2024 GOP Field is a Full One in a Post-Trump Presidential Race

With mounting legal troubles throwing President Trump’s viability as a 2024 presidential candidate into question, a line of Republican presidential hopefuls is forming behind him, each vying for different visions of a post-Trump Republican party.With the January 6 committee coming to a close, a federal case concerning Mar-a-Lago documents, a criminal probe in Georgia, and two separate cases in New York, Mr. Trump is looking at an embattled legal future.Whether or not those legal battles end in criminal conviction or disqualification from holding office — a consequence of a conviction for insurrection — potential Republican 2024 nominees are jostling for a spot behind him.People like the former secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, Mr. Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, and the former governor of South Carolina and ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, have all signaled they may throw their hat in the ring in 2024.While these candidates each stake their claim on their role in Mr. Trump’s administration, a different slate of potential candidates bubbling up highlights the internal tensions in the party more clearly: the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, the governor of Maryland, Larry Hogan, and the Senator from South Carolina, Tim Scott.In most assessments, Mr. DeSantis of Florida stands the best chance of inheriting Mr. Trump’s political supporters. Consistently polling ahead of other contenders, he is often touted as a sleeker, more strategic incarnation of Mr. Trump’s energy.Mr. DeSantis has effectively been able to channel the energy of the former president in touring the country appearing with Republican candidates, and sometimes even beating Mr. Trump to the punch, such as when Mr. DeSantis went to campaign for the GOP Senate nominee in Ohio, J.D. Vance, a full month before Mr. Trump did.An associate editor at Sabato’s Crystal Ball, Miles Coleman, says that “DeSantis is probably the Trumpiest candidate who doesn’t have Trump’s name,” arguing that he’s a natural contender in a Trump-free 2024 field.Mr. DeSantis is also one of few Republicans who can rival Mr. Trump financially, with over $177.4 million in funds between his official campaign and the Friends of Ron DeSantis committee.Mr. Trump, for comparison, has hundreds of millions at his disposal, with his principal committee, the Save America committee, having raised at least $135 million in the 2022 election cycle alone.One analysis by the nonpartisan and nonprofit campaign finance tracking organization Open Secrets found that Mr. Trump and his various associated organizations have raised over $500 million since the 2020 election.The biggest threat to Mr. DeSantis’s rise, however, comes from the same person who helped him get to where he is today, Mr. Trump, according to a professor of political science at California State University Northridge, Tom Hogen-Esch.“One of the things that Trump values more than anything is loyalty, and he not only feels responsible for DeSantis winning the Florida governorship but takes credit for it,” he tells the Sun.With the simmering rivalry between the two politicians boiling over into headlines with increasing frequency, Mr. Hogen-Esch says that whether Mr. Trump will turn on Mr. DeSantis has become “one of the big questions on the Republican side now.”On the other wing of the Republican Party, candidates like Mr. Hogan are positioning themselves as more moderate choices for a less divisive Republican Party.Mr. Hogan, one of the most popular governors in America, recently booked his third appearance in New Hampshire in the past few months, sparking speculation about a 2024 run.“It didn’t get past me the oversized role New Hampshire plays and how important it is,” Mr. Hogan said on a visit to the Granite State in July. “I thought, why not spend a day or two in New Hampshire just talking with folks and seeing how they’re feeling?”Given Mr. Hogan’s ability to win in Maryland, a Democratic state, Mr. Coleman says that Mr. Hogan could lay claim to being one of the most electable 2024 contenders. He may, however, have a hard time making it through a primary, he says.“Hogan would have more of a chance if this were 20 or 30 years ago,” he tells the Sun. “A lot of the voters who would have been voting for those candidates in the primary are Democrats now.”Mr. Hogan represents a more moderate lineage in the GOP and has been a frequent critic of the president from within the party, even saying that Mr. Trump should not run in 2024.Though Mr. Hogan’s relative moderation has earned the approval of his constituents and some who wish to see the party return to less divisive politics, that same moderation makes him a weak primary candidate.In an interview with Governor Douglas, who served as Vermont’s chief executive from 2003 to 2011, Mr. Douglas told the Sun that moderate governors rarely succeed in national politics for that very reason.A bid from one of America’s popular centrist Republican governors such as Mr. Hogan, the governor of Massachusetts, Charlie Baker, or the governor of Vermont, Phil Scott, would likely look like the 2016 bid from the former Republican governor of New York, George Pataki.Mr. Pataki, who positioned himself as a moderate in the 2016 field, dropped out after an early debate in December of 2015, citing a lack of support within the primary electorate.To compound the problems that Mr. Hogan or another candidate like him would face, Mr. Hogan, who is not currently seeking office, is at a massive financial disadvantage compared to Messers Trump or DeSantis.One candidate who does not share this problem, and is indeed the top fundraising Republican seeking office this year, is Mr. Scott, from South Carolina.Though Mr. Scott’s war chest, at $46 million, is less than Mr. Trump or Mr. DeSantis, it’s still raised eyebrows because he is not running in a competitive race this year, leading his opponent by nearly 20 points.Strategically, he is also seen as a candidate who may be able to thread the needle between the followers of Mr. Trump and those voters who might support a Hogan-esque candidate.That’s because he has largely avoided the sort of divisive rhetoric that turns some Republicans away from Mr. Trump, while also avoiding public conflict with the president.Mr. Coleman notes that Mr. Scott has been a bigger player in party politics this year, donating and endorsing candidates through his committee while managing to sate both more conservative and more moderate Republicans.“I think Scott would have a decent claim to the electability argument,” Mr. Coleman tells the Sun. “There is something at the down ballot level — in 2020 all of the seats that the Republicans flipped were with a woman or a minority.”Mr. Hogen-Esch, however, is doubtful of Mr. Scott’s appeal to the Republican base, saying that he’s “not sure the Republican electorate wants to thread that needle,” arguing that Mr. Scott’s broad appeal means that he is likely no one’s first choice.

2024 GOP Field is a Full One in a Post-Trump Presidential Race

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