While Ted Cruz barnstorms through 28 Iowa counties this week and Chris Christie holds nine events in New Hampshire in four days, Donald Trump is entering the New Year the same way he left the old: crisscrossing the country and holding a rally a day, sometimes two on Saturdays.

Trump, who once derided Jeb Bush for lacking energy, has done fewer campaign swings than any of his top-tier rivals — 100, versus, for example, Bush’s 172 — and while others have only increased the pace, Trump has barely expanded his schedule. Next week, he’ll stage a rare Sunday rally.


Like much of Trump’s run, his decision to maintain his leisurely campaign schedule into January is either political malpractice or a game-changing reinvention of the presidential primary process — depending on who you ask.

Campaign manager Corey Lewandowski pointed out that Trump can get in front of more voters during a single one of his rallies — which often draw thousands — than his rivals can in several stops. “If you were a consultant and you could have your candidate in front of 10 people or in front of 1,000 people, what would you suggest?” he said, adding, “Mr. Trump has an amazing amount of energy. He’s willing to do whatever it takes to win this election.”

But Stuart Stevens, the chief strategist for Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign, said there is more madness than method in the scheduling approach. “Donald Trump is someone who does what he enjoys, and it has absolutely nothing to do with what makes sense to get elected president. He likes having these rallies — he has these rallies,” Stevens said. “He’s in the cafeteria of life and he’s parked at the dessert table.”

And Bush isn’t the only rival out-hustling him on the trail, according to National Journal’s candidate travel tracker. Ben Carson has made 134 campaign trips to Trump’s 100, while Marco Rubio has made 122 and Christie has made 120. Cruz has made 101. But Cruz, like other candidates, often packs multiple events into a single trip. This week in Iowa, the Texas senator will make as many as five retail campaign stops in a day, in addition to a daily town hall.

Aside from the occasional Saturday double-header, Trump tends to campaign by flying in on his private jet, heading straight to a large event venue, and flying out — often back home to New York City — directly from the rally.

He has held only 27 events in New Hampshire over the course of 22 visits to the state, according to a tally kept by New England Cable News. By comparison, Christie has held 139 Granite State events, Bush has held 79, and Rubio, who has been criticized by local activists for not campaigning enough in the state, has held 52. Even Cruz and Carson, whose paths to the nomination rely more heavily on Iowa than New Hampshire, have held 39 and 32 events there, respectively.

Roger Stone, who worked on Richard Nixon’s 1972 reelection campaign and later served as a political adviser to Trump for decades, said Trump is channeling an approach pioneered by Nixon. After being exhausted by nonstop retail campaigning during his failed 1960 presidential bid, Nixon discovered in 1968 that holding a single large rally a day allowed him to dominate local media coverage and use his time more efficiently, according to Stone. Trump’s megarallies often dominate not just local, but also national media.

Lewandowski said the campaign’s state directors have “exclusive say” over the location and number of events and that the candidate is willing and able to meet their requests.

“This is a truly ground-up operation. … Chuck Laudner will call me and say, ‘Corey, I think we need to do three stops there,” he said, referring to the campaign’s Iowa state director.

Lewandowski added that even when Trump attends a single large event, he continues to mix in more intimate campaigning. Before his mega-rallies, the candidate holds closed-door VIP meetings with local supporters and activists at the event venues.

But Trump’s rivals insist that their high-volume retail campaigning will pay off.

In an email, Christie’s chief strategist, Mike DuHaime, attributed the New Jersey governor’s rise in New Hampshire polls — from 2 percent in September to 11 percent in a CBS News survey conducted in December — to the extensive face time he has put in with the state’s voters. Bruce Berke, a New Hampshire adviser to John Kasich, who has held 119 events in New Hampshire, said Trump’s infrequent presence in the state has created an opening for the Ohio governor. “Any time that another candidate is not around and Gov. Kasich is — that’s a plus,” he said.

Stevens predicted that Trump’s approach will be exposed as folly when voting begins.

“Trump is the Music Man. And that’s all fine until you’ve got to show up for the concert,” he said, referring to the 1957 musical about Harold Hill, a con man who captivates a small Iowa town by promising to organize a boys band only to be exposed as a fraud.

But polls continue to show Trump winning nationally and in almost every state, including New Hampshire — while Christie and Kasich hover between third and fifth there — which is why Trump reminds Portsmouth activist Renee Plummer, who has endorsed Christie, of a different fictional character.

“He’s the George Costanza of politics,” she said, alluding to an episode of "Seinfeld" titled “The Opposite,” in which a down-on-his-luck Costanza resolves to do the opposite of what he would normally do in every situation and ends up landing a date with a beautiful woman and a job with the New York Yankees.

Dave Carney, a New Hampshire-based Republican strategist, said that for now New Hampshire is Trump’s state to lose. “I don’t know what else has to happen this cycle to prove to people that this is not a traditional cycle,” he said.

While a core group of early-state activists feels snubbed when a candidate does not go through the rigmarole of intensive retail campaigning in their state, Carney said, average voters don’t care. He said a campaign schedule that miffs hard-core activists could handicap a candidate in Iowa’s low-turnout caucuses but that it was unlikely to matter in New Hampshire’s open primary, where activists make up only a tiny fraction of voters.

Carney added that even when Trump campaigns elsewhere, the mogul is often more successful in getting his message to New Hampshire voters than candidates who blanket the state with events.

“Do you know what Chris Christie said today in New Hampshire?” said Carney on Monday, alluding to a just-concluded speech on national security delivered in Manchester. “Neither do I.”