MAGA Candidates Flounder in Midterms
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President Trump’s handpicked and endorsed candidates largely underperformed or outright lost their midterm contests on Tuesday, deflating the former president’s status as a party kingmaker and likely 2024 GOP presidential nominee.
Trump’s influence was felt across the board: his hand-picked Senate candidates, political novices who secured their respective nominations largely on the strength of his endorsement, drastically underperformed expectations. House Republican challengers and incumbents who embraced his election denialism — and gubernatorial candidates who did the same — faced similar struggles.
In the battleground state of Pennsylvania, the Trump-backed Republican gubernatorial candidate, Doug Mastriano, lost by a bruising 13 percentage points to Pennsylvania attorney general Josh Shapiro after wholeheartedly embracing Trump’s stolen election lies.
The state’s Republican senate candidate, Dr. Mehmet Oz, was handpicked by Trump, who reportedly appreciated his background as a celebrity television doctor with a penchant for hawking dubious medical and dietary advice. Oz avoided the full-throated endorsements of Trump’s “stop the steal” narrative that Mastriano offered up and managed to outperform him, but still lost to Democratic Pennsylvania lieutenant governor John Fetterman by roughly three percentage points. While Oz held Trump at arms of length for much of the closing stretch of the general election, the former president did stump for Oz in Pennsylvania in the days leading up the election.
In Georgia, Trump’s handpicked candidate, football legend Herschel Walker, is likely headed to a run off against incumbent Democrat Rafael Warnock, as neither candidate is expected to garner a majority of the vote. Walker, who was plagued throughout the campaign by reports that he paid for multiple abortions, ran well behind incumbent governor Brian Kemp, who coasted to reelection against Stacey Abrams. The victory for Kemp comes after he stood up to Trump’s 2020 election denialism, refusing to help the former president interfere in Georgia’s counting process.
Things were no better in Arizona, where Trump vocally supported Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake. Lake rose to GOP stardom by proudly campaigning under the “America First” banner and embracing Trump’s stolen election lies. Although the race has yet to be called as of Wednesday morning, Lake is trailing the extremely unpopular Democratic secretary of state Katie Hobbs, who focused relentlessly during the campaign on Lake’s embrace of Trump.
Lake continued her election integrity fear-mongering right through Election Day, implying that tabulator issues in Maricopa County were the result of partisan interference.
“Do you think this is normal guys? My question is, do you think what’s happening here in Maricopa County is normal? We have had problems after problems…I hope it’s not malice. But we’re gonna win. And when we win, there’s gonna be a come to Jesus for elections in Arizona,” Lake told reporters Tuesday. She went on to say that she voted in a liberal area of the state based on the expectation that election officials would create issues in more heavily red areas.
Arizona’s Republican Senate candidate, Blake Masters, performed even worse in his race against incumbent Democrat Mark Kelly, a former astronaut. While the race hasn’t yet been called as of Wednesday morning, Masters is trailing Kelly by six percentage points. Shunned by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Masters relied on the financial backing of a fervent Trump-ally, Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal. In a rare bright spot for the MAGA wing, fellow Thiel-backed populist Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance pulled out a win against Democrat Tim Ryan.
Don Bolduc, the Republican hopeful who bested establishment candidate Don Morse with the help of Trump’s endorsement, fell by the wayside to the Democratic incumbent, Maggie Hassan. During the primary, Bolduc, a former high-ranking general, embraced Trump’s election denial claims only to back off of them heading into the general election.
Many House races also did not play out the way Trump-endorsed candidates had hoped.
Lauren Boebert, an unabashed Trump loyalist, is struggling to hold onto her GOP +6 Colorado district. Boebert was one of the most outspoken supporters of Trump in Congress in recent years. As of Wednesday morning, Boebert is trailing Democrat Adam Frisch by nearly 1 percentage point.
Over in Grand Rapids, Mich., the district elected its first Democrat to Congress, Hillary Scholten, in nearly fifty years over Republican John Gibbs. Gibbs won the party nomination on the strength of Trump’s endorsement over incumbent Peter Meijer, the only freshman House Republican to vote to impeach Trump for his role in the January 6 riot.
Scholten sought to cast Gibbs’s allegiance to Trump as a liability throughout the election saying he would be “doing Donald Trump’s bidding.”
The news of poor performance among Trump-aligned candidates comes at a precarious time for Donald Trump. The former president is widely expected to announce his intentions to run for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination in the coming week.
However, his poor showing in crucial battleground states has unsettled many Republicans. Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s strong performance will position him well to challenge Trump if he decides to enter the race.
