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HUNTSVILLE, Alabama — Katie Britt’s victory over Rep. Mo Brooks in a runoff election to pick Alabama’s Republican Senate nominee was another triumph for Donald Trump in a key party primary — but not because the former president endorsed the winner.
Britt, the former chief of staff to retiring Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), was headed to victory in Tuesday’s contest long before Trump granted his seal of approval on June 10. Indeed, she surpassed Brooks in public opinion polls early this year, leading Trump to disavow his support for the congressman. Yet in perhaps a more important way, Britt’s nomination represented an accomplishment for the former president worth bragging about.
Britt campaigned for Senate as a pro-Trump Republican from the outset of her bid, despite Trump initially endorsing Brooks and mocking her as Shelby’s unqualified “assistant.” She largely adopted the former president’s policy agenda and promised to continue the legacy of his administration, making her almost indistinguishable from Republicans running for office as Trump acolytes.
Trump, Britt told reporters, “knows that I am the best to fight for the ‘America First’ agenda. We’ve been talking about it all over the state, talking about sealing and securing our border, standing with Israel, holding China accountable. Knowing that we must not only be energy independent but become energy dominant again.” (One notable exception — Britt never subscribed to Trump’s unsupported stolen 2020 election claims.)
In this way, Britt’s win is emblematic of the breadth of Trump’s defeats in high-profile Republican primaries across the country so far in this midterm election cycle. Republican congressional and gubernatorial candidates most successful against Trump-endorsed contenders embraced Trump personally and his program and declined to hit back when he targeted them with his typical insults and vitriol.
REP. MO BROOKS AND THE DOWNFALL OF A GOP MAGA CONSERVATIVE IN PRO-TRUMP ALABAMA
Doing so made Republican primary voters who appreciate the former president and his accomplishments in the White House comfortable supporting these so-called anti-Trump candidates, dismissing his opposition as immaterial — both to their personal political interests and to Trump’s. This has occurred time and again, especially in Georgia.
There, Trump-endorsed Republicans took a nosedive in the state’s May 24 GOP primaries, punctuated by Gov. Brian Kemp’s shellacking of former Sen. David Perdue. “I’ve never said a bad word about President Trump. And I don’t plan on doing so. I appreciate what he did for our state,” Kemp told the Washington Examiner’s Salena Zito a few weeks before his victory in a column for the New York Post.
That trend continued in Tuesday’s GOP primary runoffs in the Peach State, as Trump-endorsed Vernon Jones fell to Mike Collins in the 10th Congressional District and Trump-backed Jake Evans lost to Rich McCormick in the 6th Congressional District. Meanwhile, in Alabama, a Republican voter who admires Trump and backed Britt from the beginning of her campaign explained that he never believed supporting both simultaneously was incompatible.
“I’m for Trump, don’t get me wrong,” said Marlon Norwood, who lives in southeastern Alabama’s rural wiregrass region. Norwood emphasized that his first choice for president in 2024 is Trump. “I’d rather have him. He’s the first businessman we had up there; he got things straight.” However, he added, “I still think Katie would have won [the Senate race] whether [Trump] endorsed her or not.”
To be sure, Trump-endorsed candidates losing key primaries — including in Idaho, Nebraska, and South Carolina, where the winners also followed the model of hugging Trump tightly — is not consequence-free.
The former president’s political vulnerability as a GOP kingmaker is emboldening prominent Republicans, particularly those in elected office or those who aspire to elected office, to fear him less, oppose him more, and, most importantly, pursue the White House in 2024, regardless of whether Trump mounts a campaign. That could have real implications for Trump’s future and the future of the Republican Party.
But in the near term, the impact of Trump-backed candidates stumbling in some of these high-profile GOP primaries is, for all intents and purposes, nil.
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Just like the losing candidates Trump endorsed, the victors in these nominating contests are generally committed to key elements of the former president’s agenda and content to facilitate the role he plays as the de facto leader of the party.
That’s in part because even Republican voters upset with Trump’s endorsements are willing to look past the transgression and make him their first choice for president in 2024.
“That is a motivator and a tool of Trump’s choice,” Vicky Bryant, a dejected Brooks supporter, said Tuesday evening after watching the congressman concede to Britt during a fiery speech at his election night party at a local gun range. “Trump needs to come back.”
