McConnell’s plan to take back Senate, stop Trump
Republican coalition recruiting candidates to counter ex-president
FPHOENIX or more than a year, former President Donald Trump has berated Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona, savaging him for refusing to overturn the state’s presidential results and vowing to oppose him should he run for the Senate this year.
In early December, though, Ducey received a far friendlier message from another former Republican president. At a golf tournament luncheon, George W. Bush encouraged him to run against Sen. Mark Kelly, a Democrat, suggesting the Republican Party needs more figures like Ducey to step forward.
“It’s something you have to feel a certain sense of humility about,” the governor said this month of Bush’s appeal. “You listen respectfully, and that’s what I did.”
Bush and a band of anti-Trump Republicans led by Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky are hoping he does more than listen.
As Trump works to retain his hold on the Republican Party, elevating a slate of friendly candidates in midterm elections, McConnell and his allies are quietly, desperately maneuvering to try to thwart him. The loose alliance, which was once thought of as the GOP establishment, for months has been engaged in a high-stakes candidate recruitment campaign, full of phone calls, meetings, polling memos and promises of millions of dollars. It’s all aimed at recapturing the Senate majority, but the election also represents what could be Republicans’ last chance to reverse the spread of Trumpism before it fully consumes their party.
McConnell for years pushed Trump’s agenda and only rarely opposed him in public. But the message that he delivers privately now is unsparing, if debatable: Trump is losing political altitude and need not be feared in a primary, he has told Ducey in repeated phone calls, as the Senate leader’s lieutenants share polling data they argue proves it.
In conversations with senators and would-be senators, McConnell is blunt about the damage he believes Trump has done to the GOP, according to those who have spoken to him. Privately, he has declared he won’t let unelectable “goofballs” win Republican primaries.
History doesn’t bode well for such behindthe-scene efforts to challenge Trump, and McConnell’s hard sell is so far yielding mixed results. The former president has rallied behind fewer far-right candidates than initially feared by the party’s old guard. Yet a handful of formidable contenders have spurned McConnell’s entreaties, declining to subject themselves to Trump’s wrath all for the chance to head to a bitterly divided Washington.
Last week, Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland announced he would not run for Senate, despite a pressure campaign that involved his wife. Ducey is expected to make a final decision soon, but he has repeatedly said he has little appetite for a bid.
Trump, however, has also had setbacks. He’s made a handful of endorsements in contentious races, but his choices have not cleared the Republican field, and one has dropped out.
If Trump muscles his preferred candidates through primaries and the general election this year, it will leave little doubt of his control of the Republican Party, build momentum for another White House bid and entrench his brand of politics in another generation of Republican leaders. If he loses in a series of races after an attempt to play kingmaker, however, it would deflate Trump’s standing, luring other ambitious Republicans into the White House contest and providing a path for the party to move on.
“No one should be afraid of President Trump, period,” said Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who won in 2020 without endorsing the then-president and has worked with McConnell to try to woo anti-Trump candidates.
But while there is some evidence that Trump’s grip on Republican voters has eased, polls show the former president remains overwhelmingly popular in the party. Among politicians trying to win primaries, no other figure’s support is more ardently sought.
“In my state, he’s still looked at as the leader of the party,” Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri said.
The proxy war isn’t just playing out in Senate races.
Trump is backing primary opponents to incumbent governors in Georgia and Idaho, encouraged an ally to take on the Alabama governor and helped drive Gov. Charlie Baker of Massachusetts into retirement by supporting a rival. The Republican Governors Association, which Ducey leads, last week began pushing back, airing a television commercial defending the Georgia governor, Brian Kemp, against his opponent, former Sen. David Perdue. It was the first time in the group’s history they’ve financed ads for an incumbent battling a primary.
McConnell has been loath to discuss his recruitment campaign and even less forthcoming about his rivalry with Trump. In an interview last week, he warded off questions about their conflict, avoiding mentioning Trump’s name even when it was obvious to whom he was referring.
If Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who is an outspoken Trump antagonist running for Senate this fall, wins her primary, it will show that “endorsements from some people didn’t determine the outcome,” he said.
Murkowski appears well-positioned at the moment, with over $4 million on hand while her Trump-backed rival, Kelly Tshibaka, has $630,000.
Even more pointedly, McConnell vowed if Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the second-ranking Senate Republican, faces the primary Trump once promised, Thune “will crush whoever runs against him.”
The Senate Republican leader has been worried Trump will tap candidates too weak to win in the general election, the sort of nominees who cost the party control of the Senate in 2010 and 2012.
But McConnell has sometimes decided to pick his battles — in Georgia, he acceded to Herschel Walker, a former football star and Trump-backed candidate, after failing to recruit Perdue to rejoin the Senate. He also came up empty-handed in New Hampshire, where Gov. Chris Sununu passed on a bid after an aggressive campaign that also included lobbying from Bush.