New Hampshire Keeps Donor Class Hopes Alive
The Haley campaign overperforms and survives -- but for how long?
My primary day takeaway from Manchester, Bedford, and Nashua yesterday: Most journalists are really lazy. At the Bedford polling place, where I went with the knowledge that Nikki Haley and Governor Chris Sununu would make a stop mid-morning, the media horde showed up, talked to no voters, shouted questions at the candidates, got no answers, and left. I stayed for a couple hours shaking hands and got more quotes than I could ever use from dozens of voters. And then in the evening, not only did CNN and MSNBC cut away from Donald Trump’s victory speech, but their entire coverage — along with that of ABC, CBS, NBC, literally every major network — included the perspectives of no one I would think of as representative of the views of the majority of Republicans in America (Brit Hume noted Scott Jennings to me and he is correct, they just give him very little time). The LA Times layoffs happening the same day serve a reminder: America’s corporate media deserves to die, and it would be a mercy killing.
I hope some of you tuned into our coverage on Fox Nation last night, it was great fun! Here’s my take the morning after:
Virtually everyone agrees that regardless of the outcome in New Hampshire last night, Donald Trump is destined to be the GOP's 2024 nominee. In exit polls, even the New Hampshire voters who cast a vote for Nikki Haley agreed. He has all the advantages now -- a flood of fresh endorsements from the party establishment, including from his handpicked head of the Republican National Committee, and the clear backing of virtually every major conservative partisan. He has the advantage of incumbency, every party resource working in his favor, no expectations that he will debate or change his rather lackluster approach to campaigning, and the map ahead looks very good for him. The sound you heard from the lovefest victory stage in New Hampshire last night is the sound of inevitability.
And yet... What Nikki Haley pulled off last night could be looked back on ten months from now as nothing more than a brief delay in the inevitable. But it might be more than that. It could be the dynamic people point back to that serves as a warning sound, a blaring bright klaxon indicating danger lies ahead. Because Donald Trump and his vaunted New Hampshire organization couldn't put Nikki Haley down. Far from it: she overperformed her polls significantly, the recipient of a flood of Independent crossover votes and support from those Democrats who, whether they just wanted an opportunity to embarrass Trump or to express frustration at the dueling olds ticket on both sides of the aisle, crossed over to vote for Haley.
Either way, for the expectations game, Haley was clearly the victor. She can turn to her flood of new donors who gave to her in December and say: "in less than a month, I solidified my position as the only alternative to Trump, proved my capability to win independents, and got 40+ percent of the vote and just three fewer delegates than Trump in a state that voted for him twice for president." That's the kind of appeal that will have more donor support lining up. If you gave Nikki Haley a chunk of change last month, why not double down?
Perhaps most telling is her substantial increase in support from the key Republican faction, those who tell pollsters they are “somewhat conservative”. Caucus states like Iowa tend to be dominated by the activist “very conservative” voters, but the somewhat conservatives usually make up the largest single ideological faction in primary states. That’s the role they played in New Hampshire, comprising 41 per cent of the electorate. Haley lost to Trump with these voters, but her 38 per cent showing was miles above the 25 per cent she garnered in Iowa.
At the end of the counting, Haley's margin of loss to Trump will be almost identical to Bill Clinton's 1992 finish behind Paul Tsongas -- the race that made him "The Comeback Kid" -- and just like Clinton, she came out early to declare her plan to fight on. This means that we can expect a tone shift in the coming days, and a dramatic one at that. The former president has personally barely hit Haley this cycle, with a definitely restrained attitude by Trumpian measures. But that is about to change. And how he attacks her -- particularly how women and Independent voters interpret those attacks -- could help cement the New Hampshire dynamic as resembling the biggest challenge for the former president in the general.
We know Donald Trump owns the GOP, and his supporters can be confident of his renomination. But that's not enough to win a presidential election. For that, he needs a big chunk of the kind of voters who went for Haley, too. It's about more than getting her to drop out. It's about doing so in a way that doesn't make the sizable portion of her voters who say they'll never vote for him in January come back to him by November.
The Spectator’s New Hampshire Coverage
You have got to read this Cockburn:
Many of the stars of the MAGA Cinematic Universe put in an appearance: Cockburn spotted Arizona Senate candidate Kari Lake, dressed in white like the Miss Havisham of VP picks; Florida congressman Byron Donalds embracing a supporter as Fox made their call; Eric Trump and his wife Lara grabbing a bite in the adjoining restaurant — with Waltine Nauta, the Donald’s co-defendant in the federal classified documents case. Gavin Wax and Raheem Kassam had made the trip north from New York and DC, respectively, and George Santos was encircled in the bar outside by fans — sorry, reporters. Corey Lewandowski, the MAGA Pete Davidson, found it equally easy to hold court right in front of the media rider — and Rudy Giuliani was mobbed in the hallway.
Marjorie Taylor Greene got up close for a Right Side Broadcasting Network hit with her beau, Brian Glenn. “Really? That’s who she’s fucking?” said an incredulous female producer close by. Outside a closed-off area labeled CAMPAIGN STAFF ONLY, Laura Loomer waited, scrolling her phone as if looking for a way in. Alas, she was not admitted, instead joining the throng of Trump supporters in the main room and posing for a picture with Santos.
Trump won the Granite State — but it was a closer affair than perhaps he’d have hoped. At the time of writing, his lead over Nikki Haley was twelve points. “New Hampshire folk are very open minded and kind of able to look at things politically and not personally,” a New England political insider told Cockburn. So why didn’t more of the undeclareds go for Haley? “There’s something about her that people aren’t buying. The voters don’t trust her — and I think a lot of people are paranoid about getting burned.”
Cockburn caught up with Merrimack County commissioner David Lovlien Jr., a Trump fan. “I’m so excited because this is the beginning of the end,” he said. “We are taking our country back.”
He said of Nikki Haley, who was speaking on TV at the time, “That’s a scary woman.” Why didn’t people in his state plump for her? “They’re suspicious of when you come in with a face, like ‘ahhhhh!’, like ‘hi, I’m a DC politician!’ New Hampshire voters at a diner who just had a cigarette and a black coffee go, ‘who is this character?’ So we can see right through her facade.”
Cockburn asked Lovlien if anything could stop Trump from sealing the nomination, besides his many trials.
“Or if they killed him,” he replied. “Let’s be honest, I know we don’t like talking about that. I hate to even say it, but I love him and this is very volatile times… and when I say ‘they,’ I don’t know who that is… and I hope that never happens.”
The crowd — and the media — waited for Trump as the PA blasted out his playlist of rally tracks, which includes songs from The Phantom of the Opera and, of course, the Village People’s “Macho Man” and “YMCA.” “You know, they say this is all him,” a photographer says to Cockburn.
Eventually, to “God Bless the USA,” Trump took the stage, accompanied by a huge entourage including former candidates Vivek Ramaswamy and Tim Scott; Eric and Lara Trump; campaign spokesman Steven Cheung; new campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt, social media director Dan Scavino and advisors Susie Wiles, Chris LaCivita, Jason Miller and Brian Jack, among others.
Trump spoke for around twenty minutes, mostly criticizing his remaining primary opponent Nikki Haley, who had spoken up in Concord just before. “She was talking about most winnability, ‘who’s going to win,’” he said. “And I had one put up. I don’t know if you see them, but I had one put up. We’ve won almost every single poll in the last three months against Crooked Joe Biden… Let’s not have somebody take a victory when she had a very bad night.”
He also took a pop at New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu, who had endorsed her: “He’s gotta be on something, I’ve never seen that kind of energy.”
“Just a little note to Nikki,” Trump said later. “She’s not going to win… but if she did, she would be under investigation by those people in fifteen minutes. And I could tell you five reasons why already. Not big reasons, but it is stuff that she doesn’t want to talk about. But she will be under investigation within minutes.”
“I find in life, you can’t let people get away with bullshit, OK?” Trump said of his opponent’s speech. “And when I watched her in a fancy dress, that probably wasn’t so fancy, come up, I said, ‘what’s she doing?’”
Cockburn headed back north to Manchester and headed for a nightcap at the Goat, where Fox News was taping a segment. At the bar, he found himself next to a familiar face: the youthful Nikki Haley staffer who had asked him to leave her meet-and-greet at an Amherst diner last week. A comrade of Cockburn was bold enough to point this out to the young chap, who naturally played dumb and claimed it must be a case of mistaken identity, that he was not the same staffer. He then left. Color Cockburn shocked when he bumps into a similar-looking fellow in South Carolina in the weeks ahead…
More from Amber Duke on why Trump won, Freddy Gray on why this is just a temporary bump in the road, and Chris Bedford on the campaign consultant calamity.
Chuck Schumer Goes To War on Zyn
In the words of Spartan King Leonidas, later adopted by gun enthusiasts and made most famous at the Battle of Gonzalez in the Texas Revolution: come and take it !
New York senator Chuck Schumer gave a press conference earlier this week calling for a federal crackdown on nicotine pouches and their most popular brand Zyn. Schumer managed to conjure up ignorance, immorality and misplaced priorities in calling Zyn “a pouch full of problems” and asking the Federal Trade Commission and Food and Drug Administration to investigate Zyn for “concerns relating to marketing and health effects.”
Zyn is a tobacco-less nicotine pouch made of salt powder that is very popular on college campuses, on X — and honestly with me and all my friends. Zyn and its competitor brands (On, VELO, Rogue) have quadrupled sales over the last few years and by some estimates now sell well over a billion tins. Almost as much fun as popping a nicotine pouch between your lip and gum is debating with your buddies which flavor most represents your personality (peppermint, citrus, wintergreen). But all the fun may stop because of buzzkill Chuck Schumer.
It’s true that nicotine is addictive. But as a drug, many health experts suspect its negative health effects is roughly the same as your daily cup of coffee. About the worst thing said of nicotine is that it can cause high blood pressure. But nicotine can also improve short-term focus, alertness and memory. One thing that nicotine does not do is cause cancer.
Ask your average person on the street about nicotine, and they will undoubtedly tell you about the horrific health consequences of smoking or chewing tobacco. But while nicotine is the addictive agent in cigarettes and dip, it is the nicotine delivery mechanism, tobacco, that causes cancer. As a drug, nicotine is relatively harmless, but that seems to be lost on Chuck Schumer.
It’s impossible to find any moral compass in the prohibition policies of Democrats. This is a party that has embraced the legalization of marijuana while new research emerges suggesting links to psychosis and schizophrenia. This is a party that passes out needles as a solution to drug addiction. And this is a party that opens the floodgates at the southern border, allowing fentanyl to poison Americans. Yet it’s 6mg pouches of peppermint Zyn that are the priority of Chuck Schumer.
I like Zyn. If I’m being honest, I’m addicted to Zyn. I’m not proud of it. I don’t think it’s cool. But among the bad choices I could be making it doesn’t make a top five. And beyond that I’m free to make bad choices. I’m a free man.
So I’ll see you at the wall Chuck Schumer. This is our Alamo. And I won’t be alone. You just created millions of single-issue voters (maybe). Get ready to reap the whirlwind. Get ready for the Zynsurrection.