Who’s running for president? Who isn’t?
Donald Trump is headlining this weekend’s Georgia Republican Convention. But he has plenty of GOP White House contenders.
ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) - With former Vice President Mike Pence’s entry into the 2024 GOP White House race, the Republican and Democratic fields are mostly set.
Former President Donald Trump is headlining this weekend’s Georgia Republican convention in Columbus, returning to the Peach State for the first time since his reelection announcement last November.
THIS WEEKEND’S GEORGIA GOP CONVENTION
As of now there are at least 10 high-profile Republican candidates officially seeking their party’s nomination. And with the announcement phase of the primary campaign largely over, several leading Republican contenders will gather in North Carolina this weekend to begin a more aggressive sorting period.
Meanwhile, the man whose 2020 Georgia victory captured him the Oval Office, Joe Biden, also has competition for his reelection from within his own party.
Here’s a rundown of who’s running for president in 2024.
Republicans
As of now, Trump is the undisputed frontrunner. He launched his campaign nearly seven months ago, and is dominating early primary polls. Despite his legal troubles including here in Georgia, his continuing allegations the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him, and concerns among GOP officials - including Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp - about his ability to win the general election, Trump maintains a strong grip on a significant portion of the Republican base that has yet to fall in love with an alternative.
Meanwhile, Trump’s team is thrilled about the sheer quantity of candidates in the race, which create a math problem that benefits Trump. It looks like 2016 all over again, when Trump won the New Hampshire primary with only 35% of the vote because the other candidates chopped up the rest of the vote.
On Wednesday, Pence became the first former vice president to run against his old boss in 80 years. In 1940, John Nance Garner, who served as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s first vice president in 1932, ran against FDR for his own party’s White House nomination. It didn’t go well.
While he frequently lauds the accomplishments of the “Trump-Pence administration,” a Pence nomination in many ways would be a return to positions long associated with the Republican establishment but abandoned as Trump reshaped the party in his image. Pence has warned against the growing populist tide in the party, and advisers see him as the only traditional, Reagan-style conservative in the race.
Christie, who also ran in 2016, announced his campaign Tuesday evening at Saint Anselm College’s New Hampshire Institute of Politics.
Christie has cast himself as the only potential candidate willing to aggressively take on Trump. Christie, a former federal prosecutor, was a longtime friend and adviser to Trump, but broke with Trump over his refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election. Christie has since emerged as a leading and vocal critic of the former president.
DeSantis campaign announcement on Twitter got off to a rocky start because of technical difficulties.
DeSantis is Trump’s strongest rival on paper, but the Florida governor has yet to outline a clear path to victory. DeSantis seems to be trying to out-Trump Trump by taking a harder line on immigration, abortion and other policies that tear at the nation’s divides, while embracing the former president’s combative style and mannerisms. DeSantis has picked up the endorsement of metro Atlanta’s U.S. Rep. Rich McCormick, who defeated a Trump-backed candidate in 2022′s GOP primary and went on to defeat Democrat Bob Christian in the general election.
The Senate’s only Black Republican, Scott kicked off the campaign in his hometown of North Charleston, on the campus of Charleston Southern University, his alma mater and a private school affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention. He repeatedly mentioned his Christian faith in his kickoff speech, crying, “Amen! Amen! Amen!” and at several points elicited responses from the crowd, who sometimes chanted his name.
But Scott also offered a stark political choice, saying “our party and our nation are standing at a time for choosing: Victimhood or victory.” He added that Republicans will also have to decide between “grievance or greatness.”
The former Arkansas governor kicked off his 2024 bid in his hometown of Bentonville, on the same steps where he launched an unsuccessful U.S. Senate campaign 30 years ago.
“I ran as a conservative Republican when being a Republican was like having a career-ending handicap,” Hutchinson said, adding, “And now, I bring that same vigor to fight another battle, and that battle is for the future of our country and the soul of our party.”
With her February announcement, the former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador became the first major challenger to former President Donald Trump for the 2024 Republican nomination.
The announcement, delivered in a tweeted video, marks an about-face for the ex-Trump Cabinet official, who said two years ago that she wouldn’t challenge her former boss for the White House in 2024. But she changed her mind in recent months, citing, among other things, the country’s economic troubles and the need for “generational change,” a nod to the 76-year-old Trump’s age.
The former software entrepreneur who enacted a slate of laws this year advancing conservative policies on culture war issues, highlighted his small-town roots and business experience as he announced his candidacy for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination on Wednesday.
The governor of the nation’s fourth-least populous state kicked off his campaign in Fargo, near the tiny farm town of Arthur where he grew up. Burgum spoke under a sign declaring him “A new leader for a changing economy,” echoing a slogan from his successful 2016 gubernatorial campaign. Reelected in 2020, he’s eligible to run for a third time in 2024.
Biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy
Ramaswamy is an American businessman leader and New York Times bestselling author of “Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America’s Social Justice Scam,” along with his second book, “Nation of Victims: Identity Politics, the Death of Merit, and the Path Back to Excellence,” and “Capitalist Punishment: How Wall Street is Using Your Money to Create a Country You Didn’t Vote For.”
He will also be speaking at this weekend’s Georgia GOP convention.
Conservative talk show host Larry Elder
Elder sought to replace California Gov. Gavin Newsom in a failed 2021 recall effort. He now says the experience of running for office — and the millions of votes he received — showed he had a message that resonated with voters.
A lawyer who grew up in Los Angeles’ rough South Central neighborhood, Elder attended an Ivy League college and then law school. He has a following among conservatives through his radio programs and has been a frequent guest on Fox News and other media.
Republicans who aren’t running or haven’t announced
Several Republicans who had taken steps to prepare for a run in 2024 ultimately bowed out. They include former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton.
Meanwhile, a handful of higher-profile Republicans are still considering a run, including former Energy Secretary Rick Perry, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez and Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
Democrats
The first Democrat to win Georgia in a presidential election since Bill Clinton’s 1992 victory is expected to have an easy path to reclaiming his party’s nomination, with much of the Democratic establishment behind him.
One day after his reelection announcement, Biden’s campaign released its first ad of the 2024 election cycle, hitting Atlanta and Georgia along with five other battleground states.
Biden’s official announcement came in a three-minute video released on the four-year anniversary of when Biden declared for the White House in 2019, promising to heal the “soul of the nation” amid Trump’s presidency.
Biden, who would be 86 at the end of a second term, is betting his first-term legislative achievements and more than 50 years of experience in Washington will count for more than concerns over his age. He faces a smooth path to winning his party’s nomination, but he’s still set for a hard-fought struggle to retain the presidency in a bitterly divided nation.
Kennedy, a member of one of the country’s most famous political families who has in recent years been linked to some far-right figures, is likening his campaign to the American revolution.
Kennedy Jr. was once known most as an environmental lawyer who worked on issues such as clean water. But over the past nearly two decades, he’s become one of the leading voices of the anti-vaccine movement.
Self-help author Marianne Williamson
Williamson, who also ran for president in 2020, became the first Democrat to challenge Biden in 2024, with her March campaign announcement.
The onetime spiritual adviser to Oprah Winfrey says she’ll be campaigning in early-voting states on the 2024 election calendar.
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