So…which candidates will still be around when Virginia votes?
As New Hampshire joins Iowa in the presidential nomination rear-view mirror (note: both may come back into view as swing states in the general election), the pundits’ eyes turn to South Carolina, Nevada, and the slew of states voting on 1 March – including Virginia. While the Commonwealth’s Republican primary ballot could be the most crowded in decades, several could (and probably will) be “zombie candidates” (or, as I prefer, the Running Dead) by the time the calendar turns.
So whither the candidates bewteen now and Virginia voting day? Let’s start with those who, in my hmble opinion, won’t be viable among the current nine.
The Running Dead: Lindsey Graham, Rand Paul, Mike Huckabee, and Rick Santorum have already made this list. I suspect they will soon be joined by Carly Fiorinia, Ben Carson, and Chris Christie. For all the talk about how Christie bested Marco Rubio on the debate stage, he couldn’t come out ahead of Rubio in actual votes in New Hampshire. Like John Kasich, Christie basically bet the farm on the Granite State. Unlike Kasich, he lost the bet. Look for him to withdraw sometime later this week. Ditto for Fiorina and Carson.
I haven’t mentioned Jim Gilmore, yet, largely because our former Governor has refused to acknowledge that hardly anyone is ready and willing to vote for him. Perhaps he can expect a decent showing in his home state, but I doubt it at this point. When that realization comes to him, he will likely bow out, but it clearly hasn’t yet.
As an aside, it should be noted that just about every governor from a state that elects them in odd numbered years has a real problem generating a national following. For all I’ve said about Christie above, his sixth-place finish was the best result of any post-war Governor from Virginia, New Jersey, Mississippi, or Kentucky (Update: Or Louisiana – thanks to Willie Deutsch for pointing that out). While these states can monopolize pundits’ attention when choosing Governors, it’s increasingly clear that voters across the nation largely ignore them. Matt Bevin, take note.
The certain candidates: In this case, there are only two definite tickets to the Virginia-and-everywhere-else primaries (for now) – Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. Yes, winning has its perks, but it’s more than just that. Both men are appealing to different sets of Republican voters (as I discussed earlier this week). For Trump, it’s the competency voters; for Cruz, the voters swayed by ideological arguments. Moreover, among the competency “sift,” Trump has won both times (only losing to Cruz last week in Iowa); while Cruz has won the ideological “sift” twice (coming in behind only Trump and Kasich last night). Both men thus have validation for going deep into the race, far deeper than the 1st of March.
That leads us to the last category – the question marks: Bush, Kasich, and (as much as it hurts me to say) Rubio (the order is alphabetical only, as I can’t tell yet which is more viable). For Kasich, the requirement is clear: show us that New Hampshire wasn’t his John Huntsman moment (as of 7:30AM, with 92% in from NH, Kasich is within 100 votes of Huntsman’s 2012 total). To be fair, that beats the alternative (which would have had him in the first category), but it’s still an uphill climb for Kasich. South Carolina in particular is not only more conservative than NH, but its Republican Party is far more diverse at the statewide level (Indian-American Governor, African-American U.S. Senator), and thus less inclined to tolerate a John-Weaver-scold campaign. Still, Kasich has earned one more try.
Bush and Rubio have the advantage of deeper pockets, but how much that helps is debatable. For the Florida Governor, finishing ahead of Rubio may be a slim reed, but it’s enough to move on. At the very least, he has to repeat that again in the Palmetto State. He cannot finish behind Kasich again, either (although I don’t expect him to do that). I would argue that a 4th-place finish for Bush in South Carolina effectively sinks him as a candidate. The weaknesses of his opponents have allowed him to argue that his Survivor strategy can still work, but he can’t be the alternative to Trump and to Cruz if other candidates are still between him and them. That said, he may be stubborn enough to keep going.
Marco Rubio, by contrast, may have the most to prove in South Carolina. With the most popular statewide politician (U.S. Senator Tim Scott) on his side, he’ll now have to play up to expectations – despite failing to do so in New Hampshire. An Iowa repeat (third behind Cruz and Trump) may allow him to limp into Virginia, but he will be even more weakened as a result. Moreover, as Rubio is pitching an ideology-sift message he likely won’t win many votes at Trump’s expense. I humbly submit that Rubio needs to do two things in South Carolina to be a viable candidate for nomination: beat the Governors, and beat Cruz. If he can’t do the latter, he can still make it to Virginia, but perhaps not much further. If he does neither, even getting to Virginia could be a challenge.
In short, Virginia Republican primary voters will have at least two viable options, probably three, and possibly four, plus Jim Gilmore and more than half-a-dozen of the Running Dead.
