As the Republican presidential primary intensifies this summer, most White House hopefuls are devoting their time to events in Iowa and New Hampshire, the states that kick off the nomination process early next year. Not Ron DeSantis or Donald Trump.
The Florida governor will address more than 1,500 faithful Republicans on Saturday at Nashville’s Music City Center. A few weeks later, the former president will swing through Alabama to headline the state GOP’s biggest event of the summer.
Trump, the early GOP frontrunner, and DeSantis, who is trailing him for second place, are hardly ignoring voters in the states that jumpstart the Republican contest. Over the past month, they’ve both held rallies and other major events in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, sometimes even appearing in the same state on the same day.
But they are doing more than the other GOP candidates to strengthen their position in states like Tennessee and Alabama that will hold elections on so-called Super Tuesday. That’s when the largest number of delegates, which candidates win state-by-state, are up for grabs of any single day in the primary cycle.
Only Trump and DeSantis, who have raised tens of millions of dollars to support their campaigns, have the resources to work in any meaningful way beyond the early states. And GOP leaders beyond Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina say it’s a smart strategy.
“I know everybody’s focused on Iowa and New Hampshire,” said Scott Golden, chairman of the Tennessee GOP, who noted that early voting in his state begins in mid-February, before South Carolina is scheduled to hold its contest. “But it is worth taking a little time out to come to Tennessee.”
For presidential candidates, Super Tuesday is a circled-in-red date — next year, it’s March 5 — that can make or break a campaign.
Coming quickly after contests in early states such as Iowa and New Hampshire, the set of roughly 14 primaries are held across a broad geographic area, from California and Texas to Massachusetts and Maine. The day also is a test of a campaign’s ability to organize supporters, its financial strength and a chance for those candidates who are still standing to run up their delegate total.
In 2016, for example, Trump’s Super Tuesday dominance signaled, against conventional political wisdom, that the businessman and reality TV star was likely to be the party’s nominee. President Joe Biden similarly romped through Super Tuesday in 2020, quickly forcing most of his remaining rivals to drop out.
This cycle, Trump and DeSantis have been nailing down key endorsements in Super Tuesday states, starting to hire staff and readying supporters to knock on doors.
The early start reflects the candidates’ confidence they will be in the running come March, when the field typically has been winnowed down. Public polling shows Trump currently leading comfortably, followed by DeSantis, with other candidates trailing. They include former Vice President Mike Pence, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley and Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor.
Of course, targeting Super Tuesday states is no guarantee for winning the nomination. After a late entry in the 2020 Democratic presidential race, billionaire Mike Bloomberg’s strategy was to bypass early contests and win in Super Tuesday states. The former New York mayor spent over $500 million but finished well behind Biden in the delegate haul.
Trump and DeSantis haven’t entirely had the Super Tuesday states to themselves. Candidates including former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson have traveled in California and elsewhere. Haley is among those who went to Texas to visit its border with Mexico. But their campaigns have been almost solely focused in early states, some on one in particular.