Donald Trump loyalists in Virginia are moving to undermine Corey Stewart, who is claiming the mantle of the president-elect in his bid for the Republican nomination for governor.
In a radio interview over the weekend, veterans of Trump’s Virginia campaign said that Stewart’s controversial rhetoric and offensive behavior might have cost the GOP nominee an opportunity to upset Hillary Clinton in the Democratic-leaning commonwealth.
They are openly urging Republican voters to reject him in the June 13 primary.
“Corey Stewart was … the only chairman — honorary chairman — in the country to be released from the Trump campaign,” Mike Rubino, a senior Trump operative, told conservative talk show host John Fredricks, who broadcasts from Southern Virginia. “He did do something horribly egregious to the president-elect. He did something that we paid dearly for.”
Stewart, 48, is chairman at-large of the Prince William Board of County Supervisors.
He was fired as Trump’s Virginia chairman at a sensitive moment down the stretch of the 2016 presidential contest for attacking Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus without authorization. Trump later appointed Priebus as his White House chief of staff.
Fredricks, whose program airs in Richmond and other Southern Virginia markets, became Trump’s campaign chairman after Stewart was jettisoned.
He agreed with Rubino and another Trump operative who joined him on his radio show Saturday, Mark Lloyd, that Stewart selfishly used his position as chairman to launch his gubernatorial campaign, and that his antics contributed to the nominee’s defeat in the state.
Fredricks predicted in an interview with the Washington Examiner on Monday that state Sen. Frank Wagner would eventually emerge as prohibitive favorite Ed Gillespie’s main competitor. Fredricks said that Stewart has too much “baggage” to win the nomination.
Stewart shrugged off the criticism as sour grapes because he wouldn’t sign Rubino and Lloyd to work on his gubernatorial campaign.
“I stayed loyal to Mr. Trump even after I was fired,” Stewart told the Examiner in a telephone interview. “Rubino and Lloyd wanted to be a part of my campaign. I didn’t hire them; they’re campaign operatives, they’ve got to pay their bills.”
The 2017 Republican primary for governor in Virginia will be the first significant election of the Trump era, offering a window into the direction of the GOP and how voters generally are responding to the president-elect’s leadership.
Stewart reaffirmed his strategy to run as Trump’s man in the commonwealth, saying that he best represents the Republican Party as gutted and remodeled by the president-elect.
Stewart dismissed Gillespie as an establishment hack.
“I was Trump before Trump was Trump,” Stewart said. “I’m definitely cut from the same cloth as Trump — very aggressive, very bold, unafraid of taking on controversial issues like illegal immigration and gun rights.”
“My main opponent, Ed Gillespie — he’s like a poster child for the establishment,” Stewart added.
Stewart said he expects illegal immigration and gun rights to dominate the primary. “Illegal immigration is the new litmus test of whether someone is an establishment Republican or anti-establishment grassroots.”
Gillespie, 55, was unavailable for comment. His campaign spokesman said that the 2014 Senate runner-up is confident that his optimistic vision and substantive policy agenda would attract a broad coalition of voters.
“Ed’s going to be a governor for all Virginians and he’s going to take his campaign to all Virginians,” campaign spokesman Matt Moran said in an email exchange.
During Gillespie’s campaign for Senate two years ago, which ended in defeat but delivered a stronger showing than expected against Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, he made inroads with the influential Republican factions that could determine the outcome of the June primary.
Gillespie maintained those relationships and has strengthened them since, forging close ties with the sort of conservatives and Tea Partiers who would naturally be considered Stewart’s base, as well as with establishment Republicans and moderates.
That, as much as money and organization, is why Gillespie is considered the top candidate in the race. That could complicate Stewart’s bid to paint Gillespie as an establishment toady, in addition to key players inside Trump’s Virginia organization trashing him.
This is the first primary campaign for governor in a dozen years that will be decided by Republicans at the ballot box. In the interim, Republicans nominated their statewide candidates at party conventions that tended to boost the anti-establishment candidate.
Gillespie and Stewart, both of whom hail from Northern Virginia, have generated the most notoriety in the 2017 primary.
But Wagner, 61, could make waves. He’s from Virginia Beach and has a strong geographical base to build on. His position as chairman of the Commerce and Labor Committee in the state senate should help him raise money.
Denver Riggleman, an Air Force veteran and businessman who owns a distillery in Nelson County, in between Charlottesville and Lynchburg, also is running for governor, according to Blue Ridge Life Magazine.
Republican insiders in Virginia don’t expect the Republican primary to unfold as a proxy war between Trump versus anti-Trump forces inside the party.
That’s because Stewart is a political insider who might be controversial like Trump, but lacks the president-elect’s celebrity magnetism. It’s also because, while Gillespie kept his distance from Trump during the campaign, he never explicitly opposed the president-elect.
What Virginia Republicans do expect is a more traditional establishment versus anti-establishment race, similar to what the GOP has experienced over the past decade. Gillespie is a former lobbyist, and also served as chairman both of the RNC and the Republican Party of Virginia. His opponents are sure to try to use his resume against him.
Rep. Dave Brat’s victory over then-House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in 2014 in a Richmond-area House seat primary would be an example of the dynamic that could assert itself, although Gillespie is not considered in trouble the way Cantor turned out to be.
“It’s almost a classic, pre-Trump primary,” a Republican strategist said.
