The Dispatch Podcast - Explainer: Do Other Candidates Stand A Chance?

Episode Date: June 4, 2023

It’s not over for those not named Trump or DeSantis, says GOP operative Mike Murphy. Join The Dispatch’s Mike Warren as speaks with Murphy about the candidates chances of rising in the polls and what they’re doing to fight in the 2024 election. Show Notes: -Mike Murphy's article for The Bulwark -Mike Warren's article for The Dispatch Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Stress less about security. Choose security solutions from TELUS for peace of mind at home and online. Visit TELUS.com. Total Security to learn more. Conditions apply. Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Mike Warren, senior editor here at the dispatch. Ron DeSantis has up the ante now for the other Republicans

who were trying to defeat Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential primaries. These also running candidates, people like Tim Scott, Nikki Haley, Mike Pence, Chris Christie, North Dakota Governor Doug Bergam have a lot to do over the next few months if they want to be able to compete with Trump and DeSantis. I'll be talking today with Mike Murphy, a veteran Republican political consultant and strategist. He's worked for a number of candidates, including John McCain, Jeb Bush, Lamar Alexander, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Let's take a listen. Mike Murphy, welcome to the dispatch.

Well, it is good to be here, Mike. Good to see you. Well, let's take stock, Mike, of the 2024 Republican field. Here we are the very beginning of June, 2023. And we've got Donald Trump, obviously running for a, I guess, a third time for a second term. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is in. Now it's been just over a week. Those two are really seem to be battling it out. But there are the other candidates. And And we should look at exactly where things are with the people I'm calling the also runnings. You say, and you're not the only one, who say that it's not over for those people not named Donald Trump and Ronda Santis, but there's some things they're going to have to do over the next few months. Let's just start there. Where are things as you see it?

That is the big question. So, you know, we tend to be in the Heisenberg business here in the pundit arena where we have a lot of hot thermometers were sticking into things and then to clearing temperatures. And we tend to be really early. You know, the voter timetable is much more backended than the bloviating timetable that we're all on. So every day in the modern news business equation is treated like the most important day of the campaign, which means all trivia is elevated. You know, the Santa sneezed near a toddler today, bringing up COVID where he attacked, you know. And so you have to step back. And Napoleon, one of my favorite little historical asides, they once asked Napoleon who his favorite general was.

And much like DeSantis, he probably thought, you idiot, it's obviously me. But, you know, you didn't want to answer that way. He also had these marshals, his great generals who were talented and all hated each other. So he got out of the question by telling the truth. He said, well, I have a lot of great generals. But the most important soldier in the grand army is that sergeant over there with the map case. Because if I understand the terrain of the battlefield better than the other general. And I have a better mobile, drilled army. I don't care if I'm on number. I'll maneuver around them and cut them to pieces, which Napoleon did a lot. So you got to look at the battlefield of the presidential race, not what kind of Tuesday Tim Scott had. And does Nikki Haley's

hybrid minivan a backlash factor in the primary, you know, the overthink. So what's the macro? The macro is there's more move beyond Trump voters in the early primary states than Trump voters. Now, people say, yeah, but his winner take on the Republican delegate process after March, and, you know, he'll build a lead, blah, blah, blah. I think it's pretty simple. If he doesn't win Iowa and New Hampshire, maybe he can narrowly lose one of them, but is the invincible president who every story I read of the analysis has has this unstoppable lock on the party, you know, he's Rasputin. He can't be killed. Well, one day they shot Rasputin in the face with a pistol and guess what happened? He died. If I think Trump has beaten those two early primary states, I think he'll bleed to death and it's over.

And there's no rolling his 38% in a multi-way primary because everybody stays in forever. Whoever the Giants Slayer in will attract all the other money and a lot of momentum really quick. And, you know, so I think that theory goes out the window. Now, if Trump can win Iowa in New Hampshire, he'll roll the table and be the nominee. So the big opportunity right now in Iowa, New Hampshire, is to emerge and consolidate enough of the, let's move. move beyond Trump. You know, the media wants it to be never Trump versus Trump. Well, there's not a big never Trump market in the Republican Party. That's like, you know, being a Yankees fan in Boston. You know, there are limits to what the Red Sox will accept, but they will accept a new coach or a new

pitcher. So there are candidates competing for that and it runs very late. Right now, today, forget the useless national polls. In Iowa, in 2016, this earlier, maybe a few weeks ago, Scott Walker was leading the polls, you know. So you've got to let the cake cook. Therefore, and sorry to win John's a lot. It is a question of will it be DeSantis? Will it be Tim Scott? Will it be perhaps Doug Burtum,

this kind of interesting folksie North Dakota governor who's getting in? Normally I'd discount that, but states adjacent to Iowa where you can talk a good ag game. It doesn't hurt. And he's a billionaire. So he can write a $10 million check to Annie in pretty quick.

well, Christy have a catalytic effect. You know, historically, nobody ever votes for Christy in these primaries, but he can sure do damage. So there are so many unknowns now. I'm not focused so much on whether a candidate could tie his shoelaces last Thursday, because they all start kind of bad. Obama started bad, but they learn. The ones who learn quick and sees the opportunity may do well, but we're not going to

really know much about that until it really starts moving in November in those early States. So I think the whole field has a theoretical shot, but some, I think, in a Orwellian way, some contenders are more equal than other contenders than having that shot. Well, I think there was an idea after several weeks of, you know, the Trump campaign really hitting DeSantis hard and hurting his poll numbers that there were even whispers that maybe DeSantis wouldn't even decide to run in 2024 or he's so damaged. And you got the sense that these other guys thought, well, if DeSantis is on the way, I can be the one on the rise and I'll be the one to challenge Donald Trump. That's clearly not happened. But again, it's not over for those other candidates.

It's so binary. The media decides if Trump's having a bad day, then it's going to be DeSantis. And if DeSantis is having a bad day, like he was in a rope line in New Hampshire and some jerky reporter yelled at him, you know, he talked to people and he popped off. Now, that is a tell, not a great candidate skill. And it's dumb on one of these early tours to try to deny all press questions because otherwise they're going to misbehave the beast has to eat. But it's not binary. The binary thing is Trump replaced Trump. Can somebody consolidate the majority of the party in some places over 60% that is move beyond Donald Trump?

That is the race. And we don't know yet. We are in the second inning, you know, of the game, the beginning, the top of it. And we have a long thing left, that big debate in August, if it occurs and who's there, a lot of maneuvering. That's going to be really important. The RNC is already trying to make sure Christy isn't there because he's going to be like a pit bull and Trump's going to be the guy with the peanut butter, you know, inside his pocket and there's

going to be blood and flesh and, you know, and the DeSantis thing is irresistible because of the human dimension. They hate each other. Trump being insane is obsessed with him. And DeSantis clearly being a guy who could not get a charm school that offers a money back guarantee to enroll him, you know, that's going to be the thing. But we have to understand that's more noise than signal. The slappy fight personality stuff lights up the beltway. The idiotic Twitter announcement lights up the bellway. And I spent, you know, a couple of days sniffing

around my old operative buddies in Iowa where I've done a lot of work last month. I was out there. At the voter level, it is a different set of interests. And they're all going to get a pitch now. The ones who have the money to make a really big pitch are obviously the Santas. Trump's already famous. He's the dog food they know and two-thirds of them want to try something else. And Scott, Scott will easily be able to put $25 million federal hard dollars. Forget Superpex for a minute into trying Iowa and New Hampshire. This Doug Bugram, who I think, or Bergum, sorry, better learn his name.

There's going to be a little boomlet around him because he's kind of different. You know, we'll see how he does. But he'll write $10 million and get in. and Christy will do it with Earned Media. The other one that's interesting on papers, Nikki Haley, who's a pretty good candidate, but her problem is this, I would pitch her Secret Service code name

ought to be too clever by half. And I think that's kind of stuck to work. But maybe she can work her way out of it over the summer. The real question for her, for all of them, but really for her, is when the next round of FEC reports come out, which will be the end of June, and we'll get to know them,

there's a lag in July, and the number that you should zero in on his cash on hand, which is always even itself inflated, because you know every campaign manager takes some bills, puts them the drawer, holds their breath to pump that number up. But in last report, it was only about $4 million, which really meant it was $3.6. And she can't raise more money.

It doesn't have to be a lot, but I've got to see $5 or $6 million new hard dollars. She can't afford a real powerful media campaign in those two states. she'll be out by Thanksgiving. So the money thing is an early tell. The voters come later. Well, you've hit on three of those sort of benchmarks of what these also runnings need to do, right?

They need to raise money to be able to compete. And Tim Scott is a sort of different situation because not only does he have that, you know, 22, starting with $22 million from his Senate race in 2022, that he basically had no opponent on. He didn't have to spend that much. and he was able to raise a lot, but he's got this super pack. And hard dollar cash on hand, too. A lot of them cook the raise money.

They go spend 99 cents raising a dollar and say, look, it's cash. Cash pays for TV, digital, field, everything you need in those two states. Remember, for all the mythology about my beloved New Hampshire and spent summers there, I love the place, it runs on Boston TV. And that's a check somebody has to start writing, particularly after the summer. But you've got money. You've got to have money, right? you've got to have money to stay in this.

Then you've got to have, particularly in Iowa, effective organizing and campaigning, you know, pressing the flesh, but also having your, you know, county chairs and every, you know, all 99 counties, having that sort of organization. And then as you alluded to that first debate, which it's going to be in August, it's going to be in Milwaukee. We'll see who shows up, like you said, Donald Trump has claimed he's not going to go. Maybe he will. Maybe he'll be baited into it.

But those sort of three benchmarks is really how we can judge maybe at the end of the summer what all of these other candidates' ability to go the distance is going to be, right? Yeah, that is totally right. I mean, Iowa, I've done some caucuses there, some gubernatorial campaigns. In fact, I remember a lesson I was taught in the 90s, my old client, Governor Terry Brandstead, who had 42 terms as governor. A great, a great governor, wonderful guy. We were talking about caucusing in smaller counties.

I mean, it's basically a firehouse primary in the big places, like Ball County, Des Moines, etc., or Black Hawk and the stuff in Northeast Iowa. But as it gets smaller, the old bit of Iowa machine advice was get the veterinarian. And I'm like, why? Because he's the guy you call it 3 a.m. when your cows dying. And if he's wearing that sign for somebody else on the second ballot, as much as you love candidate X, it's in your own interest to maybe walk over to candidate Y. because in the second and third, you know, how the process works. So, yeah, but what people forget is organization is important, but organization amplifies message.

It's kind of like the car business. You hear about the car on the internet. You see the paid ads. You go to the dealer and then they close and finance you, but you got to get them in the dealer door. And so it is a combination of things. And the other big question in the Iowa caucus, which will affect organization is who's going to vote?

Traditionally, it was down around 100,000. And it really blew up last time and last contested time in 16 with about 170,000 people participate. Remember, you got to leave and sit around for hours on a cold night. So it's not like voting in the mail here in California or somewhere. But when the Democrats killed their Iowa caucus for some good reasons, I think it was a train wreck, there are 172,600 Democrats and independents who went out on that cold night to caucus and make Iowa's voice heard. It is a cultural thing there.

So I'm very interested, and I actually wrote a piece for the bulwark on this, what are they going to do? It's very easy to vote in an Iowa caucus. There's no quiz at the door, and even so you can change your party registration online in three minutes in Iowa. Did 25, 30,000 people,

a material number show up? Two Democrats walked off the street to tell me that when I was in Des Moines a month ago. So, you know, that's not a great Trump thing either. I mean, maybe some college Democrats will get drunk and show up. And we say Biden, we voted for Trump, but they're going to be anywhere from, I can't, somebody ought to poll that universe if they end self-sertilistness. But I wouldn't be surprised for 30,000 people come into it, which is, you know, an 18% delusion of the whiskey.

And that could be material. So there's so much we don't know, to your point. We got to go, we got to go let them swim in the sea, eat other fish, have that debate in others. Then, from my experience, doing these things, it doesn't, like all primaries, it moves late because they sample, they take a lot of input, some of which are campaign driven, some of which aren't, and then, and they could be environmental what's going on in the country. And then they race to the finish line for somebody in the last seven weeks or so. And primaries are like that. I'm sorry to win John, but this is some people also don't know, you know, at a lot of the pundit chairs in D.C. in a general election you got if you're lucky in a swing state nine percent of the people you might be able to move around it's even narrowed in the modern era so to see a four or five point move in a poll is pretty significant in a primary everybody's the same they're all cats now they might be siamese or some difference ideologically but it is no big deal for 30 points to move in the last 35 days of a primary election and so this thing is so untethered compared to the assumptions that are made about it that we

We just have to watch and let it happen and see who's got the tools and the message. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder of how quickly life can change and why protecting the people you love is so important. Knowing you can take steps to help protect your loved ones and give them that extra layer of security brings real peace of mind. The truth is, the consequences of not having life insurance can be serious. That kind of financial strain on top of everything else is why life insurance indeed matters. Ethos is an online platform that makes getting life insurance fast and easy to protect your family's future in minutes, not months. Ethos keeps it simple.

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Two thoughts that came to mind. One, the first Iowa caucus I ever actually sat in on was in 2016. It was in Ames. And I found it just fascinating. And you do see, even in the caucuses, the sort of last minute shifts where people sort of gauge the room even and sort of, oh, my guy's not going to win. Let me go see if I can help somebody else who needs a boost. It's a fascinating thing.

And it's fun for them, by the way. Oh, it's, I could see it. It's a voter carnival and you've got your personal relationships and you hate that jerk they hired to go work for X. So maybe you won't even though you kind of like them. You can always vote for them in the general. Yeah, it is complicated. But if you have big message and a good organization and you have the interpersonal networks

in the smaller counties, that's a pretty big formula. I had some respectable Iowa operatives. I won't name them because they got a, you know, beat who were involved in Trump last time said I think he's coming in third you know and the Christian vote there which is big is tired of him and they think he's going to lose to Biden that's the biggest thing slow pony going to lose the world's biggest businessman is now a stone cold loser to a guy that we ought to be able to beat with a block of cement so you know everybody's looking for a winner and the way to be the turbocharged winner Republican primary and be younger than

Biden, turbocharged winner, is to beat the monster, you know, to quote wrestling superstar and political analyst, Rick Flair, to be a man, you got to beat the man. So I think this whole thing is about, did they take Trump down or not? And right now, even in the polling, I've seen both secret and public polling, there's huge vulnerability there. Can one of these candidates rise to it? That's what we don't know. Well, one of the things that you hear from a lot of, you know, non-Trump supporting Republicans,

conservatives sort of wringing their hands about is, will this large field, and it is going to be maybe not as large as some people feared, but pretty large, is that going to split the non-Trump vote, redound to Trump's benefit? But you mentioned Scott Walker, where he was at this point in the 2016 cycle. Of course, he didn't even make it to Iowa. He got out of the race before the Iowa Congresses. That's likely to happen this time, too. That's why you got to watch that cash flow. Yeah, I mean, and this is, Nikki is heading for the Scott Walker Museum of Political Failures. Now, you know, maybe she'll reverse it. She has a lot of tools on paper. But what happens is you get in and you look around and think, holy cow, a lot of people might run. I've got to

have a, I've got to hire everybody. I got to do this and you burn through all your cash. Because meanwhile, back in your home state, we love you, the state's behind you. We're going to raise you 25 million higher and then they don't. And then you got a super pack with a lot of money or some money that can go on TV and try to help you. It can go screw with other people, but all that blocking and tackling and your performance and debates. I will, if I, I will, I will, I will put on my Crescan hat here and predict the future. None of these candidates are doing enough debate prep. They think I can take my old Tallahassee Chamber of Commerce Act here. They love me in Florida. They love me in, you know, in Columbia, South Carolina. I'm Tim Scott. I'm good on my feet.

I get a lot of applause. They're all lazy, but then they show up. It's kind of like the old story about Hollywood. The prettiest man or woman in Barneyville, Kentucky, that everybody is nice to are so breathtaking beautiful, get on a train to L.A. to be a movie star. And everybody waves, you know, she's going to the top. And then they look around and there are 50,000 incredibly beautiful people there. And they're like, Christ, I'm in a new league now. And that debate, they're all going to do their safe stuff. And what you want to be is the Mayor Pete. You want to be the standout communicator on the beyond Trump message. And particularly if Christy is trying to stop on Trump with golf shoes and, you know, all that's going on, if you're the one guy, look, I'm here to

move the conservative cause forward and I'm here to beat woke Democrats. And I'm going to, you know, run circles around Joe Biden. Let me tell you who I am and while I'll do it with some skills and an affable manner. They're going to be on rocket fuel. Now, that one debate won't get you all the way, but boy, you will break through. And if I were there, I'd be doing a lot more of that and a lot less, you know, bouncing around the early state super early thinking it counts because that debate will drive Iowa, New Hampshire more than campaigning in Iowa, New Hampshire will at the beginning. Then it grows. So you think about this from the perspective of one of these, let's say, less, they're all equal, these also runnings, but maybe some of the ones who are less equal, who in a debate, for instance, on TV, you know, the moderators are not going to be as interested. They'll need to give them a sort of a token five minutes to give their spiel, but they're going to, like you said, they're going to want to see DeSantis and Trump go after each other or let Chris Christie go after Trump. So if you're somebody like, I don't know, an Asa Hutchinson or even a Mike Pence who may not get the amount of time that they

really need to make that differentiation, what is, what would be your advice to those candidates or what do you do to use that time effectively? Particularly hard for Hutchison because he doesn't have a lot of money, which means he can't buy publicity. So he's got to go through the earned media, which is still very important in presidential. The Sanis is making a mistake thinking he can do it around the media. You know, you can both use them and bash him. So the media is going to put this in a whole noble anti-Trump candidate, you know, and then all of a sudden he's a bad version of Bruce Babbitt or whatever, and he'll be boxed in. And then he has the uncomfortable choice. Just be yourself at the debate. Nobody will notice you with a gray-haired guy seven

steps down who seemed to not like Trump. Or they give you the crazy idea, wear a Viking hat, sing the national anthem, some gimmick thing that you get noticed, but you get noticed as a fool. So the real answer for somebody like, or he says, don't run. You don't have the table stakes. but I admire him. You know, I'm with him on the Trump stuff, but this is practical politics. And so they're a sideshow. And you're having Bivik, if they let him in the bait,

he's the venture capitalist who is kind of doing the old Alan Keyes, Herman Kane Act. You know, and there'll be, he'll get a little thing going for a while. But the folks to watch are going to be DeSantis, obviously Trump, Scott, what Nikki does in the clutch. And the new fresh guy, wearing his Levi's, who's kind of like Sam Elliott's younger, smarter, college professor, brother. He's got a foxy vibe.

We'll see how he does in his announcement. You know, he's got potential to kind of be interesting. That's Doug Burke. Doug Bergham, North. Two-term billionaire governor of North Dakota who beat the party frontrunner in the primary when he first ran. Software magnate from there born on a front, blah, blah, blah. I can do the pitch. I want to see him announce and see if they're taking message seriously.

but there are some ingredients there because one thing we rule about the media is if every day has to be the most important day of the campaign they got to discover something every day so right now the media is Trump and DeSantis hate each other DeSantis is a psycho killer

therefore people hate him and you know DeSanis has to go give him a campaign to disprove that and so far he's not because it's kind of like quail and potato it was unfair but it made him a moron forever in the media

a narrative, which was massively unfair. He's a friend of mine. I know him pretty well. He's no idiot at all. He's actually quite shrewd and smart and had a lot of depth on policy. But once you get on those railroad tracks, you have to really chew the media's food to convince them, you're off them. And that's what the DeSantis campaign has to be about for the next 90 days. He does have advantages. He can ante in.

He's younger than Trump, and he's a fighter. And so he should be running as I'm the Biden beater. But he's got to convince people. politically competent and interacting with other humans. And so far, he's getting a little bit of an unfair shake, but, you know, welcome to the politics business. Well, I guess we'll be, maybe we should revisit this, maybe right after the August debate, whenever that is, to just see how these guys were trying to be that third person

to really kind of compete with Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, how they did this summer. September is the first big month. If that's when we're going to, because there have been some exposure, there will been probably, we're not certain, a huge debate, there will have been some paid advertising. Won't tell us everything, but at least the pie will be in the oven then, and we might be able to taste it. All right. Well, the race is just getting started. Mike Murphy, thank you so much for joining us on the dispatch podcast.

We'll have you back again. And thanks for listening. Oh, thank you. Calling all Booklovers. The Toronto International Festival of a vote lovers. authors brings you a world of stories all in one place discover five days of readings talks workshops and more with over 100 authors from around the world including Rachel Maddow Ketouru Isaku and Kieran Desai the Toronto

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