A handful of Republican governors from liberal-leaning states say they couldn’t bring themselves to fill in the bubble next to President Trump’s name on Election Day.
Gov. Phil Scott of Vermont, a critic of Trump who said he doesn’t believe he should be in office, told reporters he voted for Democratic nominee Joe Biden on Tuesday, according to Seven Days.
Scott’s vote for Biden made him the only incumbent Republican governor in the country to publicly disclose his support for the former vice president.
Here @GovPhilScott is speaking to reporters outside the Berlin, Vt., town offices, where he just cast his ballot. pic.twitter.com/myXCEOLIWQ
— Paul Heintz (@paulheintz) November 3, 2020
Another GOP critic of Trump, Gov. Charlie Baker of Massachusetts, said he left the choice for president undecided when he cast his ballot.
“I blanked it,” Baker said, meaning he left the choice empty, according to a report by WBUR.
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said he decided to write in a candidate and put down the name of the late former President Ronald Reagan.
Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, the failed 2012 Republican presidential nominee who has traded barbs with Trump, told reporters earlier this year he doesn’t support Trump in the election but did not disclose who would get his vote.
“I did not vote for President Trump,” Romney said in October.
During Trump’s Ukraine-related impeachment trial, Romney broke ranks with fellow Republicans, becoming the only GOP member of the Senate to convict Trump on one of the two charges the president faced.
At campaign stops in the weeks ahead of Election Day, Trump blasted Republicans who he believes are not truly with him and the party, decrying them as “RINOS,” or Republicans in name only.
In the past, the president has referred to Romney as a RINO.
“I’m not just running against Joe Biden,” Trump said during a campaign rally in Arizona last month. “I’m running against the left-wing mob and the left-wing media, the big tech giants, and I’m also running against the RINOs. Do you know what RINO is? A RINO may be the lowest form of human life.”
