Republicans in battleground states sidestep endorsing Trump as they eye 2024 Senate bids
Republicans weighing 2024 Senate bids in key states haven't settled on Donald Trump for 2024.
- Potential candidates in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Montana are keeping their options open.
Republicans who are weighing 2024 Senate bids in battleground states have been keeping their options open when asked whether they support Donald Trump's 2024 GOP presidential primary bid.
In interviews with media outlets, potential candidates for races in swing states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Montana have sidestepped questions about endorsing the embattled former president, who is now facing 34 felony counts in New York.
"I have not made a decision to support anybody. I want to see how the primary goes, and I also am a strong proponent of hopefully a vision for the future that's positive — more looking forward than backwards," former hedge-fund CEO Dave McCormick, who is considering another Senate bid in the Keystone State, told POLITICO when asked in March if he supported Trump in the primary.
Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose said he wasn't going to weigh in on the 2024 race anytime soon. "When it comes to who's going to be my party's standard-bearer in 2024, that's really a decision for millions of Republican primary voters all over the country to make," he told Spectrum News in February.
Rep. Matt Rosendale, a possible GOP contender from Montana, appears to be hedging his bets. He made the pilgrimage to Trump's Florida home at Mar-a-Lago this month and posted a picture of himself there a day after Trump's historic arraignment. But he reportedly has no plans to make an endorsement, and the Daily Beast reported he left Palm Beach without scoring any facetime with the aggrieved former president.
"As Senate Republican's primary dynamics get messier by the day, Senate GOP candidates are in a lose-lose situation when it comes to Trump," said Nora Keefe, a spokesperson for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
Representatives for the three GOP prospects and the Senate GOP campaign arm either did not elaborate or respond when asked for comment.
The challenging Trump topic
All three have been complimentary or deferential towards Trump in the past, but seem hesitant to hitch their wagons to him now as they consider primary bids in states with incumbent Democratic senators.
Senate elections in those states will likely be among the most closely watched, as Democrats and independents defend seats in 23 states while Republicans defend just 11.
Trump, who endorsed multiple losing candidates in 2022, is likely to be a challenging topic for Republicans in these races as he faces 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. The charges follow a probe of alleged hush-money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 presidential election.
Rep. Mike Gallagher, a potential Senate candidate in another battleground state, Wisconsin, has repeatedly said he would not support Trump since the Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol in the January 6 insurrection. He's also looking for a younger nominee. "I have a no-boomer policy in this election. I stand by what I said," he said during an Axios forum when asked if he would support Trump if he becomes the nominee.
It's complicated
Other Republicans like McCormick have their own complicated history with Trump.
During a March 2017 talk at Duke University, he said he wasn't a Trump supporter. But in the lead-up to launching his short-lived 2022 Senate run, Politico reported that McCormick tried to shore up his MAGA bona fides by playing up his wife's tenure as a national security advisor in the Trump administration, seeking counsel from Trump confidants like former White House communications director Hope Hicks and Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, and having a spokeswoman relay that he'd voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020.
In his new book, "Superpower in Peril: A Battle Plan to Renew America," McCormick reveals how hard it was to try and win Trump over as talk of endorsing celebrity candidate Mehmet Oz hung in the air. McCormick wrote that he raced down to Mar-a-Lago to buy himself more time, only to be greeted with a 2021 video clip of McCormick wishing newly elected President Joe Biden well.
Trump then told him that the only way he could win Pennsylvania's open Senate seat was to parrot his baseless claims of 2020 election fraud. "I made it clear to him that I couldn't do that," McCormick said of their ideological impasse.
Another potential GOP candidate in Pennsylvania, state Sen. Doug Mastriano, did not respond to Insider's request for comment on Trump. The far-right Republican was endorsed by Trump in his 2022 gubernatorial bid but he lost by 15 percentage points.
In January, Rosendale was caught on camera waving off Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's attempt to put him on the phone with Trump during a round of votes on the House speaker. Just over a year earlier in November 2021, he happily accepted the embattled former president's help, writing on social media that he was "honored to receive the endorsement of President Trump as I seek reelection." He cruised to a second term in ruby-red Montana last fall, securing 57% of the vote.
While Rosendale reportedly condemned "political violence in all forms" following the deadly January 6, 2021 siege at the US Capitol, he did vote to overturn the 2020 election results and did not back Trump's historic second impeachment trial.
In Ohio, the Akron Beacon Journal slammed the "usually level-headed" LaRose in 2022 for his tweets backing Trump's false claims of widespread voter fraud. The Journal questioned whether LaRose, who was then running for reelection, was "eager for a Trump endorsement and the attention that would gain?"
Trump publicly endorsed LaRose just two months later.