GOP congressman running for Romney's Senate seat stops short of endorsing Trump
President Donald J. Trump boards Marine One in Bedminster, New Jersey, Sunday, Aug. 9, 2020, en route to Long Branch, New Jersey. (Official White House photo by Shealah Craighead)
By Mary Lou Masters
Daily Caller News Foundation
A leading contender to replace prominent Trump critic Mitt Romney in the U.S. Senate told the Daily Caller News Foundation on Thursday that the former president has his vote, but declined to give his endorsement.
GOP Rep. John Curtis of Utah has previously been critical of Trump, and is competing against several prominent Republicans for the nomination who have already endorsed the former president. While the Curtis campaign maintained that he will vote for Trump in November, it declined to say whether the congressman will endorse the former president after Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee in mid-March.
“Congressman Curtis voted with Trump 91% of the time. He supports improving border security, including building a wall. He voted for Trump’s tax reform and applauded his Supreme Court nominees,” Adrielle Herring, campaign manager for Curtis, told the DCNF in a statement. “Congressman Curtis voted for Trump in 2020 and campaigned for him around the western states. He will vote for him again in November.”
However, a Curtis campaign spokesperson suggested in early February that he’d endorse after the primary was over. Trump surpassed the Republican National Committee’s required 1,215 delegate threshold after nominating contests in Georgia, Mississippi and Washington on March 12.
“He will do that after the primary,” the Curtis campaign spokesperson can be heard saying in a clip posted on Feb. 1 of a Senate candidate panel regarding whether the congressman had endorsed Trump. “He does not like coronations.”
Other Utah Republican Senate candidates like former state House Speaker Brad Wilson, Riverton Mayor Trent Staggs and lawyer Brent Orrin Hatch have already thrown their support behind Trump, according to the Deseret News.
The congressman told The Salt Lake Tribune in 2017 that Trump’s border wall “carries all of this pent-up racism.” Curtis also took aim at the former president following the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, and introduced a resolution to censure Trump for attempting to prevent the 2020 election from being certified.
However, the congressman did not vote to impeach Trump on Jan. 13, 2021.
Curtis said in 2019 that “it’s no secret I didn’t vote for President Trump” when he announced he’d be opposing the two articles of impeachment against him at the time.
The former president has yet to make an endorsement in the primary to succeed Romney, who is a staunch Trump critic.
Curtis, former mayor of Provo, Utah, switched his party affiliation from Democrat to Republican in 2006, and was elected to Congress in 2017 via special election, according to Deseret News. The congressman won three subsequent full terms by large margins.
A Deseret News/Hinckley Institute of Politics poll released in late January found Curtis leading the Republican primary field at 18%, followed by Hatch at 14%, Wilson at 8% and Staggs at 3%. However, a large portion of respondents were undecided at 52%.
Another survey on the race released in mid-December, before both Curtis and Hatch jumped in, and conducted by Guidant Polling and Strategy indicated the congressman would beat Wilson by 29 points, with Staggs lagging behind at 6%.
Romney’s seat is characterized by The Cook Political Report as in the “Solid R” category for 2024. Utah will hold its nominating convention on April 27, followed by a June 25 primary.
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