Unlike his rivals for the 2024 Republican nomination, former President Donald Trump has universal name recognition. And that’s allowing him to pick his campaign spots more carefully.
Rather than doing four or five events per day in Iowa and New Hampshire, Trump can go to gatherings such as the Georgia Republican Party’s annual state convention, to be held in Columbus on June 9 and 10. Trump plans to speak on June 10, at the Columbus Georgia Convention & Trade Center, in the 207,000-person city’s downtown.
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In November 2022, Trump became the first prominent Republican to enter the 2024 presidential campaign, making the announcement in Palm Beach, Florida, from his Mar-a-Lago estate. Trump is trying to become the only president besides Grover Cleveland in 1893 to reenter the White House after being out for four years.
Other presidential candidates could also speak at the Georgia Republican Party convention as they jockey for the right to challenge President Joe Biden in November 2024.
Trump also will speak in Michigan on June 25. He’s the “distinguished keynote speaker” at the Oakland County Republican Party’s Lincoln Day Dinner at the Suburban Collection Showcase in Novi, a convention center and exposition center in the 67,000-person city about 24 miles northwest of Detroit. Tickets for the Trump fundraising event cost up to $7,500.
Michigan is expected to have one of the earlier primary dates in the Republican nomination fights, though dates for most states are still in flux. This is likely what piqued the Trump campaign’s interest in the local Michigan party convention, along with the Wolverine State’s status as a premier swing state in the general election.
GOP 2024 hopefuls have to have faith
Trump’s highest-profile Republican primary rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), is heading to Washington, D.C., in late June to be a keynote speaker for the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s “Road to Majority” Policy Conference.
The convention bills itself as the largest public policy gathering of conservative and Christian activists in the nation. DeSantis is set to speak at the event on June 23 at the Washington Hilton.
But he’ll hardly have the room to himself because Trump also is delivering a keynote address. Other speakers delivering keynotes include former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations for nearly two years in the Trump administration, and former Vice President Mike Pence, who looks likely to challenge Trump, his former boss, for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.
The gathering is a prime opportunity for DeSantis to introduce himself to a key voting bloc in the Republican primaries and caucuses. He’ll no doubt talk up his record as Florida governor over the 4 1/2 years, including an emphasis on the scourge of “wokeness” in higher education, business, and other realms.
DeSantis launched his campaign on May 24 to less-than-rave reviews, at least from the punditry class. He announced his campaign in a Twitter Space, but the event was repeatedly delayed when the number of listeners appeared to overwhelm the server and eventually crash it. Still, the DeSantis campaign said it raised a whopping $8.2 million in the first 24 hours after its launch.
Doug Burgum bursts into GOP field
Anger at and criticism of the high-tech industry provides regular applause lines for Republican presidential candidates. Now, there’s one who earned a fortune in the technology field, even if in a different realm that Silicon Valley giants such as Meta and Alphabet that usually draw Republicans’ ire over what they call bias against conservatives.
Gov. Doug Burgum (R-ND) is poised to enter the Republican presidential nomination race and is planning a June 7 event in Fargo.
First elected governor in 2016, Burgum could use his fortune to help boost his prospects in the 2024 GOP field against Trump, DeSantis, and other better-known candidates. Burgum built Great Plains Software from a small startup into a company acquired by Microsoft for $1.1 billion in 2001. Great Plains, which developed software for small-business tasks and had 1,200 local employees, served as the basis for Microsoft’s move in subsequent years into business-focused software beyond its Office productivity suite.
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Burgum joins a growing GOP field that includes, in addition to Trump and DeSantis, Haley, ex-Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, venture capitalist Vivek Ramaswamy, and Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC).
Some additional Republican names still being mentioned as candidates include former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Gov. Chris Sununu (R-NH), and Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA).
