CT students experience primary battle amid Trump, Haley face off in NH

As Donald Trump battles Nikki Haley in the nation’s first presidential primary Tuesday, some Quinnipiac University students are getting an up-close education as they attend rallies for the candidates across New Hampshire.

In a political science seminar, the students headed north with a longtime Quinnipiac professor to learn about the whims of presidential politics as the candidates scrambled for all-important votes in a small state that is thrust every four years into the national political spotlight.

The Republican race has taken many twists and turns, including the latest on Sunday when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis dropped out. That move would have been unthinkable one year ago when DeSantis was riding high after a re-election win in his home state. DeSantis was leading in the polls at one point last year in New Hampshire, but his campaign imploded after a series of mistakes.

After losing in Iowa by about 30 points, he was polling in New Hampshire at about 6%, far behind Trump and Haley. He dropped out before he could suffer a major defeat.

DeSantis’s troubles were apparent during the final campaign days to Quinnipiac student Justin Thompson, who attended a DeSantis town hall on Friday in Nashua.

“That event was a bit low-energy,” Thompson, 19, said Monday in a telephone interview. “You could kind of see that the campaign itself and the team was becoming more deflated. He was there. He was speaking on his resume in Florida. … People weren’t too excited. A lot of people were sitting there and not clapping.”

That event was a harbinger of things to come as DeSantis made national headlines only two days later by dropping out of the race.

“A lot of people were there to see the end of it,” Thompson said. “I myself was there, thinking this is the last time that he’s going to be in New Hampshire. I’ve got to see him before he goes because I don’t want to miss the opportunity to see him.”

The Florida Democratic Party posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, that DeSantis had run “the worst campaign in American history.”

CNN’s political director, David Chalian, said on television that DeSantis gave “a textbook example of how not to run a presidential campaign.”

An opinion column by two Republicans on Politico described DeSantis as “a bright but socially awkward introvert, a nerd who did not enjoy people — which was a problem since voters tend to be people.”

As candidates have dropped out and the field has slimmed down from 14 candidates to two, Haley now has the one-on-one race with Trump that she has always wanted. With moderate voters backing her and independents able to vote in the Republican primary, pundits say that Haley has perhaps her best chance of finishing strongly when compared to other states.

With winds whipping across the frozen ground, some Quinnipiac students waited outside in the cold for four hours to gain entrance to a rally for Trump. Since Trump has been spending time in courtrooms for various criminal and civil cases, he has not spent as much time in New Hampshire as others have in the past. Still, he won a blowout victory in Iowa and a poll by The Boston Globe and Suffolk University showed Monday that he was leading Haley by 19 points in New Hampshire. The Globe, the best-known newspaper in the region, endorsed Haley in an editorial.

“Trump has a ton of support for him,” said Thompson, who lives in East Haven. “He’s got this cult-personality around him of people that are just diehard fans of him, and they’ll never stray from Make America Great Again. He’s almost certain to win, especially with DeSantis dropping out. If Trump doesn’t win in New Hampshire, I would be shocked.”

Concerning the general election campaign in November, Thompson said it is too soon to predict in a potential rematch between President Joe Biden and Trump.

“It’s too early for November,” he said. “I think that things are pretty tight.”

Tradition since 2000

The 19 students in the Quinnipiac seminar are being led by longtime political science professor Scott McLean, who has been bringing students to the Granite State for the past seven presidential elections. They started in 2000 when U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley was battling against Vice President Al Gore, while U.S. Sen. John McCain won the Republican primary in an upset over eventual winner George W. Bush.

Every four years since then, McLean has traveled back to the primary with his students for a first-hand look at politics. With that experience, they have later gone on to a wide variety of careers, including politics and journalism.

Besides Connecticut, the Quinnipiac students in the seminar are from around the nation — from Massachusetts and New Hampshire to Florida and Colorado.

Lillian Curtin, 18, of Avon said the students are seeing how campaigns actually work and personally meeting candidates they would only see otherwise on television.

“It’s so different than sitting in a classroom and reading about the primaries,” Curtin said Monday in a telephone interview. “Being here is a whole ‘nother level. I’ve met everyone except Trump. I’ve met Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis. I do not expect to meet Trump. … Nikki Haley and these other candidates want to meet you. If you went to an event for her, you would honestly think she does have a chance — the way she talks, the way she sells it. That said, numbers are a totally different thing, and she’s still trailing behind Trump.”

Besides the Boston Globe poll, other surveys show Trump with a double-digit lead.

“I’ve talked to people wearing Trump merchandise, but I’ve also talked to people who are supporting Dean Phillips,” Curtin said, referring to the 55-year-old U.S. representative from Minnesota who is running as a Democrat in a long-shot bid against Biden.

A relative political newcomer who graduated from Avon High School, Curtin said she did not have “strong feelings” for any particular candidate.

“This is my first time voting, so it’s obviously a big decision,” she said. “I’ve heard everyone out, and I’m still deciding. If Trump was against him, I would definitely vote for Biden.”

Another freshman in the seminar, 19-year-old Ava Lanoue of Pomfret, is also a first-time voter who is watching the race from up close. A registered Democrat, she said she was stunned when DeSantis dropped out.

“When Vivek Ramaswamy dropped out, I had expected that because he is so young,” Lanoue said. “I kind of view Ramaswamy as a younger version of Trump in a way. He came into this as not a politician at all. He had never had previous experience in politics. So that’s very similar to Trump when he first started out in 2016. I kind of viewed Ramaswamy that way. But when DeSantis dropped out, I was very shocked. I never expected him to drop out a couple of days before the primary. His name is still on the ballot, so his diehard supporters are definitely going to vote for him, even though he suspended his campaign.”

The students realize they are on an unusual odyssey to see a former president and potentially future presidents as they have watched citizens wait for hours outdoors to get inside a Trump rally.

“How much are you willing to wait for your former president?” Thompson asked. “It really is a once-in-a-lifetime experience to get to one of his events. I personally haven’t been able to just because of how difficult it is to get to them and how long of a commitment the wait is. The people who wanted to go there paid a high price to go there — with all the cold air. It’s been some of the coldest weather here in New Hampshire, getting into single-digit weather. We’re finally hitting 30s now, though.”

Christopher Keating can be reached at ckeating@courant.com