Every presidential season, I tell myself I should save all the mailers and see how much I end up with when the primary ends, but I never do it. This year would have been epic, but with a week to the Primary, things appear to have gotten out of hand.
Today, in my mailbox were 13 items. Ten of these were political flyers. They all had Nikki Haley’s name on them, but contrary to her ads, none were from Trump. Only one was negative. The other nine were pro-Haley. SFA Fund Inc. paid for seven of them. AFP was responsible for the other two. The Anti-Nikki flyer was from Never Back Down.
SFA Fund, Inc. is a pro-Haley (No Sh!t, really?) Hybrid PAC, according to the SEC. It’s based in Houston, Texas, and the Treasurer is Katie Reid. It has raised over 18.7 million and spent only 1.64M of that (on mailers, perhaps). If you’d like to see who the donors are, Open Secrets and a nice list here – There are 348 records if you plan to scroll through them.
AFP, we’ve said our peace about them, so no more comment there.
Then there’s the one negative mailer for this day’s mail. Never Back Down focused on the sale of land to China, which is always troubling and more so now than ever, but they are going to have to be better than that if they want DeSantis to have a chance at grabbing some anyone-but-Trump independents away from Haley. They might see about convincing a few more Republicans as well. DeSantis was never more popular here than when he’d never been here, but since then, his polling has declined.
I saw him in person a few times. He says the right things and has great ideas, but something is missing. He doesn’t strike me as a great orator, and maybe that’s why he’s having more of a challenge despite the ideas on which he is running. It’s just a thought. I expect the DeSantis fans will be after me for it, but what else might the matter be? Substance doesn’t win elections, and that’s not a new problem.
I wish him the best, but he’s not selling America, and the polling shows it. He underperformed in Iowa and seems likely to do much worse here, which won’t bode well for the states that follow. But I hope he stays in the race. We need a not-Haley candidate who is also a not-Trump candidate, and he is it. And no, this wasn’t meant to start as a critique of DeSantis, but I had much higher hopes for him on this stage, and perhaps I’ll be pleasantly surprised.
And yes, I still think this is Trump’s to lose, and I expect him to walk away with it in a landslide short of an actual guilty verdict in court that doesn’t go his way, and even that might not stop the nomination train.
And Haley, lots of flyers. Good Strategy. Younger, positive vision. And she might be the political Left’s favorite politician. Mary Rooke, whose work we often share, is reporting that Democrats in Iowa switched parties to vote for Haley in the Primary.
When you’re running to be the Republican Presidential nominee, the last people you expect to boost your ballot numbers are the ones actively hoping you and all your colleagues fail, but that’s precisely who propelled Haley to win the only county Trump lost in Monday’s Iowa primary race.
CBS News’ @tonydokoupil reports from a precinct in Johnston, Iowa, where some registered Democrats filled out forms to switch to the Republican Party to participate in the caucus: “They ran out of those forms.”
“This room was in favor of Nikki Haley.” pic.twitter.com/BapNjVGxdh
— CBS News (@CBSNews) January 16, 2024
We had over 3000 Democrats switch to meddle in the Republican Primary in NH. It’s not enough to make a Yuge difference, but they must love all those mailers.
