Source: Politics<\/p>\n
Donald Trump is about to learn how much clout he still has in the Republican Party.<\/p>\n
A series of Republican gubernatorial primaries in more than half a dozen states, all scheduled for May, has turned into mini-referendums on the former president. He\u2019s directly backing candidates challenging two sitting GOP governors and a flock of other Republicans are running in his image \u2014 even without his blessing.<\/p>\n
Both allies and opponents of Trump see the May primaries as a test of his staying power, believing the outcome will offer signs of how powerful he remains two years out from the next presidential election.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe quicker we get through the May primaries,\u201d said Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, a vocal critic of Trump since the 2020 election who is not seeking reelection this year, \u201cthe quicker we\u2019re going to move past Donald Trump and close that chapter.\u201d<\/p>\n
But many Republican candidates don\u2019t agree. They are still clamoring for Trump\u2019s endorsement \u2014 or, failing that, trying to get some residual shine by associating with former Trump aides and confidants. May\u2019s primaries contests will test the success of that strategy and could shed light on Trump\u2019s crumbling influence within the GOP \u2014 or prove it is as ironclad as it has ever been.<\/p>\n
Georgia presents the most visible test of Trump\u2019s sway over the party, not only in May but arguably during the entire election cycle. There, Trump has thrown his full support behind former Sen. David Perdue\u2019s primary challenge to Gov. Brian Kemp, whom Trump still blames for not helping overturn his narrow loss in the state during the 2020 election.<\/p>\n
Trump has been heavily involved in Perdue\u2019s challenge to Kemp, publicly trying to draw the former senator into the race throughout 2021<\/a> before immediately endorsing once Perdue launched his campaign in December<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cPresident Trump\u2019s endorsement is the most powerful force in politics,\u201d Taylor Budowich, a spokesperson for Trump, said in a statement in response to a series of questions.<\/p>\n Trump has rallied for Perdue in the state, and has cut direct-to-camera TV ads for him as well. But Perdue\u2019s candidacy is struggling, with time rapidly dwindling for him to close the gap.<\/p>\n Kemp has significantly outraised Perdue<\/a>, and has led him in public polling. A Fox News poll released last month<\/a> had Kemp leading Perdue by 11 points among Republican primary voters, even with Trump being overwhelmingly popular among Georgia Republicans.<\/p>\n A major question hanging over the race is if Trump will spend some of his $110 million<\/a> political war chest to boost Perdue and other endorsed candidates.<\/p>\n \u201cSave America is committed to ensuring every voter is engaged and educated ahead of these important elections,\u201d Budowich said in his statement, referring to Trump\u2019s leadership PAC. He declined to provide any further specifics.<\/p>\n Martha Zoller, a Georgia-based Republican operative who was once a senior aide to both Kemp and Perdue and now hosts a talk radio show in Northeast Georgia, said that disconnect shows how longtime state political dynamics \u2014 which are especially prevalent for Kemp\u2019s reelection bid \u2014 can sometimes trump Trump weighing in, even as he remains incredibly popular.<\/p>\n \u201cTrump is really a 2015 or later entity,\u201d Zoller said. \u201cBrian Kemp has relationships with people going back 20 years. \u2026 It\u2019s a different kind of relationship that Gov. Kemp has with the voters than Trump has with the voters.\u201d<\/p>\n On the trail, Perdue has leaned in heavily to Trump\u2019s mythology that the 2020 election was stolen. He has embraced that lie<\/a> on the stage alongside Trump and in media interviews, and has emphasized it \u2014 and Trump\u2019s support \u2014 in campaign ads. A recent Perdue ad<\/a> highlights Trump\u2019s comments from a March rally, where he attacked Kemp as a \u201cturncoat\u201d and said there was \u201cmassive voter fraud\u201d in Georgia in the 2020 election.<\/p>\n The race has also put Trump on a collision course with the Republican Governors Association. The group, which endorses its incumbent members as a manner of policy, has gone beyond that in Georgia by running nearly $1.3 million worth of TV ads boosting Kemp so far, according to the ad tracking firm AdImpact.<\/p>\n Trump himself acknowledged the difficulty of beating Kemp in the primary in an interview with John Fredericks, a popular conservative radio host who is close to Trump. <\/p>\n \u201cNot easy to beat a sitting governor, just remember that,\u201d Trump told Fredericks on Tuesday<\/a>, while floating another Georgia rally. \u201cBut it\u2019s a close race, and we\u2019ll see what happens. If David wins, we\u2019ll get no credit, if he loses [the press will] blame me fully. But that\u2019s okay, I\u2019m always prepared for that.\u201d<\/p>\n Kemp is one of two incumbent Republican governors facing a Trump-endorsed primary challenge in May, with Idaho Gov. Brad Little also being primaried by the state\u2019s lieutenant governor, Janice McGeachin. Little has not publicly drawn Trump’s ire as Kemp has, but the former president nevertheless backed McGeachin, an early supporter of his with ties to the far right \u2014 including a virtual appearance at the America First Political Action Conference in February, which was hosted by a white nationalist.<\/p>\n (She later told a reporter for KTVB<\/a>, a Boise-based TV station, that conference attendees were \u201cyoung conservatives\u201d supporting \u201cAmerica First\u201d policies, but that she didn\u2019t know the organizer before the event and the reporter was trying to do \u201cguilt by association.\u201d)<\/p>\n Little and McGeachin have had particularly public, and at times farcical, battles over Covid policy in the state. On more than one occasion, McGachin would use her power as acting governor while Little was out of the state to issue an executive order related to the pandemic \u2014 like trying to ban various mandates \u2014 which Little would angrily rescind shortly after.<\/p>\n Tom Luna, the chair of the Idaho Republican Party, said that the response to Covid is one of the biggest issues in the gubernatorial and other state primaries. Luna said that the issue puts politicians in a particularly tricky place among Republican primary voters in his state. He cited an unscientific survey that the party ran during a recent debate about pandemic policy in the state, where 70 percent said that they didn\u2019t believe businesses should require vaccines as a condition for employment \u2014 but 68 percent said they also didn\u2019t believe the legislature should pass a law prohibiting companies from doing so.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s probably the biggest argument and disagreement in this campaign,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n When Trump first endorsed McGeachin, Luna said, \u201ceverybody was talking about it, everybody was writing about it.\u201d But over time, the race moved on. Trump weighing in became \u201cnot as new and shiny as it once was,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t say that as a negative. It\u2019s just people now know that she had that endorsement, and she continues to use that to her benefit.\u201d<\/p>\n Luna, who is neutral in the primary, said that as primary day draws nearer, he expects to see a resurgence of the endorsement in the race, especially in McGeachin\u2019s advertisements. \u201cWe\u2019ll see, at the end of the day, if it\u2019s enough,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n Trump has also endorsed in two open seat May gubernatorial primaries. In Arkansas, the race showed the potential potency of his endorsement, when he backed his former press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders shortly after she launched her bid. Sanders \u2014 who was being floated as a potential gubernatorial candidate while she was still working at the White House<\/a>, including by Trump publicly \u2014 eventually cleared the field of prominent challengers in the state, including the sitting lieutenant governor and attorney general.<\/p>\n The second open race comes in Nebraska and pits Trump against outgoing incumbent Gov. Pete Ricketts \u2014 who is also the co-chair of the RGA. Trump threw his support behind Charles Herbster, a cattle-breeding executive and longtime ally who has feuded with the governor, despite Ricketts trying to dissuade Trump<\/a> from doing so last year.<\/p>\n Earlier this year, Ricketts endorsed Jim Pillen<\/a>, a University of Nebraska regent. But notably, Pillen is not trying to sell himself as anti-Trump, instead promising to defend Trump\u2019s legacy in an introductory video<\/a> in the crowded race.<\/p>\n The two other Republican governors seeking their party\u2019s nomination in May are also facing Trump-inspired \u2014 but not Trump-endorsed \u2014 primary challengers. The most explicit is in Alabama, where Gov. Kay Ivey is staring down a primary field that includes a son of a former governor and Lynda Blanchard, Trump\u2019s former ambassador to Slovenia.<\/p>\n Blanchard, who briefly ran for the state\u2019s open Senate race, has leaned hard into her tenure in the Trump administration. Her opening TV ad<\/a> in the contest highlights her ambassadorship in its first 10 seconds and says she is \u201ctrusted by President Trump.\u201d Trump at one point even floated an endorsement of Blanchard, the Wall Street Journal reported last year, with the former president reportedly angry at Ivey<\/a> over a scrapped rally at a decommissioned battleship.<\/p>\n (Budowich, Trump\u2019s spokesperson, did not answer a question on the potential endorsement.)<\/p>\n But Ivey, too, has sought to tie herself to Trump, with a narrator in one ad<\/a> declaring her \u201cTrump tough\u201d and saying she is \u201cfighting Joe Biden every step of the way.\u201d<\/p>\n Ivey appears to be in pole position in the race. A recent Gray TV\/Alabama Daily News survey conducted by Cygnal<\/a>, a well-respected Republican polling outfit, has her well ahead of the rest of the field at 46 percent. A candidate, however, needs majority support to avoid a runoff.<\/p>\n Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine is the other Republican incumbent facing down a non-endorsed challenger, with former Rep. Jim Renacci and Joe Blystone. There, a recent Fox News poll<\/a> had DeWine at 50 percent, with Blystone at 21 percent and Renacci at 18 percent.<\/p>\n Renacci, in particular, has tried to lean into his Trump connections during the race<\/a>. A recent press release from Renacci even bragged that Trump sent around video from a film that his running mate Joe Knopp produced, with Knopp saying in a statement, \u201cI am very close to the Trump Family.\u201d<\/p>\n The former congressman has also hired a top Trump loyalist, Brad Parscale, to try to tie himself closer to the former president \u2014 a tactic that is also increasingly common in the month\u2019s most chaotic open gubernatorial primary in Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n There, several campaigns in a crowded field<\/a> have hired on former Trump hands to boost their campaigns, and try to secure an endorsement of the former president.<\/p>\n A recent Fox News poll<\/a> had no clear frontrunner, with former Rep. Lou Barletta, an early Trump 2016 supporter, in first place at 19 percent and state Sen. Doug Mastriano, a proponent of Trump\u2019s election lies who once said Trump \u201casked me\u201d to run for governor<\/a>, in second at 18 percent.<\/p>\n It isn\u2019t clear if Trump will actually endorse in the race or not. But if he does, it could be decisive with such a crowded field.<\/p>\n \u201cIf President Trump endorses in this race, that person has the best chance of being the Republican nominee,\u201d Kellyanne Conway, Trump\u2019s former campaign manager, told reporters last week<\/a>. Conway now works for the gubernatorial campaign of state Senate President Jake Corman.<\/p>\n But, should Trump weigh in before the primary, his endorsement could be both a blessing and a curse.<\/p>\n \u201cI think his endorsement would help the candidate overall, more than it would hurt the candidate in the Republican primary,\u201d Christopher Nicholas, a veteran Pennsylvania-based Republican strategist advising gubernatorial candidate Charlie Gerow, said. \u201cIt would not be a positive in the general election.\u201d<\/p>\n