Trump is reviewing his prospects for another White House run in 2024 (File)
A series of primaries in May will test Donald Trump’s grip on the Republican Party as voters weigh in on his preferred candidates ahead of the November midterm elections. starting Tuesday in Ohio. Dozens of states are holding nominations, with a particularly brutal battle raging on the Republican side between hard-line far-rights adopting the ex-president’s moribund campaign style. system.
Trump has confirmed in most of his campaigns, making them a test of his influence 18 months after being defeated by President Joe Biden and of his prospects for another White House run. in 2024.
Across the key battlegrounds of Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Alabama, nearly four in ten major Republican Senate ads for 2022 mentioned Trump, according to an analysis AdImpact provided to Punchbowl News.
“The results of the primaries will test whether the Republican base is still a Trump base,” said Alexander Heffner, host of PBS’s “The Open Mind” and co-author of the show. author of “A Documentary History of United States”, told AFP. He added: “If the candidates endorsed by Trump do not have a favorable outcome, the trajectory to the 2024 presidential nomination will look different, with the possibility of the party’s independent wings reemergence.” he added.
In Ohio, the former reality TV star picked best-selling author and venture capitalist JD Vance as he bid to be the Senate nominee in one of the most watched races.
Vance, whose 2016 memoir “Hillbilly Elegy” became an Oscar-nominated Netflix series, was knocked out by Trump against more prominent rivals in the broad primaries to replace Senate. Republican congressman Rob Portman is retiring.
Trump couldn’t get Vance’s name right at a rally in Nebraska on Sunday. “We confirmed JP, didn’t we? JD Mandel,” Trump said during the rally, confusing Vance with one of his opponents, Josh Mandel.
Still, the former president’s backing has proved a huge boon for Vance, who once called his new protege the “American Hitler” but has gone from being obscure in the race to leading the year. points after succeeding in endorsing Trump.
While Ohio is in the process of reasserting Trump’s role as the king of the Republican Party, the 75-year-old has also used much of his political capital in campaigns suggesting to… limited his influence after the presidency.
On May 17, the main season takes place in the key battleground state of Pennsylvania, which has made headlines with a popular Trump-backed Senate candidate.
Trump’s endorsement of Mehmet Oz – known to countless fans on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” as Dr. Oz – appears to have helped the TV surgeon overtake his closest rival , former Treasury Department official David McCormick. While Oz has a slight lead, the poll doesn’t show him clearing the field with a Vance-sized bounce.
Stakes are high in Georgia in November, a state that voted Democrats last time but could change the balance of power in the Senate if it turns against Republicans, with broad implications for the term Biden’s president. It has also been at the heart of Trump’s election disinformation campaign and the increasingly heated battle over voting rights.
Trump has repeatedly criticized Republican Governor Brian Kemp for certifying the 2020 results, which the governor was forced to do by law following Biden’s victory in the former Republican stronghold.
In a direct appeal to Trump followers who continue to falsely question the validity of the election, Trump-backed former senator David Perdue made false claims about the election. fraud as a focus of his campaign.
However, Perdue’s fortunes are noticeably worse since Trump’s confirmation, with the gap behind Kemp widening from seven points to 25 points.
The most obvious threat to Trump’s status as king has come in Alabama, where he enthusiastically supported Representative Mo Brooks, a prominent speaker at the January 2021 rally in Washington, where Trump had inciting mobs to attack the Capitol, for the Senate.
However, Trump revoked that endorsement in a shameful face last month, with Brooks being badly monitored.
Brooks has since protested against Trump, claiming that the former president illegally asked him to “undo” the 2020 election results and help remove Biden from office.
Author, journalist, and political profiler Mark Leibovich believes that reminding Republicans that Trump’s winning streak isn’t everything, is the best hope for more traditional Republicans. to win their nomination races.
Leibovich told MSNBC in a weekend interview: “Not only did he lose re-election, which was really hard to do, he lost the Senate to the Republican Party, he lost the House to the Republican Party, The White House for the Republican Party”. He added: “He is the first Republican in 100 years to lose all three houses in one term.
(Except for the title, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from an aggregated feed.)
