The coronavirus has scrapped plans for sporting events, graduations, and weddings, and will also determine the fate of a mass gathering that’s a staple of warm-weather retail politics: the political rally.
Boisterous rallies have been a bedrock of President Trump’s campaign strategy. In pre-pandemic times, the President jetted around the county to whip up excitement among GOP supporters, sometimes doing more than one event a day to boost candidates in statewide and federal elections.
Since his inauguration, Mr. Trump has held six campaign rallies in Ohio — including his first of 2020 in Toledo — marking a total of 15 appearances in the state since he became president.
Mass gatherings were the first events to disappear under Ohio’s shutdown order, and may be the last to return. The absence of political rallies in a presidential election year is the most visible way campaigns have shifted during the pandemic, complicating in particular Mr. Trump’s strategy for winning battleground states where polls show a tight race against Joe Biden, the expected Democratic presidential nominee.
“It’s a major loss of theater,” said David Niven, a political science professor at the University of Cincinnati. “An awful lot of what goes into a campaign is still going to happen, but the theater part, the part that we see, the noisiest and most exciting part, is going to be missing.”
Rallies are the perfect stew of everything health officials have warned against to prevent the spread of coronavirus. Dense crowds. Stuffy indoor venues. Lines too long for social distancing. Plenty of vocalizing.
Managers at the Huntington Center, the 8,000-seat arena where Mr. Trump held his rally in January, are looking at slashing seating capacity by at least half for future events.
“The challenges we’re trying to work through now are, what do you do with concessions and the entry to the facility?” said Steve Miller, general manager of ASM Global, the company that operates the arena.
A virtual rally can be a weak substitute for the real thing. Mr. Biden floundered in a virtual rally with Tampa supporters earlier this month that was plagued by technical glitches.
“I wish we could have done this together and it had gone more smoothly,” the former vice president said.
Mr. Trump, who has expressed his eagerness to return to life on the campaign trail, has resumed appearances in battleground states, but without the packed crowds. On Thursday, he toured and delivered streamed remarks at a medical supply distributor in Allentown, Pa. Earlier this month, he visited a Phoenix factory that makes face masks. The President has also teased an upcoming trip to Ohio.
And while Democrats have scaled back their nominating convention, Mr. Trump said in a recent interview with The Washington Examiner that he doesn't see the need to modify the GOP gathering in North Carolina kicking off Aug. 24.
“We’ll have a convention. I’m a traditionalist, but we’ll have to see, like everything else, but I think we’ll be in good shape by that time,” he said.
When Mr. Trump can resume his frenzied political schedule will depend on the trajectory of the virus as states begin lifting shutdown orders. Two of the states where he stands to gain the most from the exposure — Ohio and Michigan — were among the first to cancel mass gatherings.
“I don’t think [Mr. Biden] needs to win Ohio to win the election,” said Kyle Kondik, managing editor of the elections forecasting site Sabato’s Crystal Ball. “Trump certainly does.”
Mr. Trump has clashed with Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, but has maintained a friendly relationship with Ohio’s Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, who nonetheless has charted his own course in responding to the pandemic that has diverged from Mr. Trump’s recommendations.
Mr. DeWine was the first governor to ask candidates to call off major political rallies on the day of Michigan’s presidential primary, when Mr. Biden and his former rival, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, were supposed to hold dueling election-night events in Cleveland.
In the coming months, Mr. DeWine may have to navigate how to appease the President without sacrificing safety.
“It recreates a really intriguing political dynamic for Governor DeWine of how to respond to the pressure to allow a full-scale, no-limits campaign,” Mr. Niven said.
Until that point, both Mr. Trump’s and Mr. Biden’s campaigns have gone entirely digital — Mr. Biden has been streaming events from his Delaware home, including a roundtable Thursday with Governor Whitmer, a possible running mate — but with Mr. Trump reaping the structural and financial benefits of incumbency.
The Trump campaign hosts nightly online events with campaign surrogates, including the President’s son Donald Trump, Jr., which have garnered around one million views a day and 300 million views total across several platforms, according to the campaign.
In Ohio, the campaign said it has made contact with 5 million voters since going virtual, and continues to mobilize grassroots volunteers during the pandemic.
“Ohio has such a master grasp on how to organize, train, and turn out the vote that it really becomes the example that other states want to emulate,” said Rick Gorka, a Trump Victory spokesman.
Mike Hartley, a Republican strategist in Columbus, points out that Mr. Trump has other tools besides rallies at his disposal, including a massive voter database, the money for direct mailings, and a captive audience online.
“The guy gets up at 6 in the morning and starts tweeting and dictates the narrative,” Mr. Hartley said, “and he’s been doing it for six years.”
First Published May 17, 2020, 12:00 p.m.
