That’s not exactly bad news, but it might be in 2024 if his presence in some way increases the risk of survey error by energizing Democrats to take polls while dissuading the already less engaged and irregular conservatives who only turn out and vote for him.What we’ve changed/what we’re changingWe’ll make a number of fairly modest and arcane changes to our Wisconsin and state polls, reflecting a series of modest and arcane lessons from the Wisconsin study. But so far none of these insights have yielded fundamental changes to our surveys heading into 2024. That said, there are a few larger tweaks worth mentioning:When deciding whether someone is likely to vote, we will rely even less on whether voters say they’ll vote, and more on their demographics and whether they’ve actually voted in the past. This is the third cycle in four — with the exception being 2018 — when we would have been better off largely ignoring whether voters say they will vote in favor of estimates based on their demographics and voting record. We won’t ignore what voters tell us, but we will look at it that much more skeptically when estimating how likely someone is to vote.We’re reordering our questionnaires to let us look at and potentially use respondents who drop out of a survey early. This isn’t usually an issue for us — our state and district polls have never taken longer than eight minutes or so to complete — but about 15 percent of respondents who made it to the major political questions on our longer national polls and the Wisconsin study later decided to stop taking the survey. Not surprisingly, they’re the kind of low-interest voters we need the most.When it comes to Republican primary polling, we might adjust our sample — or weight it — using a new category: home value. In our two national polls with the Republican primary ballot last year, home value was an exceptionally strong predictor of support or opposition to Mr. Trump, even after controlling for education.Overall, Mr. Trump had a lead of 60 percent to 17 percent among people whose homes were worth less than $200,000, based on L2 data, while Ron DeSantis led, 47-24, among respondents whose homes were worth more than $500,000.I don’t think these changes will make very much of a difference, but we’re putting it to the test in the Republican primary now.There’s one last change to mention, one with no effect on the qualify of our polls: For candidates who receive less than 1 percent of the vote but over 0.5 percent, we will record them as less than 1 percent ( More

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      Trump to Skip Iowa State Fair Interview With Gov. Kim Reynolds

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      Gov. Kim Reynolds next month will hold “Fair-Side Chats” with candidates including Ron DeSantis, Tim Scott and Perry Johnson, but not the former president.When Gov. Kim Reynolds interviews nearly the entire Republican presidential field at the Iowa State Fair next month in a series of one-on-one chats, there will be an especially notable absence: former President Donald J. Trump, the race’s clear front-runner.Ms. Reynolds’s office on Tuesday released a list of participants for the interview series that did not include Mr. Trump. The former president, who has expressed his anger at Ms. Reynolds for not endorsing him, declined an invitation to participate.While it is traditional for Iowa governors to stay on the sidelines of presidential primaries, Mr. Trump’s camp believes Ms. Reynolds is neutral in name only, pointing to a series of events she has attended with Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, Mr. Trump’s chief rival.Mr. Trump appears intent on prolonging his public feud with the popular Ms. Reynolds, which has angered and puzzled conservatives in the state. One Republican state senator even flipped his endorsement from Mr. Trump to Mr. DeSantis after the spat. Mr. Trump, confident in his lead over the rest of the field, has shown a wider willingness to skip important primary events, potentially including the first Republican presidential debate in late August, which he has not committed to attending.The interviews with Ms. Reynolds, called the “Fair-Side Chats,” will take place between Aug. 10 and Aug. 18 at JR’s SouthPork Ranch at the Iowa State Fairgrounds in Des Moines. The Iowa State Fair — famous for its fried foods on sticks and life-size butter cow sculpture — is a crucial opportunity for presidential hopefuls to mingle with voters ahead of the state’s caucuses in January.Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, said the former president planned to attend the state fair — just not the interview with Ms. Reynolds.“President Trump looks forward to interacting with tens of thousands of Iowans at the fair in an open and unfiltered setting,” Mr. Cheung said in a statement.Of the other major Republican presidential candidates, only former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey will not participate in an interview with Ms. Reynolds. Mr. Christie’s campaign has said he is choosing to compete in New Hampshire and South Carolina, the other early nominating states, over Iowa.Otherwise, the remaining major candidates, including Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, as well as long shots like the businessman Perry Johnson, agreed to attend.“The Iowa State Fair showcases the best of Iowa — from our people to our culture and wonderful agriculture industry — and it’s the perfect venue for a conversation with the candidates,” Ms. Reynolds said in a statement.Mr. DeSantis, meanwhile, has seemed to eagerly cultivate his relationship with Ms. Reynolds, telling reporters at a campaign stop in the state this month that he would consider her as a running mate, should he win the nomination.“I mean, she’s one of the top public servants in America,” he said.Recent polls show Mr. DeSantis in second place in Iowa, a state many of his allies say he must win, trailing Mr. Trump by roughly 30 percentage points. The governor is scheduled to begin a bus tour of the Des Moines area on Thursday before speaking at a dinner for the Republican Party of Iowa on Friday. Almost all the other candidates, including Mr. Trump, are also set to speak at the dinner. More

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      DeSantis Cuts Campaign Staff by Over a Third, Aiming to Rein In Costs

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      His presidential campaign, facing questions from allies and donors about the strength of his candidacy, has now eliminated the jobs of 38 aides this month.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is sharply cutting the size of his presidential campaign staff, reducing by more than one-third a payroll that had swelled to more than 90 people in his first two months as a candidate, according to four people with knowledge of the decision.The DeSantis campaign has now made two rounds of cutbacks in the past week, and has eliminated the jobs of 38 aides this month, a figure that is nearly the size of former President Donald J. Trump’s entire 2024 campaign staff. Politico first reported on the latest reduction.Mr. DeSantis has struggled to gain traction in his early months as a candidate, losing ground to Mr. Trump in the polls as allies and donors have raised questions about the long-term strength of his candidacy.Those worries came to a head after the first public glimpse of his campaign’s finances this month. It showed that Mr. DeSantis’s payroll was roughly double the size of Mr. Trump’s and that he was burning through 40 percent of the $20 million he had raised from April through June. Mr. DeSantis’s heavy use of private planes and his decision to rent luxury venues for some fund-raising events, including a Utah donor retreat last weekend, drew added scrutiny.Mr. DeSantis entered July with just $9 million to spend on the primary race from his initial haul. A significant portion came from donors who gave the maximum amount possible, meaning they cannot contribute again.The cutbacks are seen internally as a recognition not just that spending must be reined in but also that fund-raising is expected to be harder in the coming months. Many bigger donors are now spooked by Mr. DeSantis’s sliding poll numbers and may be less inclined to risk getting on the wrong side of Mr. Trump than they were a few months ago, when Mr. DeSantis looked more competitive.One DeSantis donor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid, said that he expected the next quarter of fund-raising to be an extremely tough slog and that donor interest in Mr. DeSantis has dried up considerably.In a statement, Mr. DeSantis’s campaign manager, Generra Peck, said the changes followed “a top-to-bottom review of our organization.”“We have taken additional, aggressive steps to streamline operations and put Ron DeSantis in the strongest position to win this primary and defeat Joe Biden,” she said.There have been some shifts inside the leadership of the campaign, which is based in Tallahassee: Ethan Eilon, who had served as digital director, is now deputy campaign manager. Carl Sceusa, who had overseen the campaign’s technology, is now the chief financial officer. On Tuesday, Mr. DeSantis was on a three-stop fund-raising swing through Tennessee when his four-car motorcade had a pileup after traffic suddenly slowed. One campaign aide was lightly injured, but the governor was unharmed.On Thursday, Mr. DeSantis is set to return to Iowa for two days of events and his first bus trip in the state. But in a cost-cutting move, his campaign is not putting together the tour. His main super PAC is doing so instead, inviting Mr. DeSantis as a “special guest.”The payroll reduction came on the heels of a donor retreat in Park City, Utah, where Mr. DeSantis convened about 70 top supporters. They enjoyed s’mores on the deck and cocktails as campaign officials and super PAC advisers made presentations about the state of the race.Two people at the donor event said that despite the fact that the alarming campaign filing had dominated coverage of Mr. DeSantis heading into the weekend, there was very little talk of it by campaign officials in formal sessions. Instead, they focused on the notion that they were steadying the ship, making adjustments and trying to find ways to help Mr. DeSantis spread his message.Mr. DeSantis himself held one interactive session with donors, who tossed out suggested zingers for next month’s debate. Among the Republicans who were seen at the retreat was Phil Cox, who was a top adviser on Mr. DeSantis’s 2022 campaign and had initially been in line for a top role on his 2024 super PAC. Instead, Mr. Cox is helping the campaign itself with fund-raising and some informal support.Nick Iarossi, a lobbyist in Tallahassee and DeSantis supporter who attended the retreat, said the weekend had gone well.“Campaign manager Generra Peck and the team assured the donors of a new insurgency campaign style,” Mr. Iarossi said before the latest round of cutbacks was announced. “It’s going to be a lean, efficient and tactical campaign moving forward that’s going to focus on return on investment. They are going to cut things quickly that aren’t producing results.”In Utah, Ms. Peck’s leadership was a focus of some of the donors in private conversations among themselves, according to people familiar with the discussions. But the weekend ended with Ms. Peck, who has made herself indispensable to both Mr. DeSantis and his wife, Casey, still in charge. More

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      Kelly Ayotte Announces Run for Governor in New Hampshire

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      The former senator entered the race after Gov. Chris Sununu, a fellow Republican, said last week that he would not run again.Former Senator Kelly Ayotte, a Republican, entered the race for governor of New Hampshire on Monday, following Gov. Chris Sununu’s announcement last week that he would not run again for office in 2024.“I’m running for governor because New Hampshire is one election away from becoming Massachusetts — from becoming something we are not,” Ms. Ayotte wrote in her campaign announcement. Maura Healey, a Democrat, flipped the Massachusetts governor’s office last year after Charlie Baker declined to run again. Both Mr. Baker and Mr. Sununu are popular moderate Republicans in their states.Ms. Ayotte, a former attorney general in New Hampshire, was ousted from her Senate seat in 2016 by Maggie Hassan, a Democrat who had previously served as a popular governor of the state.Ms. Ayotte’s candidacy for governor comes at a time when the state is receiving renewed attention from Republican presidential hopefuls, many of whom have repeatedly traveled to the state to court voters who will be among the first to go to the polls in the G.O.P. primary.Ms. Ayotte is expected to garner widespread support among Republicans in the state, in a race that the nonpartisan Cook Political Report shifted to a tossup, from solid-Republican, after Mr. Sununu said he would not run again. Chuck Morse, the former president of New Hampshire’s state senate who lost the G.O.P. Senate primary in the race to face Ms. Hassan last year, entered the race almost immediately after Mr. Sununu’s announcement.Two Democrats in the state — Cinde Warmington, a member of the New Hampshire Executive Council, and Joyce Craig, the mayor of Manchester — announced their candidacies ahead of Mr. Sununu’s declaration.Ms. Ayotte faced a tough re-election campaign in 2016 even as Republicans gained power nationally. She served only one term in the Senate.Though New Hampshire has had several recent statewide officials that are Republicans, the state has leaned blue during presidential elections, supporting Democrats in the last five.Alongside her announcement, Ms. Ayotte rolled out a lengthy list of endorsements from dozens of Republicans across the state, who rallied around her candidacy.But national Democrats were quick to criticize the former Senator and indicated that they plan to make abortion protections central in the race.“Kelly Ayotte has spent her career working to stack the deck against New Hampshire’s working families and attacking their most fundamental freedoms — even leading the charge for a national abortion ban — which is why New Hampshire voters retired her seven years ago after a single term in the Senate,” wrote Izzi Levy, the deputy communications director for the Democratic Governors Association.In her statement on Monday, Ms. Ayotte said she would seek to tackle crime by “standing up for our law enforcement officers” and would aim to “protect and strengthen New Hampshire’s economic advantage.”She also signaled that she would lean into cultural issues motivating the Republican base, writing that she would “stand with parents, not bureaucrats, when it comes to deciding what is best for our children.” More