But with Senate control on the line, McConnell is carefully choosing his battles with Trump, still the party leader and clearly his most dominant voice.
Walker’s ancestry shows the limits of McConnell’s ability to shape the party’s gang of candidates long before Republicans voted in the primaries.
“There’s an old saying in politics: sometimes you have to be what’s going to happen,” said Scott Jennings, an adviser to McConnell and a CNN contributor.
Beyond Georgia, this war for influence in Republican Party contests has been set in a temporary strain.
McConnell’s political team has received other endorsements from Trump in open primaries with prudent hosting, including Sean Parnell in Pennsylvania, Mo Brooks in Alabama, and Ted Budd in North Carolina. No Republican consultant could say none of McConnell’s ideal candidates, but none would significantly diminish the Republican Party’s chances of winning next November.
And in the case of Adam Laxalt from Nevada, Trump has given his support to the candidate McConnell was working to recruit.
“Except, no doubt, in Georgia, Trump has chosen no one who cannot win and there are no competitive races in which an established alternative would be a slam dunk,” said Liam Donovan, a Republican strategist. “Don’t engage in a major proxy battle against Trump for the sport; there has to be something to be gained.”
But established Republicans still fear there are other Senate primaries (in Arizona, Ohio and Missouri, for example) where Trump’s influence could hamper the Republican Party candidate and jeopardize McConnell’s goal of regaining the majority.
“The types of people Trump supports don’t usually win in general elections,” said a Republican fundraiser, who pointed to the race in the Georgia Senate as a prime example.
A cold relationship since December
Both House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Sen. Rick Scott, chairman of the Republican National Senate Committee, have maintained working and even friendly relations with Trump. Since leaving office, McCarthy and Scott have made trips to Mar-a-Lago and adopted Trump as an integral part of their medium-term strategies.
But despite the adaptations McConnell is making to Trump, relations between the two major national Republicans remain frozen.
According to people close to the two men, McConnell and Trump have not spoken since Dec. 15, when the then president focused on changing the outcome of the 2020 election.
McConnell had long since advanced, directing his attention to the Georgia election that would determine control of the Senate. Republicans eventually lost those races in the Senate, which Georgia Republicans attribute in part to Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.
Just a day after the runoff, the crowd of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol to try to avoid counting election votes. McConnell condemned the insurgency and Trump for his role in encouraging it, though he ended up voting against condemning Trump in his second Senate impeachment trial.
“Former President Trump’s actions that preceded the riot were a disgrace and a disgrace to duty,” McConnell said in statements after Trump’s acquittal in February. “Trump is the practical and moral responsible for provoking the events of the day.”
Since then, Trump has been relentless. So far this year, he has insulted the Kentucky senator as an “old crow,” a “bad, grumpy, unsmiling political pirate,” and “the most overrated man in politics.”
In an April interview with Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo, Trump called on Senate Republicans to replace McConnell with a new leader.
“We need good leadership. Mitch McConnell hasn’t done a great job, I think they should change Mitch McConnell,” he said.
McConnell has typically taken the teasing calmly.
“McConnell sees no use in the public struggle with Donald Trump,” Jennings said.
In his limited remarks on Trump and the primaries, McConnell has reiterated that his priority is victory.
“Well, he has his own agenda,” McConnell told Fox News in June if he welcomed Trump’s involvement in choosing GOP candidates. “And my view is that we will focus on this administration and the future, on what they are trying to do in the country and turn it into a referendum in the autumn of 22 on how people feel about this new government that they limit. elected while continuing the Senate 50-50 and a close score in the House “.
The icy feelings between Trump and McConnell also stem from their polar opposing approaches to politics.
“(For McConnell), there’s really no emotional connection to people, there’s no, you know, ego, you know it’s not visceral to him. It’s a raw question of strategy and tactics and how we get from where are we today? to have a direct majority, “Jennings said. “I think for President Trump, it’s obviously different. You know, there’s ego, there’s emotions, there’s visceral reactions to people, and he just doesn’t look at the world the same way.”
Two very different political styles
While McConnell is deliberate and calculating, Trump is impulsive. His recent support for Parnell in Pennsylvania surprised Republicans there and was seen as a disagreement with another Senate candidate: Carla Sands, a major Trump fundraiser who also served as ambassador to Denmark.
And his announcement at the North Carolina GOP convention in June that he supported Budd captured much of the crowd, which was full of supporters of two other unsuspecting candidates (Pat McCrory and Mark Walker).
This clash of styles is still evident in Georgia, where Trump promoted Walker months before Walker declared his candidacy to challenge Raphael Warnock, the Democratic incumbent who won one of the two January elections in Georgia.
“It would be unstoppable, just like when I played for the Georgia Bulldogs and the NFL,” Trump said in a March statement. “He’s a great person, too. Run, Herschel, run!”
Their friendship dates back to the mid-1980s, when Trump bought the New Jersey Generals, a U.S. Football League team in which Walker was the star. The USFL would fold shortly after a Trump-led effort to merge the league with the well-established National Football League.
After signing with the NFL Dallas Cowboys, Walker stayed close to Trump. He appeared on NBC’s “The Celebrity Apprentice” and later backed Trump’s presidential bids for 2016 and 2020. And in December, Walker tweeted in a video supporting Trump’s effort to cancel. lar their loss and subvert the will of the electorate. Trump replied, “Herschel is telling the truth!”
But where Trump sees a loyal friend and sympathizer, McConnell and many other Republicans see an important responsibility.
The Senate minority leader tried to recruit the two Republican Party senators who lost the January qualifiers, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, to run in the primaries. And his allies sent a clear message to the press that McConnell saw Walker as a dangerous bet for Republicans.
But even after a series of negative stories about the former football star, including accusations that he threatened and abused women, Walker entered the race in late August. Days later, Trump supported him. As a result, McConnell must recalibrate his strategy to regain a crucial place in his search for a majority.
Republican strategists say there’s still a chance McConnell could defend an alternative to Georgia’s primaries. Most likely it was Latham Saddler, a young former Navy SEAL who surprised many Republicans in Peach State when he reported raising more than $ 1.4 million in his first few weeks as a candidate.
But Washington Republicans acknowledge that McConnell’s options in Georgia have narrowed considerably. If Trump-approved candidates drag the party’s chances, the Republican leader has already said he is preparing to get them back.
“There’s no doubt that in order to win, in most states that will determine who is a majority next time, you’ll have to appeal to a general election hearing. And some of the candidates who ran in these primaries clearly I won’t. I’ll be watching for that, ”McConnell told conservative radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt in June. “Hopefully, we won’t have to intervene. But if we do, we will.”
CNN’s Jeff Simon, Alex Rogers and Manu Raju contributed to this report.