NEW YORK (AP) – After a trio of new announcements this week, the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential field is almost set.
A handful of challengers may enter later, but now there are at least 10 high-profile Republican candidates officially seeking their party’s nomination. And with the announcement phase of the primary campaign largely over, several major Republican candidates will gather in North Carolina this weekend to begin a more aggressive qualifying period.
It will be a long road to the GOP national convention in Milwaukee next summer when Republican delegates from across the country gather to finalize their nominee to run against President Joe Biden. Surprises are guaranteed. Fortunes will change. But as of now, all Republican White House hopefuls are looking to former President Donald Trump, who is the undisputed frontrunner in the tight race.
Here are some points about where the Republican contest stands:
After all, IT IS A BIG FIELD
Trump launched his campaign nearly seven months ago in an effort to scare off potential challengers. It didn’t work.
As of now, the former president is running in a field that features no fewer than nine high-profile challengers. They include Mike Pence, a former vice president; four current or former governors: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson; Nikki Haley, former ambassador to the United Nations and also former governor of South Carolina; US Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina; biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy; and conservative talk show host Larry Elder, an unsuccessful candidate for governor of California.
Although it is large, the 2024 field could have been much larger. The party’s 2016 promotion featured 17 candidates who filled two debate stages.
Several Republicans who had taken steps to prepare for a run in 2024 eventually withdrew. They include former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton.
Meanwhile, a handful of high-profile Republicans are still considering a run, including former Energy Secretary Rick Perry, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez and Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
IT’S TRUMP AND EVERYONE ELSE
Make no mistake: This is Trump’s race to lose.
The former president is dominating early primary polls, despite his extraordinary legal troubles, his continued lies about the 2020 election that fueled the Jan. 6 uprising, and serious concerns among GOP officials about his ability to win the general elections However, Trump maintains a strong grip on a significant portion of the Republican base that has yet to fall in love with an alternative.
DeSantis is Trump’s strongest challenger on paper, but the Florida governor has yet to chart a clear path to victory. Florida’s governor is trying to one-up Trump by taking a harder line on immigration, abortion and other divisive policies across the nation, while adopting the former president’s combative style and mannerisms.
Meanwhile, the Trump team is delighted with the sheer number of candidates in the race, which creates a math problem that benefits Trump. It looks like it’s 2016 all over again, when Trump won the New Hampshire primary with only 35% of the vote because the other candidates cut off the rest of the vote.
Trump’s Republican critics warned against this exact scenario for the past year, but for now, they seem unable to stop it.
NOT A CLEAR STRATEGY FOR TRUMP
Math aside, Trump’s Republican rivals have yet to find a coherent strategy to defeat him. That doesn’t mean they haven’t started trying.
Pence told Iowa voters this week that Trump “demanded that I choose between him and the Constitution,” a reference to Trump’s oft-repeated (and false) insistence that Pence had the authority to overturn the U.S. election. 2020. Pence called Trump’s words “reckless” and said the former president put his family in danger.
DeSantis, like others, has dropped plenty of indirect jabs at Trump, largely focused on the former president’s inability to serve more than one term and the GOP’s “culture of losing” under his leadership since 2016. DeSantis’ team also believes they have a chance to beat Trump from the right on conservative priorities like abortion and immigration.
DeSantis dismissed Trump’s big polling lead when asked this week in Arizona: “You don’t poll one year and say that’s the end of the election,” he said.
Christie may be Trump’s most vocal critic of the race, even though he hasn’t held office in more than five years.
“I went there to take out Donald Trump,” the former New Jersey governor told New Hampshire voters this week. “But here’s why: I want to win and I don’t want him to win. … There’s a lane for the Republican nomination and he’s in front of it.”
Expect to see anti-Trump strategies continue to evolve this weekend in North Carolina.
A DIVERSE FIELD
The 2024 Republican field equals the GOP’s class of 2016 as the most racially diverse in the party’s long history.
At least four candidates of color are seeking the presidency this year: Scott and Elder are black, while Haley and Ramaswamy are of Indian descent. For Haley and Scott, in particular, race plays a central role in their pitch to voters, even though all four deny the existence of systemic racism and are largely opposed to federal policies designed to help people based on the color of their skin.
Republican officials are confident the diverse field will help the party continue its modest progress with black and Latino voters. Both groups still overwhelmingly support Democrats, but even small cracks in the Democratic coalition could be significant in 2024.
There is only one woman in the Republican field. But there is a wide diversity in the ages of the candidates: Trump is the oldest at 76, while Ramaswamy is the youngest at 37. DeSantis is only 44, while Haley and Scott are in their 50s. The rest of the candidates are between 60 and 70 years old.
RIGHT TO POLICY
With few exceptions, the Republican camp has adopted hardline conservative policies on issues such as abortion, immigration, gun violence and LGBTQ rights.
All candidates oppose abortion rights to some degree, though there are differences in the degree of opposition and rhetoric about the procedure. Pence and Scott have openly endorsed national abortion bans, while Trump and DeSantis have so far avoided taking a strong position on a federal ban. That said, DeSantis this spring signed into law Florida a six-week abortion ban, one of the most restrictive policies in the country.
The entire Republican camp also opposes new limits on gun ownership, including a ban on assault weapons. Most blame the nation’s gun violence epidemic on mental health issues. DeSantis enacted a new law this spring that allows Florida residents to carry concealed firearms without a permit.
The Republican camp has also embraced the party’s recent focus on the LGBTQ community.
Haley mocked and mocked transgender women on the campaign trail in recent weeks. Trump and DeSantis have denounced gender-affirming surgeries for minors as child abuse. And Scott co-sponsored a Senate bill that would cut funding to elementary or middle schools that change a student’s pronouns without first getting parental consent.
However, there seems to be some disagreement about Social Security and Medicare.
DeSantis, as a member of Congress, voted in favor of a resolution that would have raised the age to qualify for Medicare and Social Security to 70. He seems to have moved away from that position since becoming governor of Florida. But Trump has seized on his rival’s past stance, while promising to preserve popular programs.
UNCERTAINTY HAS A LIMIT
The Republican camp may be settling down, but big surprises in the coming months are all but assured.
Trump’s legal troubles may be bigger. The former president already faces 34 counts of falsifying business records related to hush money payments made during the 2016 campaign to bury allegations he had extramarital sex. Federal prosecutors are also currently using grand juries in Washington and Florida as part of their investigation into possible mishandling of classified documents. And Georgia prosecutors are investigating whether Trump broke the law while trying to overturn his 2020 election loss.
At the same time, DeSantis has only begun to be evaluated on the national stage. Opponents on both sides are scouring his background for any hint of damaging information. Fellow Republicans openly question his interpersonal skills. And he quickly mixes it up with the media in unscripted moments of the campaign.
Meanwhile, there is great uncertainty surrounding the upcoming presidential debates, which are scheduled to begin at the end of August. Trump, who has a big lead in early polls, has raised the possibility of skipping the debates altogether. DeSantis has attacked major media outlets that would play a role in hosting the televised events. And it’s unclear whether lower-level candidates could meet the relatively modest polling and fundraising thresholds.
