Speculation Swirls Around Youngkin, but Window Is Closing for Dark Horse Candidates To Enter 2024 Race

As conservative donors implore Governor Youngkin to get in the presidential race and anxious Democrats wring their hands over whether President Biden is the right nominee, the window for candidates to toss their hat in the ring is rapidly closing.CBS News reports that conservatives from the former Attorney General, William Barr, to investor Rupert Murdoch are pressuring Mr. Youngkin to launch a late presidential bid. This comes as conservatives opposed to President Trump’s re-election have soured on Governor DeSantis’s stalled campaign.Mr. Youngkin has repeatedly said he’s focused on a Republican victory in Virginia’s upcoming 2023 legislative elections. That’s done little to quell speculation that he may launch a campaign after the November elections should the GOP do well in the state.CBS News’s Robert Costa reports that billionaire Thomas Peterffy told him that if Mr. Youngkin runs, “the money would be there” and that the governor “appears to be leaving the door open.”On the Democratic side, handwringing among some members of the commentariat combined with some recent unfavorable polls has led to questions about whether it is too late to nominate someone besides Mr. Biden.Governor Newsom, though he’s supporting Mr. Biden, has made his interest in the White House apparent and is acting in some ways like a presidential candidate by going to the Fox News spin room after the second GOP debate and challenging Mr. DeSantis to a debate.A wrinkle in any plans to launch a last minute presidential campaign, however, is the fact that the deadlines for appearing on primary ballots around the country are rapidly approaching.The first deadline for running for president is in Nevada on October 16. Later that month, New Hampshire will stop accepting new candidates for the primary on October 27. Four states have filing deadlines in November, and 15 states have deadlines in December, all of which come before the holidays.While there are some states with filing deadlines as late as March, like South Dakota, and others where parties submit a list of candidates directly to the secretary of state, which also have their own deadlines, sometimes months in advance, the window for candidates to secure ballot access is closing.If Mr. Youngkin were to announce presidential intentions after the November 7 elections in Virginia, he would only have a few weeks to assemble a presidential campaign and just over two months to try to overtake Mr. Trump and every other presidential candidate if he wanted to win in the Iowa caucuses, which are scheduled for January 15. He would have also already missed the filing deadlines for two key early states, Nevada and New Hampshire.Aside from the formal primary and caucus, a candidate could have theoretically tipped the scales in their favor by taking advantage of the array of different rules dictating how delegates are pledged in each state.While the deadline for states to submit their official delegate selection rules to the Republican National Committee is technically October 1, most states have already set in stone what their delegate selection process will be for 2024, and any changes, if they made them, have largely been friendly to Mr. Trump.As Los Angeles Times reports, states from California to Michigan to Nevada have all overhauled their rules in the past year to work in favor of Mr. Trump, making any last-minute dark horse campaign even more of a long shot than it would have been four years ago.As one GOP attorney, Ben Ginsberg, told the Times, “despite a large number of candidates, only the Trump campaign went out and did the really hard grunt work of talking to state parties to try and get them to meld their rules to Donald Trump’s favor.”

Speculation Swirls Around Youngkin, but Window Is Closing for Dark Horse Candidates To Enter 2024 Race

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