DeSantis and Trump hold dueling campaign events in New Hampshire

Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis have trailed each other in early primaries and will hold duel campaign events in the first presidential primary state of New Hampshire on Tuesday.

The front-runner candidates received some criticism over the coincidence timing of their events.

Meanwhile, polls in New Hampshire show Trump retaining a wide lead over DeSantis, despite signs that the Florida governor is gaining early ground there.

DeSantis is holding an event with voters in Hollis, New Hampshire, Tuesday morning, while former President Trump will speak at a luncheon in Concord around the same time.

Trump will also headline an event in Manchester on Tuesday to officially open his campaign headquarters in the Granite State.

Other candidates are in New Hampshire this week, including longshot candidate Vivek Ramaswamy visiting a senior center in Londonderry on Tuesday night.

The New Hampshire Federation of Republican Women, which hosts Trump, issued a statement last week expressing disappointment with DeSantis’ campaign to plan a town hall around the same time as her own event.

DeSantis and Trump’s events on Tuesday morning are just 40 miles apart in the tiny northeastern state.

The hosting organization said Desantis was “trying to steal the focus” from their so-called Lilac Luncheon fundraiser. They claimed that other candidates planned around the event and asked DeSantis to do the same.

The campaign apparently refused to bow to requests to keep the focus on Trump and the governor will still speak at 10 a.m. in Hollis.

“We are confident that the governor’s message will resonate with voters in New Hampshire as he continues to visit the Granite State and lay out his solutions to Joe Biden’s failures,” DeSantis campaign press secretary Bryan Griffin said. in a statement.

DeSantis sells himself as the more conservative nominee against Trump and tries to take control of the former president in key early contest states that could determine primary results.

The Florida governor has claimed he would appoint more conservative Supreme Court justices than the three Trump appointed to the court during his tenure, criticized Trump for suggesting Florida’s six-week abortion ban is “too strict” and accused the former president of ‘generally’ moving to the left.’

While conservative bona fides are important in heavy GOP states like Iowa, the leading caucus state, they are more politically tricky in New Hampshire, a state on the political battleground in the more liberal Northeast.

Trump finished first in the 2016 New Hampshire Republican primary after losing Iowa to Texas Senator Ted Cruz.

DeSantis visited the border town of Eagle Pass, Texas, on Monday, where he unveiled a plan to deal with the migration crisis that closely paralleled what Trump has put forward in the past, such as building the border wall and ending the birthright.

But the governor argues that while Trump made good promises, he failed to deliver on them during his four years in office.

He claims he will actually deliver on his agenda – given the tremendous progress he has made in Florida over the past six years.

While leading in New Hampshire, Trump also maintains a huge lead in national polls with a new Morning Consult poll showing that 57 percent of Republican primary voters support the former president over one of the other 13 candidates in the busy field.

Second place is still DeSantis — but he lags Trump by a whopping 38 points with just 19 percent support.

No other candidate received double-digit support from Republican primary voters.

A new national Morning Consult poll released Tuesday shows Donald Trump has an ever-growing lead with 57% support among Republican primary voters

Former Vice President Mike Pence, one of the most recent entrants to the race, is third with 7 percent support and biotech millionaire Vivek Ramaswamy is fourth with 6 percent.

The two candidates from South Carolina — Senator Tim Scott and former ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley — are tied for fifth with 3 percent each.

Once-Gov. for New Jersey, Chris Christie has 2 percent and former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson has only 1 percent.

No other candidate among the longshots broke the 1 percent mark.

The Morning Consult survey was conducted June 23-25 ​​of 3,650 voters registered to vote in the 2024 Republican primary.

Most other polls have produced similar results with Trump a distant leader, DeSantis second, several dozen points behind the former president, and the rest of the field trailing much further behind.