DeSantis hits Trump in New Hampshire, looking to make up ground

Gov. Ron DeSantis jabbed former President Donald Trump in New Hampshire on Tuesday, vowing to deliver on the campaign promises that Trump failed to live up to as he looks to make up critical ground in the first-in-the-nation Republican primary state.

Speaking to a crowd in Hollis, just hours before Trump was set to take the stage at a prominent Republican women’s luncheon in Concord, DeSantis delivered a tailored version of his stump speech, touting the new immigration and border security policy he released in Texas on Monday and outlining a promise to dismantle Washington’s traditional power structure.

But he also took careful aim at Trump, his chief rival for the GOP’s 2024 presidential nod, hammering the former president for not following through on his longtime campaign pledge to “drain the swamp” in Washington and warning that Republicans would lose the White House next year if the party and its nominee remains “mired in the past.”

“I remember these rallies in 2016. It was exciting. ‘Drain the swamp.’ I also remember ‘lock her up, lock her up,’” DeSantis said when asked by an audience member about how he plans to follow through on “draining the swamp” in D.C. “And then two weeks after the election: ‘Ah, no forget about it. Forget I ever said that.’”

“If this election is about Biden’s failures and our vision for the future, we are going to win. If it’s about relitigating things that happened two, three years ago, we are going to lose,” he later added. “I can tell you this, I can point you to Tallahassee, Florida, I believe, on Jan. 5, 2023. We had a transition of power from my first administration to my second, because we won reelection in a historic fashion.”

DeSantis’ remarks during his second trip to New Hampshire since launching his 2024 campaign last month came as he looks to close a growing gap with Trump in a state that, for several election cycles now, has had a better track record of picking the eventual GOP nominee than Iowa, the first-in-the-nation caucus state.

A poll from Saint Anselm College released on Tuesday found Trump leading DeSantis 47% to 19% in the Granite State, marking a 10-point loss in support for DeSantis since March.

At the same time, DeSantis’s town hall event on Tuesday became the subject of criticism from some members of the New Hampshire Federation of Republican Women, the influential group whose luncheon Trump headlined on Tuesday. The federation’s president released a statement last week, accusing DeSantis of trying to “pull focus” from the luncheon by holding his own event in the state on the same day.

That view wasn’t shared by every member of the group. Melissa Blasek, a former Republican state representative from New Hampshire, wrote on Twitter last Thursday that she was resigning her membership in the federation after its president criticized DeSantis.

“As a dues paying member of the NFRW, I am resigning my membership due to this attack on a first in the nation candidate,” she wrote. “Clearly this is motivated by the Trump campaign and it is bewildering to me that our president would take part in such a cheap campaign stunt.”

Ground to make up

DeSantis wasn’t the only candidate throwing punches in New Hampshire on Tuesday. Trump mocked the governor during his keynote speech at the luncheon, criticizing him for holding a town hall earlier in the day.

“By the way, he’s holding an event right now, which is considered not nice,” Trump said. “He’s holding an event right now to compete with us. Well guess what? Nobody showed up.”

Despite trailing Trump in most polling out of New Hampshire, DeSantis has a formidable political operation backing him up.

Never Back Down, the main super PAC supporting his presidential bid, has already launched an extensive voter-outreach push in the state. Jessica Szymanski, a spokesperson for the group, said that the super PAC’s canvassers had already knocked on nearly 84,000 doors in New Hampshire alone and that the group expects to have talked to every one of its targeted primary voters by mid-July.

“No other candidate’s on-the-ground efforts come anywhere close to ours, which is why you’ll continue to see Gov. DeSantis’ support grow,” she said.

Jim Merrill, a longtime Republican consultant in New Hampshire who’s unaligned in the primary, said that Never Back Down’s on-the-ground operation in the state was so far unmatched by other presidential hopefuls, adding that DeSantis “has a lot of the elements to wage a strong campaign.”

He also said that despite Trump’s towering lead, the primary is still eight months away and the race for New Hampshire remains wide open.

Still, he said, DeSantis, like just about every Republican presidential hopeful, faces a daunting challenge in overcoming Trump’s frontrunner status.

“There’s no question about it: It’s a challenge,” Merrill said. “Trump takes a lot of oxygen out of the room that the other candidates need.”

“This is a hard time right now. We still have candidates up here that draw big crowds like Gov. DeSantis did today. But you’ve gotta run for president in New Hampshire like you’re running for governor. You have to be more creative in your engagement, dive a little bit deeper.”

There’s also the question of how DeSantis’ reputation as a conservative culture warrior plays out in New Hampshire, a state where independent and libertarian-leaning Republican voters often dominate the primary.

Addressing his town hall event on Tuesday, DeSantis appeared to tailor his remarks to New Hampshire voters, highlighting his state’s budget surplus, calling for a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution and casting his immigration and border security plan as a way to stem the flow of opioids into the U.S.

Notably absent from his remarks was any mention of the six-week abortion ban he signed into law in April - something he’s talked about at campaign events in Iowa, where evangelical voters and social conservatives are particularly influential.

Dante Scala, a political science professor at the University of New Hampshire, said that DeSantis’ ability to shift his message between Iowa and New Hampshire will be a major hurdle for his candidacy.

“The thing that’s difficult about having Iowa and then New Hampshire is having to thread the needle, where you can appeal to evangelicals and social conservatives on one hand and then be able to come here and get those more moderate Republicans,” he said. “I think for DeSantis, that’s part of his challenge here.”