by tyler | Feb 21, 2024 | CNN, politics
The Obama administration has unveiled a plan to spend millions of dollars to stem the tide of undocumented children streaming across the U.S.-Mexico border, announcing a coordinated government-wide response to the situation Friday.
The plan includes almost $100 million in aid to the Central American governments of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador to help reintegrate the illegal migrants whom the United States will send back, and to help keep them in their home countries, according to a White House statement.
The administration also announced it will set aside $161.5 million this year for the Central American Regional Security Initiative (CARSI) programs because the programs “are critical to enabling Central American countries to respond to the region’s most pressing security and governance challenges.”
“Our assistance will help stem migration flows as well as address the root cause of the migration,” the statement said.
The Obama administration has accused syndicates in Latin America of waging a deliberate campaign of misinformation that has caused people in poor Central American countries and Mexico to risk their lives to head for the United States, where they expect to stay.
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said the administration is addressing the problem in several ways.
“We’re going to open up some additional detention facilities that can accommodate adults that show up on the border with their children. And we’re going to deploy some additional resources to work through their immigration cases more quickly, so they’re not held in that detention facility for a long time, and hopefully be quickly returned to their home country,” Earnest said.
Earnest said the administration is also working with Central American countries to address the problem at its root.
“Some of that is an information campaign and countering this intentional misinformation campaign that’s being propagated by criminal syndicates. But also working through a host of USAID programs and the host governments, or the governments in these countries to try to meet some of the citizens’ security needs that are so acute in these countries right now.
Biden meets with Central American leaders
Vice President Joe Biden traveled to Guatemala on Friday for talks with Central American leaders as part of the White House strategy. A large number of the recent surge of undocumented children, 29%, are from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, according to the government.
Biden’s objective in the meeting with leaders from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Mexico was to emphasize that “children and adults arriving with their children (in the U.S.) are not eligible to benefit from the passage of immigration reform legislation or from the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) process.”
Most of the children crossing the border would not qualify for “amnesty” under the federal DACA program that defers deportation for children brought to the United States previously by their parents or guardians illegally.
Biden spoke with Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez during his flight to Guatemala. He asked Hernandez to work closely with the other leaders to help develop a plan to address the root causes of unlawful migration from Central America, according to a statement from the office of the vice president.
The vice president discussed the same topics in a meeting in Guatemala later with Guatemalan President Otto Pérez Molina, President Salvador Sánchez Cerén of El Salvador, and representatives from the Honduran and Mexican governments.
Obama administration unveils new response
Biden’s visit to Central America was part of the Obama administration’s response to what it calls an “urgent humanitarian situation.”
U.S. authorities estimate that between 60,000 and 80,000 children without parents will cross the border this year alone.
The majority of the children apprehended by the U.S. Border Patrol along the southwest border this month have been concentrated in the Rio Grande Valley sector of Texas, according to a congressional advisory Friday.
As of June 18, 3,103 unaccompanied children from 11 countries were in U.S. Customs and Border Protection custody along that border, the majority being from Honduras, El Salvador, Mexico and Guatemala, the advisory said.
The federal government does not have the processing capabilities to handle this kind of influx of illegal human traffic. But the Obama administration has now coordinated a governmentwide response to the crisis.
The new plan announced Friday includes a big influx of spending to the USAID program, including $40 million dollars to Guatemala to improve security, $25 million to El Salvador to help with a crime and violence prevention program and at-risk youth, and $18.5 million to the Central American Regional Security Initiative in Honduras for crime and gang prevention efforts.
The Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security are also taking additional steps to try and mitigate the still unfolding immigration crisis.
The agencies are “surging government enforcement resources to increase (the) capacity to detain individuals and adults who bring their children with them and to handle immigration court hearings as quickly and efficiently as possible while also while protecting those who are seeking asylum.”
“This is an extraordinary interagency effort to deal with an urgent humanitarian situation,” said Cecilia Muñoz, the White House director of domestic policy, in a conference call on the new administration plan.
Opponents of the Obama administration remain skeptical of the immigration policies leading to the boarder crossings of minors.
On Friday, Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin toured a temporary shelter at Fort Sill housing about 600 unaccompanied minors – ages 12 to 17 – who crossed the United States’ southern border illegally.
Fallin criticized President Barack Obama for the “lax immigration policies that have lead to an illegal immigration crisis.”
“This facility is designed for our soldiers to train and prepare to protect our nation,” said Fallin. “Instead, the federal government is using it as a cross between a boarding school and detention center for illegal immigrants. President Obama should not be using our military facilities as a tool to cover up his failed immigration policies.”
The Obama administration aims to close the Fort Sill housing facility for undocumented children in the next 120 days.
Crossroads of hope and fear: Stories from a desert bus station
Texas touts ‘surge’ at Mexican border to confront illegal immigration
by tyler | Feb 1, 2024 | CNN, politics
Betsy Sarcone is nowhere near done looking for a presidential candidate, but the first Republican primary debate did reorder her shopping list some.
“My personal favorite was Nikki Haley,” Sarcone told CNN of the former South Carolina governor after watching Wednesday’s debate at her Urbandale home in the Des Moines suburbs. “She had a lot of commentary on different topics where I said, ‘Wow, I agreed with everything she said right there.’”
Chris Mudd, who owns a solar energy company in Cedar Falls, is still enthusiastically for the candidate who skipped the debate: front-runner Donald Trump.
But of those on stage, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy stood out to Mudd.
“I’m for the USA,” Mudd said in a text message moments after the debate in Milwaukee wrapped up. “Trump represents that best in my opinion. Vivek sounds great.”
Sarcone and Mudd are part of a group of Iowa voters CNN is tracking as part of a voter-focused 2024 reporting project, beginning in Iowa because it votes first in the GOP nominating contest, and then expanding as the campaign unfolds over the next 14 months. The goal is to watch the presidential race through the voters’ eyes and life experiences, and see what, if anything, leads them to change their voting preferences or, at this early stage in the nominating process, at least how they stack their favorites.
To be clear, this is anecdotal reporting and should not be considered a scientific sampling of public opinion. But it is helpful, and at times telling, to track how voters from different slices of the Republican electorate view the same event.
To that end, these were the two biggest takeaways from our group: Haley made a strong impression, and Ramaswamy stirs an undercard version of the Trump GOP divide.
Haley first.
As the only woman in the GOP field, there is potential opportunity for her in the fast-growing Des Moines suburbs, where Trump is weakest and where many moms like Sarcone talk openly of trying to wrest the Republican Party back from him.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis topped Sarcone’s list when we first visited earlier this month. He is still very much on that list. But after watching the debate with her parents, Sarcone had this to say when they both said Ramaswamy was too aggressive and would have trouble winning swing voters.
“So you want a DeSantis-Haley ticket?” Sarcone interjected. Then, quickly, this: “Haley-DeSantis. Maybe Haley-DeSantis.”
“She wasn’t afraid to go toe to toe with them,” Sarcone said. “But she also came across as not nasty, but knowledgeable. There’s a difference.”
Priscilla Forsyth, a Sioux City attorney, caucused for Trump in 2016 and voted for him in the 2016 and 2020 general elections. But she wants a new candidate and said of the debate: “Nikki Haley really helped herself.”
Forsyth said it was honest for Haley to say there are not enough votes in Congress to pass a national abortion ban, and she liked her tone. “She was also the one who said ‘Get control of this debate’ and that needed to happen.”
Even Trump supporter Mudd took notice of Haley, who served as Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations.
This is Mudd earlier this month: “I’m not a big Nikki Haley fan. … I’ve just never really connected to her. I don’t know why.”
This is Mudd, still for Trump, after the debate: “Nikki Haley made good use of her time.”
With Trump boycotting, it was Ramaswamy who consistently pleased the debate hall crowd with praise of the former president and embrace of most of his MAGA positions and grievances.
Mudd loved it.
“Trump was a great president like Vivek said tonight,” he texted.
Forsyth, though, saw enough to cross Ramaswamy off her list. A big change.
This was Forsyth in our initial interview a few weeks ago, after attending a Ramaswamy event: “I was extremely impressed with Ramaswamy. … I really got the feeling he’s brilliant. He’s got energy. He’s young. I really liked him.”
But she had a different take after the debate: “He just isn’t grown up enough to be president. He’s trying to be Trump, but he just isn’t. His inexperience showed.”
Sarcone and her parents had the same negative reaction to Ramaswamy’s debate performance. Her mother, Susan, used the term “abrasive” – a turnoff in the suburbs but perhaps not across the GOP in the era of Trump.
“Some Trump people may have found that attractive about Ramaswamy, right?” Betsy Sarcone said. “So he might pull some of that crowd. Who knows.”
One last takeaway that benefits Trump: different opinions, for now, among the suburban mothers in our group who hope that one consensus Trump alternative emerges before Iowa kicks off the voting in January.
Jaclyn Taylor manages construction projects. Earlier this month she was souring on DeSantis because of “a little stir around him.”
But the debate put the Florida governor back atop her list.
“DeSantis has been elevated to me,” Taylor said. “He was concise in his answers and he wasn’t reactive to the people around him.”
Taylor said she “lost interest” in South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott watching the debate, and would keep Haley as a possibility but scored her “a little weak” on her top issue, the economy.
Sarcone is the flipside of the suburban split.
She put DeSantis first in our initial meeting. Now Haley has that spot.
That benefits Trump, whose lead in Iowa and nationally in primary polling is beyond formidable.
But both Sarcone and Taylor stressed they were not locked in. And Sarcone made clear getting rid of Trump is her top priority and so things could change.
“Can she win, right?” Sarcone said of Haley. “So that’s my main question. She personally would be my favorite candidate right now. But DeSantis, at this point, looks more viable.”
by tyler | Feb 1, 2024 | CNN, politics
The homes are nearly identical, dotting both sides of the curvy road in a middle-class subdivision. But one stands out: 10 solar panels newly attached to its sloping roof as the crew links the system to the electric meter. The finishing touch: a new Midwest Solar magnet attached to the junction box.
Chris Mudd is the hands-on founder and CEO. He checked in with the crew, made a point of thanking the homeowner for her business and then took a moment to reflect on Midwest Solar’s swift progress.
“Our first 12 months I think we averaged three or four systems a month. … It was tough. Today, we are doing 15-20 systems a month,” Mudd says. “We lost money the first year we were in business and we’re going to make money our second year. I think that’s good. Starting a business from scratch is very difficult.”
Yes, he says, some of the credit goes to President Joe Biden’s clean energy initiatives – particularly tax incentives for solar systems.
“Absolutely,” Mudd says. “There are lots of grants available to business owners. The tax credit is at that 30%. Absolutely.”
But Mudd is a lifelong Republican, would prefer that tax credit money instead be spent on a border wall and is rooting for a Donald Trump comeback – beginning here in Iowa – to make that happen.
“Do I think Donald Trump’s perfect? No,” Mudd says. “Personally, I’m not a big fan of who he is and what he does and how he lives. But I think the decisions and things that he did for the country were good.”
Our conversation was the day after the former president was indicted again by a special counsel, this time on charges stemming from Trump’s effort to stay in power after losing the 2020 election.
My visit to Iowa was part of a new project designed to build relationships with voters and to see the 2024 campaign through their eyes and their experiences as the cycle unfolds. The first-in-the-nation GOP caucus state is our first foray for the obvious reason: Trump at the moment is the formidable favorite to win the Republican nomination and, if he is to be stopped or even stalled, it would likely have to come early in the process.
“I think he’s the best guy for the job,” Mudd tells us. “I wonder why they are attacking him so hard. Why are they going after this guy so hard? Does everybody really believe what happened was exactly the way that the government is laying it out today? I don’t.”
Mudd’s distrust runs deep, and like many Republicans, still includes the 2020 presidential vote count – even though there is no evidence of widespread election fraud that would have affected the outcome.
“Did something happen to that election?” Mudd asks. “You know, we have six states change late at night, from the trajectory of where they are going.”
I remind him that this was because some states counted early ballots first, and others counted the ballots cast on Election Day first. Biden, for example, had a big lead in the early hours of the count in Ohio and Texas, because they counted early ballots first, but he ultimately lost both by wide margins as all ballots were counted. Pennsylvania and Georgia were among the states where Election Day votes were counted first, and Trump led in early returns but faded as the counting turned to votes cast early.
Mudd does not dispute this but says he would have more confidence if states followed the same procedures.
Families like the Mudds, to borrow a phrase, are what makes America great.
Jim Mudd Sr. was an AM radio voice, who started a small advertising business in Cedar Falls in 1981 at the suggestion of a local Iowa car dealer. Mudd Advertising now employs 85 people and has clients from coast to coast.
This American Dream family is also living America’s political divide.
Dad and three sons are loyal Republicans; two daughters are Democrats.
The Republicans don’t watch and don’t trust CNN. But they are beyond gracious and kind to CNN visitors. They revere former President Ronald Reagan, yet the Trump effect – and the Fox effect – on today’s Republican Party is abundantly clear in an hour-plus conversation around a Mudd Advertising conference table.
“Nothing about that deal is the American way, I don’t think,” Mudd Sr. says of the latest Trump indictment.
Of the eight family and friends around the table, only one voices opposition to Trump. Tracey Mudd, Chris’ wife, says she does back most Trump policies.
“It is more of his tone,” she says. “He kind of rubs me the wrong way sometimes.”
No one at the table raises a hand when asked if anyone supports US financial and military assistance to Ukraine.
The explanation from Rob Mudd is stunning, and no one at the table disputes it. “I don’t believe what we are being told about Ukraine,” he says. “You don’t have to be smart to connect the dots, right. And so, is the war to cover up sins committed so that you can cover your tracks? Too much money that’s been thrown over there.”
The unfounded allegation that Biden’s support for Ukraine is somehow linked to his son Hunter Biden’s overseas business dealings sounds like an old Tucker Carlson show open.
So, I try this question: “You think all the NATO countries would do what Biden told them to do to cover up some Hunter Biden business deal?”
Rob Mudd doesn’t hesitate.
“It all depends on (Ukrainian President Volodymyr) Zelensky and how much dirt he has on Biden to keep the money coming.”
When I suggest “that’s out there,” there is laughter around the table.
One big goal of this project is to better understand America’s divide, and this is just the beginning. The kindness and goodwill around the table – despite clear disagreements over what is true – are an encouraging first step.
Jim Mudd Jr. is for Trump, but says he is also impressed with entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy’s promise to slash the federal bureaucracy.
Beyond those two, the 2024 candidate who has piqued his interest the most is Democrat Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
“I think he is a really good guy,” Mudd Jr. says. His father agrees: “He sounds like a real genuine individual to me. He’s smart and he’s even minded. He’s open minded, I should say.”
CNN reminds the group RFK Jr.’s family is unhappy with his primary challenge to Biden. And that he has pushed views on vaccines and other issues that reputable scientists consider conspiracy theories and dangerous.
The conversation is polite, cordial. And it vividly captures the country’s red state-blue state divide, which includes what you think of Trump and where you get your news.
“I think it’s nearly impossible to know what is true,” Chris Mudd says. “Because there’s so many – there’s a little bit of truth in every lie. … It’s hard to distinguish what’s really true and what’s not because there is a little bit of truth in everybody’s angle.”
Another takeaway of the conversation is that the roughly half of likely GOP voters who are backing Trump are a loyal group, to say the least.
There is that other half to consider, of course.
Sioux City is 212 miles west of Cedar Falls and was a Trump stronghold in the 2016 caucuses.
Attorney Priscilla Forsyth was raised Republican but switched to the Democrats while in law school. Her caucus experience includes backing Howard Dean in 2004 and John Edwards in 2008.
But she attended a small Trump event in 2016 and liked what she heard.
“He does have charisma, I mean, whether you like him or not, he does,” Forsyth says in an interview at the Woodbury County courthouse. “I liked his policies.”
She’s attended three Trump rallies and, for the most part, isn’t bothered by his aggressive language and attacks. But his effort to stay in power after losing the 2020 election was a turning point.
“You have to respect the system,” Forsyth says. “Otherwise, the system falls apart.”
While she doesn’t flatly rule out voting for Trump again, Forsyth is shopping for a new candidate.
“I think the country needs to move on,” she says. “I think we need to get rid of Biden. I think we need to get rid of Trump. I think we need to move on.”
So there’s at least modest evidence some past Trump supporters are looking elsewhere.
But beating him here, or wounding him here, would require a giant change in the current GOP math.
Watch the booming Des Moines suburbs over the next five months to see if there is any evidence that is happening. The population in Metro Des Moines is up about 60,000 voters just from 2016, and the suburbs are Trump’s kryptonite.
“I don’t appreciate the negativity, the character,” says Jaclyn Taylor, a single mother and entrepreneur who lives in suburban Waukee.
Taylor supported Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in the 2016 caucuses, but voted for Trump in November 2016 and again in 2020.
She sighs when asked how she would vote if there is a Biden-Trump rematch.
“I don’t know. It’s very difficult. I really can’t answer that question.”
South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott intrigues Taylor. Former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley does, too. Sometimes Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as well.
Betsy Sarcone is also a single mom and a real estate agent who lives in nearby Urbandale.
DeSantis tops her list at the moment, but she, too, wants to take her time and is not a fan of the six-week abortion ban signed by the Florida governor.
“I don’t feel it is my place to judge,” Sarcone says. “I think that is up to them.”
Sarcone was a Florida Sen. Marco Rubio supporter in the 2016 caucuses and, like Taylor, voted for Trump against Hillary Clinton and again against Biden.
But if 2024 is a 2020 rematch, Sarcone says she would back Biden – because she would feel abandoned by the GOP.
“I think the victim mentality has run its course,” Sarcone said of Trump. “I see the party as the party of personal responsibility and for this man to still be on the national stage representing the Republican Party is very troubling to me.”
Both suburban mothers are feeling 2016 déjà vu five months before Iowa casts the first 2024 votes.
Shopping around is an Iowa tradition, but both understand that a splintered field eventually helps Trump, as it did in 2016. And both say their goal is to talk to friends as the January caucuses approach, with the hope they can agree on one Trump alternative.
“I think the moderates need to band together,” Sarcone says. “We’ve got to find one that works.”
Taylor says she is having the same conversations, because “it’s a no-brainer, right?”
by tyler | Feb 1, 2024 | CNN, politics
First mate Andrew Konchek uses a dockside crane to lower the last giant chest of ice onto the stern of the Alanna Renee. Moments later, the fishing boat eases off the dock and heads out of Portsmouth Harbor in the moonlight.
This is a two-day trip, and a storm is coming. Konchek often spends 80 hours a week on the water, sometimes more. It is grueling work – and it shapes his politics.
“I’m a Republican,” the 38-year-old commercial fisherman said last week. “You know, they are for the working man. … I believe Republicans stand for us. So yeah, when it comes to gas prices and everything else, the economy feels better run by Republicans.”
In 2016, Donald Trump captured Konchek’s attention, and he was among those who helped the first-time candidate to his game-changing initial win in the New Hampshire primary. Now, Trump again tops Konchek’s list as he looks over another crowded Republican field.
“Donald Trump as of right now but I’m going to keep it open so I can make an educated decision,” Konchek said. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is his second choice.
“You know [Trump] does a bunch of negative things and a lot of things I don’t agree with,” Konchek said. “But as a businessman he can run the country as a business that way.”
Konchek is among a group of New Hampshire residents CNN contacted as part of a 2024 reporting project aimed at tracking the presidential campaign through the eyes – and the life experiences – of voters who live in key battlegrounds or are members of critical voting blocs.
New Hampshire’s 2024 primary will be a crucial early test of Trump’s comeback bid. The state also could be a general election battleground. New Hampshire and national Democrats are still at odds over scheduling the presidential primary, and the state could forfeit some convention delegates if it ignores the Democratic National Committees rules. Still, the Democratic primary, whenever it is held, would be a test of President Joe Biden at a time even many Democrats say they would prefer a younger candidate.
A common complaint from the fishermen CNN spoke to is that they are left out of the state and national post-pandemic recovery and get double hit by inflation because it increases the cost of fuel, bait and other things they must buy for work in addition to thumping them, like everyone else, at the grocery store or the gas pump.
The commercial fishing industry, which has a 400-year history in Portsmouth, is struggling. Workers like Konchek say they feel ignored and disrespected by the regulators who write the rules and set the fishing quotas and by politicians who believe one piece of moving to a cleaner energy infrastructure is to dot the seacoast here with wind turbines.
“That’s going to completely destroy our fishing industry,” Konchek said. He believes digging trenches for construction and cables to bring power on shore will damage already fragile habitats.
Konchek makes clear he sees the climate crisis and understands it could require sacrifice for commercial fishermen.
A handful of fishermen CNN chatted with at the docks in Portsmouth or the Rye Harbor a few miles down the road said similar things. The water is warmer. The storms are more severe. The fish are different. They understand the need for quotas and regulations but say their input is almost always ignored.
“Definitely harder,” Konchek said when asked about making a living now compared to five or 10 years ago. The Alanna Renee is a gillnetting boat – designed to get a large catch by draping nets in the water. Konchek also owns a 22-foot boat and in past years has dropped lobster traps to supplement his income. But he skipped that this year.
“Fuel prices are a lot higher,” he said. “The bait price is higher, and the price of lobster stayed the same.”
Konchek believes things would be better with a Republican as president because they generally favor lower regulation. Plus, Trump is a fierce critic of the wind energy farms.
Friend and fellow fisherman Lucas Raymond once agreed. He, too, helped Trump to his 2016 primary win here in New Hampshire – and supported him against Hillary Clinton that November.
But the chaos and coarseness of Trump turned him off, and he voted third party in 2020.
This cycle, Raymond is drawn to a new insurgent – so much so he is poised to support a Democrat for president for the first time.
“I am extremely likely to vote for Robert Kennedy,” Raymond told us in Rye, where his fishing boat is moored in the harbor.
Why?
Raymond cites Kennedy’s years of work as an environmental lawyer, including helping fishermen hurt by industrial pollution.
“I also believe there’s a little more honesty to him than our average politician,” Raymond said. “He is willing to say that we should not blindly trust corporations or our government.”
Raymond said he was first drawn to Kennedy after a crewmate shared an interview on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast. He says other Republican leaning fisherman also are considering backing Kennedy.
Raymond is registered as undeclared – an Independent – and New Hampshire allows such voters to cast ballots in either the Democratic or Republican primary. Raymond has already moved on from Trump, so his decision alone wouldn’t make much of a difference. But if he is correct about other former GOP voters crossing over and voting for Kennedy – a Democrat – it could be a dynamic worth tracking.
“I’ve come to this place of distrust out of watching the regulations do the exact opposite of what they claim to do,” Raymond said. “I felt stuck in, I still feel stuck in the two-party system.”
Stanley Tremblay represents another piece of the New Hampshire political math test.
Like Raymond, he is listed on the voting rolls as undeclared. Like Raymond, he is disgusted with national politics.
“There are so many politicians that have been in power for so long,” Tremblay told us at his Nashua brewpub, Liquid Therapy. “The same stagnant pool continues to exist.”
Tremblay’s father was a Vietnam veteran and some of his military patches hang on the brewery walls. It is in a former fire station, and patches and other memorabilia left by firefighters also dot the walls. Tremblay says service and patriotism run deep in him, but he can’t stomach the tone of national politics anymore and voted third party for president in 2016 and 2020.
“What if you get Biden-Trump again?” CNN asked.
“Probably not vote,” Tremblay said.
Tremblay leans Republican but is no fan of Trump. So, you could argue not participating in the Republican primary helps the former president.
Pete Burdett’s change of heart, on the other hand, hurts Trump.
Burdett is a 21-year Navy veteran. The former helicopter pilot and flight instructor met Trump at a veteran’s event in 2016 and was won over. “He’s a pretty smart guy,” Burdett said of the Trump he met at that event. “We had this great discussion.”
But Burdett said 2024 Trump is a far cry from 2016 Trump.
“He talks about himself,” Burdett says. “He’s not focusing on the issues going forward. He seems to be focusing on the issues of the past. I’m done with the past.”
A Nikki Haley sign stands at the end of Burdett’s driveway.
“She hit all my hot buttons,” Burdett said. “She’s got the international chops with her time at the UN to really kind of understand the whole global idea of what is going on in the world. You got to have that. And she also has a husband who is currently deployed, so she gets that.”
Burdett says he would support Trump if he were the Republican nominee next November but hopes the state that helped launch Trump in 2016 turns to someone new for 2024.
New Hampshire’s primary date has not been set but will be early next year, most likely in January. But as summer prepares to give way to fall, signs of Trump’s advantage here are easy to come by.
“It’s definitely very much pro-Donald Trump,” Natalya Orlando from Londonderry said.
She was a Rand Paul supporter back in 2016 but voted for Trump in both the 2016 and 2020 general elections and is “pretty much” locked in for Trump in the 2024 primary. “From what I see here on grassroots, on the ground, it’s very much pro Donald Trump.”
Still, Orlando adds a caveat worth keeping an eye on.
“I personally don’t think he is as strong as he was in 2015. I have people argue with me about that and tell me I am wrong and get mad that I am saying this, but I am going to be honest. … I just don’t see the same enthusiasm that I did in 2016 behind him. … I just don’t see it day in, day out, like I did. I’m hoping I’m wrong,” she said.
Orlando loved when Trump dominated the political conversation with provocative and controversial tweets and sees him as more cautious in the 2024 campaign: “I wish Donald Trump would go back to being Donald Trump.”
Konchek also sees “less now” when asked to compare enthusiasm for Trump compared to the 2016 primary. “All the legal cases,” he says. “Yeah, it did impact him around here.”
Still, Trump remains his faraway first choice for now. Konchek expects to be on the water for the second GOP debate next week and hopes he can catch it on satellite TV. Sometimes, during a work lull, he does check the news.
“I’ll turn on Fox and CNN. … I flip and I watch the football games,” Konchek said. “I watch the weather to tell you the truth. It’s my job – pay attention to the weather.”
CNN’s conversations with voters are anecdotal reporting. But what New Hampshire voters said last week tracks closely with a new survey released by CNN on Wednesdaay.
The CNN/University of New Hampshire poll found Trump with a comfortable lead – winning support from 39% of voters who said they were planning to vote in the GOP primary next year. Vivek Ramaswamy was a distant second at 12%. Other candidates with double-digit support were Haley at 12 %, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie at 11% and DeSantis at 10 %.
Trump runs strongest in the poll among voters registered as Republicans, while the race is far more competitive among undeclared voters who plan to participate in the GOP primary. But the opposition to Trump is split across the crowded field – the very dynamic that helped him to his New Hampshire win in 2016.
The numbers reinforce two big questions from CNN’s voter conversations.
First, do Trump supporters like Konchek and Orlando stay put? Both said they were strong for Trump but listed DeSantis as a second choice.
And second, does the anti-Trump vote consolidate in any significant way? Burdett, for example, said he hoped to win over fellow veterans to Haley as the primary draws closer. But he acknowledged it’s a tall order.
by tyler | Jan 31, 2024 | CNN, politics
Betsy Sarcone is nowhere near done looking for a presidential candidate, but the first Republican primary debate did reorder her shopping list some.
“My personal favorite was Nikki Haley,” Sarcone told CNN of the former South Carolina governor after watching Wednesday’s debate at her Urbandale home in the Des Moines suburbs. “She had a lot of commentary on different topics where I said, ‘Wow, I agreed with everything she said right there.’”
Chris Mudd, who owns a solar energy company in Cedar Falls, is still enthusiastically for the candidate who skipped the debate: front-runner Donald Trump.
But of those on stage, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy stood out to Mudd.
“I’m for the USA,” Mudd said in a text message moments after the debate in Milwaukee wrapped up. “Trump represents that best in my opinion. Vivek sounds great.”
Sarcone and Mudd are part of a group of Iowa voters CNN is tracking as part of a voter-focused 2024 reporting project, beginning in Iowa because it votes first in the GOP nominating contest, and then expanding as the campaign unfolds over the next 14 months. The goal is to watch the presidential race through the voters’ eyes and life experiences, and see what, if anything, leads them to change their voting preferences or, at this early stage in the nominating process, at least how they stack their favorites.
To be clear, this is anecdotal reporting and should not be considered a scientific sampling of public opinion. But it is helpful, and at times telling, to track how voters from different slices of the Republican electorate view the same event.
To that end, these were the two biggest takeaways from our group: Haley made a strong impression, and Ramaswamy stirs an undercard version of the Trump GOP divide.
Haley first.
As the only woman in the GOP field, there is potential opportunity for her in the fast-growing Des Moines suburbs, where Trump is weakest and where many moms like Sarcone talk openly of trying to wrest the Republican Party back from him.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis topped Sarcone’s list when we first visited earlier this month. He is still very much on that list. But after watching the debate with her parents, Sarcone had this to say when they both said Ramaswamy was too aggressive and would have trouble winning swing voters.
“So you want a DeSantis-Haley ticket?” Sarcone interjected. Then, quickly, this: “Haley-DeSantis. Maybe Haley-DeSantis.”
“She wasn’t afraid to go toe to toe with them,” Sarcone said. “But she also came across as not nasty, but knowledgeable. There’s a difference.”
Priscilla Forsyth, a Sioux City attorney, caucused for Trump in 2016 and voted for him in the 2016 and 2020 general elections. But she wants a new candidate and said of the debate: “Nikki Haley really helped herself.”
Forsyth said it was honest for Haley to say there are not enough votes in Congress to pass a national abortion ban, and she liked her tone. “She was also the one who said ‘Get control of this debate’ and that needed to happen.”
Even Trump supporter Mudd took notice of Haley, who served as Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations.
This is Mudd earlier this month: “I’m not a big Nikki Haley fan. … I’ve just never really connected to her. I don’t know why.”
This is Mudd, still for Trump, after the debate: “Nikki Haley made good use of her time.”
With Trump boycotting, it was Ramaswamy who consistently pleased the debate hall crowd with praise of the former president and embrace of most of his MAGA positions and grievances.
Mudd loved it.
“Trump was a great president like Vivek said tonight,” he texted.
Forsyth, though, saw enough to cross Ramaswamy off her list. A big change.
This was Forsyth in our initial interview a few weeks ago, after attending a Ramaswamy event: “I was extremely impressed with Ramaswamy. … I really got the feeling he’s brilliant. He’s got energy. He’s young. I really liked him.”
But she had a different take after the debate: “He just isn’t grown up enough to be president. He’s trying to be Trump, but he just isn’t. His inexperience showed.”
Sarcone and her parents had the same negative reaction to Ramaswamy’s debate performance. Her mother, Susan, used the term “abrasive” – a turnoff in the suburbs but perhaps not across the GOP in the era of Trump.
“Some Trump people may have found that attractive about Ramaswamy, right?” Betsy Sarcone said. “So he might pull some of that crowd. Who knows.”
One last takeaway that benefits Trump: different opinions, for now, among the suburban mothers in our group who hope that one consensus Trump alternative emerges before Iowa kicks off the voting in January.
Jaclyn Taylor manages construction projects. Earlier this month she was souring on DeSantis because of “a little stir around him.”
But the debate put the Florida governor back atop her list.
“DeSantis has been elevated to me,” Taylor said. “He was concise in his answers and he wasn’t reactive to the people around him.”
Taylor said she “lost interest” in South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott watching the debate, and would keep Haley as a possibility but scored her “a little weak” on her top issue, the economy.
Sarcone is the flipside of the suburban split.
She put DeSantis first in our initial meeting. Now Haley has that spot.
That benefits Trump, whose lead in Iowa and nationally in primary polling is beyond formidable.
But both Sarcone and Taylor stressed they were not locked in. And Sarcone made clear getting rid of Trump is her top priority and so things could change.
“Can she win, right?” Sarcone said of Haley. “So that’s my main question. She personally would be my favorite candidate right now. But DeSantis, at this point, looks more viable.”
by tyler | Jan 31, 2024 | CNN, politics
Ask Lisa McGaffey if she has ever voted for a Democrat and there is no pause.
“Oh, heavens, no,” she says quickly and emphatically. “Oh, no. There’s no – abortion. … They have to have a chance to grow up. They have to have the chance. You never know who that’s going to be.”
McGaffey is a loyal Donald Trump supporter and is grateful for his three appointments to the conservative Supreme Court majority that erased Roe v. Wade last year and returned the question of abortion rights to the states.
Two-hundred miles away, in the fast growing Des Moines suburbs, Betsy Sarcone takes a different view.
Iowa, like Florida, in recent months enacted a law outlawing most abortions at six weeks. Sarcone – a single mother and a Catholic and Republican who told us, “I don’t believe in abortion” – thinks that is too restrictive.
“I agree with a time limit,” Sarcone said in a recent interview in her West Des Moines home. “I’ve had three babies grow inside me. I agree when you feel them kicking and you feel them moving – that’s in my heart, is a time when that (a cutoff to abortion access) would be. Which is around say, like 18 weeks, something like that typically. So in my heart, that’s what I feel. I again, I just I don’t know that much further than that it’s somebody’s place to judge.”
Abortion is among the fault lines in the 2024 Republican campaign, and a likely debate topic in Wednesday’s first primary season showdown between Republican candidates – all of whom support abortion restrictions. It’s also an issue that splits GOP voters, even those who share an opposition to the procedure. Sarcone and McGaffey, for example, are among a group of Iowa Republicans we are tracking as part of a CNN project designed to view the 2024 campaign through the eyes of voters – to see firsthand if their views change over the course of the cycle, and if so, why.
Among that group is also Chris Mudd, a businessman in Cedar Falls and a Trump supporter, who signals a potential warning for GOP hopefuls on abortion.
“I’m a pro-life guy,” Mudd told us. “But I think it is a losing issue for Republicans.” Of the six-week bans enacted in Florida and later in his home state of Iowa, Mudd said: “I think that was a mistake.”
Among Republican candidates there’s some disagreement over whether a national ban should be a priority, or whether the issue is best left to the states.
Trump, for example, has called the six-week ban signed by DeSantis in Florida “too harsh.” The GOP front-runner is choosing to skip the Milwaukee debate.
Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina favors a federal law banning most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Mike Pence, the former vice president and Indiana governor, supports a six-week federal ban.
GOP rivals Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum describe themselves as staunchly “pro life” but argue the principled conservative position is that each state should make its own law. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley has said she would sign a 15-week national ban, but also frequently notes the votes aren’t there in the current congressional balance of power and that the federal conversation is best put aside unless and until there is more consensus.
Democrats see opportunity in almost any Republican conversation about abortion, citing how the issue has consistently helped galvanize voters in elections – from ballot initiatives to last year’s midterms – since the Dobbs decision.
The last public poll on the issue in Iowa was in March, for the Des Moines Register.
A clear majority, 61% of Iowans, said abortion should be legal in all or most cases. But the first competition here is the Republican caucuses, and the poll found that 59% of Republicans and 64% of evangelicals believed abortion should be illegal in most or all cases.
Sarcone, a suburban Des Moines real estate agent, made a point worth remembering as the candidates debate for the first time this week.
“I don’t know that I will have any candidate that I agree with on everything,” she said. “So the character, the leadership, the military is very important to me.”
To that end, she listed DeSantis as her early favorite, despite her opposition to a six-week ban, but said she would consider Haley, Scott and perhaps others, too.
Our first visit with this voter group, before the first debate, was to get a sense of how they rate the candidates and the issues early on.
McGaffey, an administrator at the Jolly Time Pop Corn company, was the only member of the group who brought up the abortion issue in our conversations.
Mudd, the pro-Trump businessman who’s wary of the GOP leaning too heavily into abortion, listed the economy as his lead issue.
Similarly, attorney Priscilla Forsyth from Sioux City said abortion was not an issue on her debate priority list.
“Issues like abortion are not my issue,” she said. “A lot of the social issues are not. It’s all the economy, really.”
