Former President Donald Trump is set to launch his 2024 White House bid with a tour of a pair of early voting states on Saturday, his first campaign event since announcing his latest campaign more than two months ago.
Trump will keynote at the New Hampshire GOP annual meeting before traveling to Columbia, South Carolina, where he is set to introduce his state leadership team. New Hampshire and South Carolina hold two of the party’s first three nominating contests, giving them enormous power in selecting the nominee.
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Trump and his allies hope the events will offer a show of force behind him after a slow start to the former president’s campaign that left many questioning his commitment to running again. In recent weeks, his supporters have reached out to political operatives and elected officials to secure Trump’s endorsement at a critical point when other Republicans are preparing for expected challenges of their own.
“The guns have been fired and campaign season has begun,” said Stephen Stepanek, the outgoing chairman of the New Hampshire Republican Party and who served as co-chair of Trump’s 2016 campaign in the state.
While Trump remains the only declared 2024 presidential candidate, potential challengers including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who was Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, is expected to make her campaign debut. in the coming months.
In South Carolina, Gov. Henry McMaster, US Sen. Lindsey Graham and several members of the state’s congressional delegation plan to attend Saturday’s event at the Statehouse. But Trump’s team has struggled to garner support from state lawmakers, even some who supported him during previous runs.
Some have said that it is too early to make an endorsement after more than a year has passed since primary voting or that they are waiting to see who else enters the race. Others have said it is time for the party to move on from Trump to a new generation of leadership.
Republican state Rep. RJ May, vice chairman of South Carolina’s state House Freedom Caucus, said he was not going to attend Trump’s event because he was focused on that group’s legislative battle with the GOP caucus. He indicated that he was open to other candidates in the 2024 race.
“I think we’re going to have a very strong slate of candidates in South Carolina,” said May, who voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020.
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Dave Wilson, president of the conservative Christian nonprofit Palmetto Family, said some conservative voters may be worried about Trump’s recent comments that Republicans who oppose abortion without exception could hurt the party in November’s elections. .
“It gives pause to some people within the conservative ranks of the Republican Party as to whether or not we need the process to work by itself,” said Wilson, who hosted Pence for a speech in 2021. Earn your vote. Nothing is taken.
Acknowledging that Trump “did some extraordinary things while he was president,” such as securing a conservative U.S. Supreme Court majority, Wilson said South Carolina’s GOP voters are “looking for a candidate who is not only for now but Ongoing construction could be the standard-bearer for the momentum across America for conservatism for the next few decades.
But Gerry McDaniel, who worked on Trump’s 2016 campaign and will attend Saturday’s event, dismissed the idea that voters were ready to move on from the former president.
“Some people in the media keep saying that he is losing his support. No, he isn’t,” she said. “It’s only going to happen more than ever because there are a lot of people who are angry about what’s happening in Washington.”
The South Carolina event, at a government building surrounded by elected officials, is off-brand in some ways for a former reality television star who typically favors large rallies and tries to project an outlandish image. But the reality is that Trump is a former president seeking to reclaim the White House by comparing his time in office with the current administration.
Rallies are also expensive, and Trump, who is notoriously frugal, added new financial challenges when he decided to launch his campaign in November _ much earlier than allies urged. That leaves him subject to strict fundraising rules and prevents him from using his well-funded leadership PAC to pay for such events, which can cost several million dollars.
Officials expect Trump to speak in the second-floor lobby of the Statehouse, a grand ceremonial area between the House and Senate chambers.
The venue has hosted some of South Carolina’s most notable political news, including Haley’s 2015 signing of a bill to remove the Confederate battle flag from the Statehouse grounds and the state’s ban on abortion after about six weeks pregnant. McMaster’s 2021 signing into law. , The state Supreme Court recently struck down the abortion law as unconstitutional, and McMaster has promised a retrial.
Trump’s nascent campaign has already sparked controversy, particularly when he has drawn Holocaust-denial white nationalist Nick Fuentes and the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, who made a series of antisemitic remarks. Trump was also widely mocked for selling a series of digital trading cards depicting him as a superhero, a cowboy and an astronaut.
At the same time, he is the subject of a series of criminal investigations, including the discovery of hundreds of documents with classified markings at a Florida club and whether he obstructed justice by refusing to return them, as well as state and federal examinations. Because of his efforts to reverse the results of the 2020 election, which he lost to Democrat Joe Biden.
Still, Trump remains the only declared 2024 candidate, and early polling suggests he is the favorite to win his party’s nomination.
Stepanek, who was required to remain neutral until his term as New Hampshire party chair ends at Saturday’s party meeting, downplayed the importance of Trump’s slow start, which campaign officials say is a Time was spent putting in place the infrastructure for the national campaign.
In New Hampshire, he said, there is “a lot of anticipation, a lot of enthusiasm” for Trump to be re-elected. He said that Trump’s most loyal supporters are standing behind him.
“You have a lot of people who weren’t with him in ’15, ’16, then became Trumper, then became Trumper,” Stepanek said. “But the people who supported him in New Hampshire, who propelled him to his victory in the New Hampshire primary in 2016, are all still there, waiting for the president.”