The Trump Test in Texas—and Beyond

By Josh Kraushaar

Tuesday, April 27, 2021

 

Former President Trump doesn’t have access to Twitter and has kept a relatively low profile since leaving office three-plus months ago. But he’s been aggressively inserting himself in elections across the country, proving that he’s eager to demonstrate his clout within the Republican Party in the run-up to a momentous midterm election.

 

The first test of Trump’s political capital will come Saturday in Texas, where the first round of balloting takes place in the special election to succeed late GOP Rep. Ron Wright. With most of the Republicans offering plenty of praise to the former president, GOP operatives expected Trump to steer clear of taking sides in the crowded all-party primary ballot. But on Monday, he endorsed the congressman’s widow, Susan Wright, who was seen as the early front-runner but has lagged behind several leading rivals in fundraising and stopped airing television ads during the heart of the early-voting period.

 

Wright, Trump Health and Human Services Department Chief of Staff Brian Harrison, and state Rep. Jake Ellzey are the top Republican candidates in the field, according to GOP operatives involved in the race. The anti-tax Club for Growth endorsed Wright, and has been airing ads attacking Ellzey as insufficiently conservative. Polling suggests there’s a credible chance that no Democratic candidate will make it into the top-two runoff, a result that would pit two pro-Trump Republicans against each other— in a district with a sizable share of Trump-skeptical suburban conservative voters.

 

Trump’s endorsement likely ensures Wright’s place in the expected runoff—an outcome that was already anticipated before the presidential intervention. But by injecting himself in the low-stakes race, Trump is putting his own credibility on the line for the future. If Wright dominates in Saturday’s balloting, Trump can cement his status as an all-powerful Republican kingmaker, even out of office. But if his late endorsement doesn’t move many Republican votes, it would suggest the days of his dominance within the GOP have peaked. And it would raise further questions about his political judgment, picking a political novice over his own administration official (Harrison), who has raised the most money in the 24-candidate field.

 

While Trump pollster John McLaughlin confidently declared this week that “Trump is the strongest endorsement I have ever witnessed in politics,” other Trump-defending Republican strategists have grown more circumspect. One GOP strategist involved in the Texas race said: “The further we get away from him being in office, the less he matters.” Put another way, the more that most Republicans profess support for Trump’s presidency, the harder it is to distinguish the true believers from those who simply supported his administration’s policies. (Even Michael Wood, the lone anti-Trump Republican running in the Texas special election, actually voted for Trump last November.)

 

A new NBC poll gives credence to the view that Trump isn’t quite the factor he once was in GOP politics. The survey found that 50 percent of Republican respondents said they’re more loyal to the Republican Party than the 44 percent who say they’re more supportive of Trump. It’s the first time that the party-over-Trump crowd hit a majority in the survey’s polling. Trump’s overall favorability numbers are also at all-time lows: Just 32 percent of Americans view him favorably, while 55 percent view him unfavorably.

 

But Trump still has the power to reshape the trajectory of critical Republican primary contests. His early endorsement of famed NFL running back Herschel Walker to run against Sen. Raphael Warnock for the Senate in Georgia has frozen the Republican field, and played a role in former Rep. Doug Collins’s decision not to run. In Missouri, scandal-plagued Eric Greitens named Kimberly Guilfoyle as the national chair of his Senate bid, inserting Trump family connections into a highly contentious primary. Trump endorsed election rejectionist Rep. Mo Brooks for the Senate in Alabama over a well-funded Republican challenger, a move that earned a subtle rebuke from National Republican Senatorial Committee chairman Rick Scott. (“My goal is … for [Trump] to let the voters pick and then support the [Republican candidate] after the primary. Clearly that’s not what he did in Alabama,” Scott told NBC News.)

 

On the House side, Trump has pledged revenge against House Conference Chair Liz Cheney for supporting his impeachment, and endorsed one of his former staffers running against Rep. Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio. The other eight House Republicans who voted for Trump’s impeachment are also on high alert.

 

Trump’s effectiveness in these contests depends on how fully the Republican Party bends to his will. When he was president, he could get the media to focus attention on his political whims at any given moment. But without the megaphone of his social media feed, that clout stands diminished. His first test comes this weekend, and will offer a signal of just how powerful an e-mailed presidential endorsement—without any accompanying glitz or glamour on the campaign trail—means in a Republican Party that’s trying to chart a sustainable path for the future.