The shadow campaign for the Republican presidential nomination is poised to break wide open, with about a dozen 2024 contenders scheduled to showcase themselves to leading donors and activists attending an annual Republican Jewish Coalition conference.
Former President Donald Trump is not on the guest list. He was invited to Las Vegas but declined, RJC officials confirmed Monday. But nearly every other prominent Republican eyeing a White House bid is coming. That includes former Vice President Mike Pence and two veterans of Trump’s Cabinet: former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley.
Also appearing is Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, considered a top Trump rival should both mount presidential campaigns. DeSantis is expected to cruise to a second term in next Tuesday’s midterm elections. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, the latest entrant into the GOP’s 2024 sweepstakes, is headlining the RJC’s megadonor fundraising dinner — a slot coveted by ambitious Republicans — the Thursday before the conference begins.
“A lot of Republicans have been diligently laying the groundwork for a campaign, and now, they’re ready to start testing the waters in earnest. This race will start earlier than usual because everybody wants to get ahead of Trump,” said Alex Conant, a Republican operative in Washington and partner at Firehouse Strategies.
Conant knows something about packed GOP presidential primaries. In 2016, he advised Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-FL) White House bid. That campaign involved several events with more than enough Republican candidates to field a football team. “This is the first of many, many crowded cattle calls on the way to the 2024 nomination,” he said.
Meanwhile, the RJC’s Nov. 18–19 “leadership meeting” could be unique for another reason. The gathering could feature House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) first public speech as the speaker-elect.
House Republicans are on track to win the House majority, and McCarthy is expected to be designated speaker-elect by his Republican colleagues during a closed-door, conference-wide vote set for after the midterm elections. However, winning the gavel outright requires a majority vote of members of both parties, on the House floor, after the new Congress is sworn into office in January. McCarthy will not be able to breathe easy until then.
Top McCarthy political adviser Jeff Miller is a member of the RJC’s board of directors.
The group’s conference will be the first of its kind after the Nov. 8 vote to feature so many Republicans interested in running for president in 2024 in one place. Many have spent the past two years campaigning for GOP candidates as part of a broader effort to expand their political networks, collect allies, and raise cash for their political groups to seed a 2024 bid.
These Republicans have made a special point of supporting GOP candidates running for state, local, and federal office in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina (and traveling to) the states that are first, second, and third on the party’s presidential nominating calendar. Some of them, such as Pence, Haley, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), have been doing all of this since the day Trump was inaugurated in 2017.
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Other top presidential contenders headed to Las Vegas for the RJC’s post-election gathering include Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the Senate GOP campaign arm; Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC); former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie; outgoing Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan; and New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, expected to be freshly reelected.
Among the other Republican VIPs confirmed to appear are Sen. Bill Haggerty (R-TN), Rep. David Kustoff (R-TN), and Kellyanne Conway, who helmed Trump’s 2016 campaign and later worked for him in the White House. For many years until he died in January 2021, Las Vegas casino mogul and influential Republican donor Sheldon Adelson was a prominent member of the RJC board of directors.
