Military contracting pioneer Erik Prince says he has ruled out a Senate campaign in Michigan, his home state, but is keeping his options open in Wyoming, where Republican incumbent Sen. John Barrasso faces reelection next year.
“They want Kid Rock to run in Michigan,” Prince said during an interview with the Washington Examiner. “Michigan is not something under consideration at all, although I believe [Democratic incumbent] Debbie Stabenow is very, very vulnerable.”
Prince, best known as founder of Blackwater Worldwide, said he considers himself at home in Wyoming.
“I identify with Wyoming, I love the state of Wyoming, I love the people,” he said. “It’s a fantastic state — people that live in rugged conditions and who make their living doing things in the outdoors. I can relate to ranchers and roughnecks and professional game guides and farmers and homemakers.”
Prince, 48, declined to share a timeframe for his decision, but said he has owned a home in Wyoming for 25 years and already meets the residency requirements to run.
Prince has been encouraged to run by former White House adviser Stephen Bannon, who has vowed to assist primary challenges against all incumbent Republican senators next year except for Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.
A source close to Bannon said his support for Prince is motivated in part by Barrasso’s backing of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and by what Bannon views as Barrasso’s insufficient enthusiasm for Trump priorities ranging from a Mexican border wall to repealing Obamacare.
Unsurprisingly, Prince — who led Blackwater to an estimated $2 billion in U.S. contracts, notably in Iraq, before stepping down as CEO in 2009 — is most passionate about international affairs.
Prince said he’s outraged that Iran-backed militias in Iraq have used equipment given by the U.S. to Iraq’s government to advance against Kurds in and around Kirkuk.
The U.S. “should support Kurdish independence,” he said, and consider a negotiated end to the Syrian Civil War that reimagines the 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement that divvied up Iraq and Syria after World War I. He called the current boundaries a “a random line in the sand” that “history and conflict has erased.”
On domestic policy, Prince said he is “completely aligned with my sister,” Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, on education matters, and that he believes teacher unions prioritize employment continuity over quality.
“Allowing competition to work there, just like it does in other parts of the economy, is essential,” he said. “You have a globally competitive role and all of our students have to be competitive.”
Prince said he hasn’t spoken personally with Trump since his inauguration in January, but offers a similar view on the ongoing special counsel investigation into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. He said “illegal unmasking and leaking” from within U.S. intelligence agencies is the real scandal.
Prince currently leads the Frontier Services Group, a company listed on Hong Kong’s stock exchange that supports investment in developing countries. He said some people call the company Chinese-owned as a smear, where in fact it’s based in Asia because investors there are more willing to bet on the third world.
He said the new company is “largely held by a couple of insiders, including me” and by institutional investors including, among other entities, U.S. pension funds.
Although he has not publicly committed to run, Prince told DeVos he would like to challenge Barrasso, the New York Times reported this month. On Saturday, Prince attended the socially conservative Values Voter Summit in Washington, hosted by the Family Research Council that Prince’s father once helped fund. He told Breitbart News at the conference that “I have a Wyoming driver’s license, I’m a Wyoming resident and exploration is underway.”
Prince made headlines earlier this year by proposing that the U.S. role in Afghanistan largely be privatized. Trump chose not to pursue the idea in August, when he outlined his vision for ending the near 16-year war with a strategy that largely continues the current course.
Prince blames political fallout from Trump’s remarks about racial unrest in Charlottesville, Va., for his cautious policy shift on Afghanistan and said he holds out hope that Trump, an “audience of one,” will reconsider in the future.
