Urgency mounts for Trump’s GOP rivals in pre-holiday blitz through Iowa and New Hampshire

With the holidays approaching and the first Republican nominating contest a month away, the GOP presidential contenders will urgently spread across the early voting states in the coming days for what is likely the last full weekend of heavy campaigning before the new year.

Former President Donald Trump will hold a rally Saturday in New Hampshire, seeking to maintain his grip on a state that delivered his first primary victory on his way to winning the GOP nomination in 2016. Trump will follow up with appearances in Nevada on Sunday and Iowa on Tuesday as he ramps up his end-of-year political activity.

The burst of campaigning underscores an aggressive effort by his team to maintain his dominating lead when polls give way to actual voting. His advisers have privately voiced concerns that Trump supporters could simply assume he has a comfortable advantage in the race and is not reliant on their votes.

“We are leading by a lot, but you have to go out and vote,” Trump told supporters Wednesday night in Iowa.

The rest of the field is in a race against time to catch the front-runner – and their calendars reflect the intensifying push to slow Trump’s path to the nomination.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will spend Friday in New Hampshire before turning his attention back to Iowa on Saturday and for much of the foreseeable future until the January 15 caucuses. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley has plans to visit the Hawkeye State on Sunday and will remain there until the middle of next week. Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy has eight events planned over the next two days in Iowa.

The flurry of activity follows one of the most intriguing weeks to date in a race that so far has lacked breakout moments. Trump’s ongoing legal peril, marked by court appearances, a dizzying array of legal filings and unprecedented indictments of a former president, has often overshadowed his rivals in their fight for attention from Republican voters.

But Haley and DeSantis each managed to seize a share of the spotlight in their own way this week. In a potentially seismic development in the Granite State, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu endorsed Haley for president, and the two hopped around the state looking to turn their new political alliance into votes in the January 23 primary. DeSantis, meanwhile, demonstrated a new willingness to escalate his attacks against Trump during a CNN town hall, going after the former president at every turn with a newfound appreciation for the task at hand.

Still, there were other signals that pointed to the difficult road ahead for Trump’s opponents. The latest Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom poll showed Trump’s lead expanding in the Hawkeye State, with 51% of likely caucusgoers saying he would be their first choice. DeSantis and Haley trailed far behind at 19% and 16%, respectively.

The Des Moines Register, in an analysis of its poll, noted that “no candidate with a double-digit lead over second place” one month before the caucuses has gone on to lose.

That’s a daunting sign for DeSantis, who has staked his campaign on a strong showing in the state’s caucuses to build momentum going into New Hampshire and South Carolina. Publicly, DeSantis has said his operation in Iowa has an organizational strength that isn’t being captured in surveys and that will prove formidable when it comes time to rally Republicans to show up at their local precinct to vote.

“Iowa voters will choose, not pundits and polls,” DeSantis said at CNN’s townhall with Jake Tapper. “I’m sick of these polls. Haven’t we learned as Republicans? We were supposed to have a red wave in November of 2020.”

However, pessimism is growing among his advisers and those who once expressed confidence in a victory in Iowa are now hedging in their private discussions about the outlook there, a source close to the governor’s political team told CNN.

“Candidly, I don’t know how many people think we’re going to win Iowa,” the source said, adding that money could become a problem for the Florida Republican depending on his performance. DeSantis held a fundraiser Thursday night at the Florida governor’s mansion in Tallahassee, bringing in donors from across the country to ensure the effort to elect him remains on solid financial footing.

The news out of Iowa is especially frustrating for some of the DeSantis’ team in New Hampshire, which has not received the kind of attention voters there demand of presidential candidates. Neither the campaign nor Never Back Down, the super PAC that has hosted the majority of DeSantis’ events, would say if they have planned more visits to New Hampshire before the Iowa caucuses.

One close ally of the campaign in New Hampshire, who asked not to be named to talk freely about the operation there, said it was clear that those in charge of DeSantis’ strategy are much more focused on Iowa than the Granite State.

“I would not have invested as much effort if I would have known that the campaign wasn’t going to be investing the effort,” the person said, before adding: “I don’t have anyone else to vote for. I think even if Ron weren’t running, I would still write his name in.”

Much has changed in New Hampshire since June, the last time Trump and DeSantis both appeared in the state within 24 hours of each other. In dueling events, their intensifying rivalry was on full display for Republican voters to take in. Neither candidate had much to say about the other GOP presidential contenders, who were polling well behind the two.

Trump, though, predicted that would change.

“Soon, I don’t think he’ll be in second place,” Trump said at an event in Concord. “Soon, I’ll be attacking someone else.”

Lately, that someone else has been Haley, Trump’s former ambassador to the United Nations who has captured the attention of Republican donors and more GOP voters.

Sununu predicted that his endorsement of Haley represented “a complete reset” of the Republican presidential campaign in the near-six-week countdown to the nation’s first primary. Sununu backed Haley over DeSantis and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, whose long-shot bid rests on a strong showing in New Hampshire.

“This is a race between two people – Nikki Haley and Donald Trump,” Sununu told reporters in Manchester. “I think that’s why Donald Trump [is] nervous.”

Sununu offered no immediate evidence to back up his claim. Both Christie and DeSantis downplayed the importance of the endorsement and questioned Haley’s ability to win. The Des Moines Register poll suggested DeSantis’ support in Iowa grew only nominally from an endorsement by the state’s popular governor, Kim Reynolds.

Trump offered his own assessment during his appearance in Iowa this week.

“What happened to the Haley surge?” Trump said. “I keep hearing about the surge from Haley.”

He added, “There’s no surge. They don’t have any surge. She has a guy in New Hampshire, the governor of New Hampshire.”

While Haley was greeted by large crowds on her three-day New Hampshire swing this week, with Sununu serving as her opening act, conversations with voters suggested that many people’s minds are far from made up and opinions are still being formed in the race.

Stephanie Gilson took her seat onstage behind Haley during a stop in Newport. Her hands were full of Haley campaign literature, but when asked whether she intended to support Haley given the Sununu endorsement, she shook her head no.

“I’m just here to listen and hear what she has to say,” Gilson said, adding that she was still doing research and weighing the candidacies of Haley, Christie and Ramaswamy. “I’m looking to listen more and still open-minded.”

With the Christmas and New Year’s holidays approaching, campaign advisers conceded that time was running short to persuade voters like Gilson. Television ads, which are already blanketing the airwaves, are expected to play throughout much of the holidays.

In 2016, Trump won the New Hampshire primary with 35% of the vote, with more than 284,000 ballots cast. Republican strategists believe the 2024 turnout could be nearly twice as high, without a competitive Democratic primary for independents and moderates to participate in.