Trump recalibrates his standing after primary setbacks
ATLANTA — Donald Trump has long been the dominant force in Republican politics, but as he has faced a spate of setbacks in recent weeks — punctuated last week by the defeat of his favored gubernatorial candidate in Georgia — the former president has been privately fretting about who might challenge him.
Mr. Trump has been quizzing advisers and visitors at his Mar-a-Lago resort in South Florida about his budding rivals for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, including his former vice president, Mike Pence, and Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Among his questions, according to several advisers, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations: Who will actually run against him? What do the polls show? Who are his potential foes meeting with?
He also had revived conversations about announcing a presidential exploratory committee to try to dissuade challengers, they say, even as some party officials and advisers continue to urge him to wait until after the midterm elections to announce that he’s running.
Mr. Trump’s deliberations follow prominent defeats this month for chosen candidates in Idaho, Nebraska, North Carolina and now Georgia, where former Sen. David Perdue was defeated Tuesday by Mr. Trump’s arch-nemesis, Gov. Brian Kemp, who refused his entreaties to overturn the election he lost in the state in 2020. The defeats were driven by rival Republican power centers amid a growing
senset hat Mr. Trump may not hold the dominant sway he once had over the party.
Throughout Georgia, Republican voters said they simply dismissed Mr. Trump’s sharp criticisms of Mr. Kemp and overwhelmingly elected the incumbent governor, delivering a remarkable repudiation of the former president by giving Mr. Kemp a victory of about 50 percentage points.
In his victory speech, Mr. Kemp did not mention Mr. Trump and barely mentioned Mr. Perdue. “Even in the middleof a tough primary, conservatives across our state didn’t listen to the noise. They didn’t get distracted,” he said. “Georgia Republicans went to the ballot box and overwhelmingly endorsed four more years of our vision for this greatstate.”
That Mr. Trump spent more than $2.5 million on behalf
of Mr. Perdue, held a rally in Georgia and relentlessly attacked Mr. Kemp but was still defeated was the latest sign that his influence over the Republican Party, while considerable, has receded somewhat in recent months. In another defeat for Mr. Trump, Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state who resisted Mr. Trump’s calls to “find” votes in 2020, was far ahead of his opponent, Trump-backed Rep. Jody Hice.
The Republican Governors Association steered $5 million to defeat Mr. Perdue after backing victors against Trump picks in Nebraska and Idaho. The emerging field of 2024 rivals have grown increasingly bold in their willingness to campaign against his interests. And in the U.S. Senate, all but 11 Senate Republicans joined with Democrats on a recent military aid
bill for Ukraine despite Mr. Trump’s criticism of the measure as a misplaced priority given the domestic baby formula shortage.
“Donald Trump is truly the leader of the party right now, but there are many people, particularly those in elected office, who also stake a claim to the ‘America First’ agenda,” Mr. Trump’s former White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said Tuesday during a Washington Post Live event when asked about the growing dissent within the party.
The former president has also found himself fighting in races in Ohio, Alabama and Pennsylvania against the Club for Growth, a deep-pocketed conservative group that once advised him. His candidate for Senate in Pennsylvania, Mehmet Oz, is locked in a tight race with Dave
McCormick, which is headed for a recount after the May 17 primary there, and has ignored Mr. Trump’s repeated calls to declare victory before all ballots are counted. And Mr. Trump’s pick for governor in Pennsylvania, state Sen. Doug Mastriano, found his primary victory marred last week by a statement from the RGA suggesting that the group did not see him as a competitive candidate.
The shifts add up to the biggest challenge to Mr. Trump’s self-image — “The king of endorsements,” he recently boasted — since his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, riots at the U.S. Capitol thrust his party into temporary chaos. Few in the party still publicly oppose or criticize him while seeking elected office, but a growing group has been working overtime to show that he can be ignored and is not infallible.
Mr. Trump has publicly batted away such concerns as he has vowed to allies that he plans to run for president again.
But privately, his team increasingly expects Republican challengers — potentially including Mr. DeSantis, Mr. Pence, former secretary of state Mike Pompeo and former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, along with others — to come after him in 2024. Among his advisers biggest concerns though is that Mr. DeSantis, who has dominated chatter among Republican operatives and donors, takes Mr. Trump on.
“My guess is a lot of people run against him,” said Tony Fabrizio, his longtime pollster, if Mr. Trump announces he’s running.
That view is now widely heldin Republican circles.
“I think there is a very real and growing sense — albeit in hushed tones, private conversations, and rarely publicly but more publicly now than ever before — of people saying maybe not that he’s a paper tiger, but that his power is greatly diminished,” one person close to him said. “Privately, no one around Trump — and when I say no one, I mean no one, other than the handful of people who wouldn’t have any professional existence without him —wants him to run again.”
Another Republican operative who recently met with Mr. Trump said it is now clear that Mr. Trump will have to compete to win the 2024 GOP nomination, for which the former president remains heavily favored.
Mr. Pence’s decision to campaign for Mr. Kemp, whom Mr. Trump has called “a disaster” for not overturning the 2020 election results, is particularly notable — an early sign of clear separation between the longtime allies. Mr. Pompeo, another potential 2024 contender, has also become increasingly vocal, criticizing Mr. Oz after Mr. Trump endorsed him and calling for the “counting of valid absentee ballots” in Pennsylvania after Mr. Trump suggested Mr. Oz declare victory over Mr. McCormick before the primary ballots were counted.
Advisers have repeatedly had to talk Mr. Trump out of announcing for president ahead of the midterms, which Republican strategists worry would offer a jolt to Democratic prospects by shifting the focus away from frustrations with President Joe Biden, whose approval rating hovers around 40%. Mr. Trump has privately raged against some of his former allies, such as Mr. Pence, and has been discussing how to attack potential 2024 foes.
Local friction
On the ground in key states, Mr. Trump’s intervention has caused friction with someof his local supporters.
“You’ve got Republicans willing to go down there and campaign for Kemp, you’ve got 30 or 40 or 50 state party chairmen in these places criticizing Trump, [and] you’ve got guys like [former state GOP chair] Rob Gleason, who delivered Pennsylvania for us in 2016, coming out against him,” said one longtime Trump adviser, who noted the anger that followed Trump’s endorsements of Oz for Senate and Mr. Mastriano for governor.
In Alabama, GOP Rep. Mo Brooks, lost only two of his 67 county campaign chairs after Mr. Trump pulled his endorsement in March, according an adviser. Both later signed back up, as Mr. Brooks continued to campaign by arguing that Mr. Trump had been misled by the advisers around him. Mr. Brooks share of the vote in public polls more than doubled in the weeks after Mr. Trump withdrew his endorsement, as the other candidates in the race turned their fire on each other.
In the Senate, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, RKy., who Mr. Trump has singled out as a foe in recent months, publicly celebrated in an interview with Politico the overwhelming vote to send more support to Ukraine as a repudiation of “some loose talk during the Trump years” about wavering Republican commitment to European allies.Mr. Trump had released a statement earlier, describing the $40 billion effort as a move by “Democrats” that was improper given the baby formula shortage. “America First! ”Trump wrote.
Mr. Trump nonetheless remains a strong favorite if he chooses to run again, with a massive small-dollar fundraising operation and continued support within the party. A Washington Post-ABC News poll released earlier this month found that six in 10 Republican and Republicanleaning voters thought party leaders should follow Trump’s leadership, compared with 34% who wanted to take the partyin a different direction.
“I think he’s going to run. I’ll be shocked if he doesn’t run. All the polling shows he would be the front-runner by a country mile,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said. “The day that Trump makes it clear he’s going to run — it would be a mountain to climb to beat him.”
Ed McMullen, a longtime Trump ally and former ambassador, attended a small fundraising dinner for Mr. DeSantis in South Carolina, his home state, raising eyebrows in the Palmetto State. But Mr. McMullen said he wa sfor Mr. Trump all the way — should Mr. Trump run. “I’m supporting Trump in 2024, and I have no doubt he’s running ,”Mr. McMullen said.
“When you look at states like Pennsylvania, everyone enveloped themselves and wrapped themselves in Trump policy,” he continued. “All the candidates are embracing the president.”
Mr. Fabrizio said he’d polled in five different states about whether voters would support Trump in a primary campaign, and over 50% in each of the states said they would vote for him “regardless ”if he entered the race.
But he said it would be easier said than done to defeat Trump.
“Just because people speak out and take him on doesn’t mean they can beat him. They have to beat him somewhere. not some candidate he endorsed. They have to beat him. I haven’t seen any data that showed any of these people are beating him anywhere. In fact, the person that comes closest is DeSantis, and all the rest of these people chattering on the sidelines can’t even break into double digits, ”Mr. Fabrizio said.
In the meantime, Mr. Trump has focused on directing the public’s attention to his own count of primary endorsement wins, which he tallied at 82 to 3 before Tuesday night, a statistic that includes dozens of uncontested races with little competition. It also leaves out races like the Alabama Senate contest where he withdrew his endorsement of Mr. Brooks.
Taking account of only the prominent and heavily contested contests in May, his record is 6 to 4 after Tuesday, with one race still outstanding. Mr. Trump’s endorsements have lost in the Nebraska, Idaho and Georgia gubernatorial primaries, and one House primary in North Carolina, where Rep. Madison Cawthorn, R-N.C., failed to win the nomination. His endorsements for two other House seats in North Carolina and West Virginia won, as did his picks in Senate contests in Ohio, North Carolina and Georgia, as well as his pick of Mr. Mastriano for governor of Pennsylvania. His pick for Pennsylvania Senate, Mr. Oz, leads slightly in that race with more ballots to tally and a recount pending.