Thread: Populist GOP candidate drops campaign after Trump tweet

Populist GOP candidate drops campaign after Trump tweet

By Yaron Steinbuch
March 16, 2018 | 3:06pm | Updated

A Republican running a populist campaign to unseat a GOP senator in Nevada ditched his bid Friday after a tweeted entreaty from President Trump.

“It would be great for the Republican Party of Nevada, and it’s (sic) unity if good guy Danny Tarkanian would run for Congress and Dean Heller, who is doing a really good job, could run for Senate unopposed!” the president tweeted.

Tarkanian told the Reno Gazette Journal that Trump had already asked him to bail out of the GOP primary race with Heller and pursue the House seat left open by Rep. Jacky Rosen, who is running as Heller’s top Democratic foe in the Senate race.

“I am confident I would have won the US Senate race and done a great job representing the people of Nevada in the Senate, but the president is adamant that a unified Republican ticket in Nevada is the best direction for the America First movement,” Tarkanian said in a statement.

“With President Trump’s full support and endorsement, I am filing to run again in (Congressional District 3) with the firm belief that we will finish what we started in 2016 and win in 2018,” he added.

He told the Gazette Journal that he regretted telling the Nevada Independent earlier that there was “zero chance under any circumstances” that he would run for the House seat.

“I argued with them, but (the president) felt otherwise,” Tarkanian, son of famed UNLV hoops coach Jerry Tarkanian, said of the decision.

The pro-Trump Las Vegas businessman narrowly lost his 2016 bid to win Nevada’s battleground 3rd Congressional District.

Trump has privately said he’d campaign for Heller, who has become his loyal foot soldier ever since he won the 2016 election, according to Talking Points Memo.

Tarkanian announced a primary challenge last year after Heller couldn’t decide whether to support a Trump-backed GOP health care overhaul.

“We’re never going to make America great again unless we have senators in office supporting President Trump,” he said on Fox News Channel in announcing his run, the Washington Post reported.

https://nypost.com/2018/03/16/populi...r-trump-tweet/

Here's the tweet:

Donald J. Trump
‏Verified account @realDonaldTrump
3h 3 hours ago

It would be great for the Republican Party of Nevada, and it’s unity if good guy Danny Tarkanian would run for Congress and Dean Heller, who is doing a really good job, could run for Senate unopposed!

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump?...Ctwgr%5Eauthor

Danny Tarkanian‏Verified account @DannyTarkanianFollowFollow

@DannyTarkanian

More

Dean Heller supports amnesty for the 14-15 million illegal immigrants here and a pathway to citizenship. #NVsen

[COLOR=rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.85)]




0:15
862 views











[/COLOR]
11:59 AM - 4 Jan 2018

https://twitter.com/DannyTarkanian/s...07438270758912

Tarkanian is right, Dean Heller is an illegal immigrant amnesty supporter.

What the hell is Trump thinking?

Sometimes I'm convinced Trump is often just repeating what his handlers tell him! I understand he's a busy man and has a lot on his plate. However, supporting Heller in the Senate is the same as supporting a Democrat where illegal immigration is concerned.

Trump just moved to rescue the Senate's most vulnerable Republican

Danny Tarkanian will run for the House rather than challenge vulnerable GOP Sen. Dean Heller.

President Donald Trump reached out to Tarkanian and asked him to let Heller run unopposed.

Tarkanian ran to the right of Heller and had a shot to beat him in the Republican Senate primary.

Jacob Pramuk
Published 4 Hours Ago
Updated 28 Mins Ago

A GOP candidate challenging the Senate's most vulnerable Republican has decided to seek a House seat instead after a nudge from President Donald Trump.

Businessman Danny Tarkanian will now run for Nevada's 3rd Congressional District rather than challenge Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev. In a statement Friday, Tarkanian said Trump and "members of his political team" contacted him Wednesday and asked him to run for the House seat he narrowly lost in 2016. The president, as well as his digital guru and 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale, reached out to Tarkanian.

"I am confident I would have won the US Senate race and done a great job representing the people of Nevada in the Senate, but the President is adamant that a unified Republican ticket in Nevada is the best direction for the America First movement," he said in the statement. "With President Trump's full support and endorsement, I am filing to run again in CD3 with the firm belief that we will finish what we started in 2016 and win in 2018."

In a tweet earlier Friday, the president pushed Tarkanian to abandon the Senate race. Trump said "it would be great" for the Republican Party and its unity if Heller "could run for Senate unopposed."

Many observers consider Heller, 57, the Republican running for re-election this year the most likely to lose his seat. A bitter primary battle, or a Tarkanian win, could have left the seat even more vulnerable.

Tarkanian is considered more conservative than Heller and may have had a tougher time winning statewide in Nevada, which Democrat Hillary Clinton carried by about 2 percentage points in 2016. A primary election could have pulled Heller to the right on some issues, making it tougher for him to win in Nevada as a moderate.

Last year, Heller drew ire from both the left and right. He notably opposed Trump and Republican leaders' efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. He then signed on to one of the plans GOP senators floated to overhaul the U.S. health-care system.

Tarkanian, 56, is a son of late University of Nevada, Las Vegas, basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian. In his 2016 congressional bid, he lost to Democratic Rep. Jacky Rosen, the likely Democratic candidate in this year's Senate race.

In 2016, Rosen beat Tarkanian for the 3rd District seat by just 1 percentage point. Observers consider it a toss-up and a pickup opportunity for the GOP as Rosen runs for Senate.

Tarkanian joins a crowded Republican field that includes state Sen. Scott Hammond and former state assemblywoman Victoria Seaman. Meanwhile, the campaign arm of House Democrats has backed philanthropist Susie Lee among the Democratic candidates running for the seat.

As a Senate candidate, Tarkanian cast himself as an alternative to mainstream Republicans who would better support Trump's agenda in Washington than Heller has. Polling in the GOP Senate primary was scarce, but one JMC Analytics survey in October found registered Nevada voters preferred Tarkanian by a 6 percentage-point margin. The GOP primary will take place in June.

Trump's move to nudge Tarkanian out of the race shows Republicans may have had concerns about Heller's ability to win the primary. The GOP got burned by an upstart Republican last year, when ex-Judge Roy Moore beat party leaders' preferred candidate, Luther Strange, in an Alabama Senate special election primary. Moore went on to lose the Senate seat in the deep-red state to Democratic Sen. Doug Jones.

Republicans currently hold 51 of 100 Senate seats. They aim to maintain that majority in November.

Democrats have held a consistent edge recently in polls gauging whether voters support a generic Republican or a generic Democrat in November. But the minority party has to defend about three times as many seats as the GOP does, including some in red states Trump won in 2016.

Nonpartisan election analysis websites Cook Political Report and Sabato's Crystal Ball both rate the Nevada race as a "toss-up."

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/16/trum...an-heller.html

trump doesn't really care how many illegals are here. He is into the more numbers, more consumers, more cheap labor ideology that he has been inundated with by those around him, businessmen and other politicians he has to deal with.

Illegals be gone was the issue that trump was able to win the election with his campaign promises - all out the window now; he has no integrity. He has bigger fish to fry now and rake in more dough for all his coharts.

Republicans want to keep control of the US Senate and hopefully gain some Senate seats in November as well as keep if not grow our margins in the House so we can actually pass the immigration legislation we want and need along with other important bills to fix our country. All odds are against us, based on long historical records of what happens in the first mid-term of the first term of a new President, regardless of the party, so to defy history and achieve this takes unity and that's what Trump is trying to help with.

Americans have been shooting themselves in the foot for at least 40 years, Republicans most of all, so we'll just have to see what happens, but this President will do and say whatever he thinks will help to win the races. Sometimes it will work, sometimes it won't, but at least he's out there trying.

This disaster of illegal immigration started with Eisenhower who removed many and that solved the problem for a few years, but this disaster we have now began again with Jimmy Carter in the 1970's. No President has worked harder either as a candidate or as President to fix a cancer that's been growing for 42 years. Not only is he working to stop illegal immigration, he is also working to reduce, curb and curtail excess legal immigration.

Trump isn't into more consumers through population growth, he's into more consumption through economic growth, more jobs, higher pay, lower taxes, business and industry protections through tariffs and better trade deals. Trump isn't into poverty growth through population growth, he's into growing wealth for more Americans by increasing our earnings and incomes through economic growth.

Those who think Trump is profiting from his Presidency, that isn't true. He's lost $400 million in net worth already being our President and works for free. Ivanka and Jared also work for free and both of their businesses have also suffered. This family didn't leave the wonderful lives they built and jump into the White House to help themselves, they did this to help US, and are paying a huge price for doing so.

Sen. Dean Heller Distances Himself From Trump on Arpaio, DACA and Border Wall

by Leigh Ann Caldwell / Aug.28.2017 / 4:22 PM ET

U.S. Sen. Dean Heller R-Nev. attends an aviation conference at the Wynn Las Vegas Monday, Aug. 28, 2017, in Las Vegas.Isaac Brekken / for NBC News

LAS VEGAS — Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., distanced himself from President Donald Trump on several prominent policy issues in an interview with NBC News Monday, saying he opposes a government shutdown in order to secure funding for a border wall, does not support potential changes to protections for undocumented children and disagrees with the president's pardoning of former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio.

Heller, considered one of the most vulnerable Senate Republicans facing reelection next year, was most outspoken on the pardon for Arpaio, who was convicted of contempt after failing to obey a judge’s order to stop detaining people for suspicion of being undocumented immigrants.

“I don’t believe anybody’s above the law,” Heller said of the pardon. “I do believe the courts ought to run its course and let the system work its way through this. But I just don’t believe anybody’s above the law.”

Sen. Heller on DACA, Arpaio and Trump’s Shutdown Threat

The senior senator from Nevada, who sat for an interview at the Wynn Hotel Monday morning, is facing a campaign in 2018 that is likely to be the most difficult of his career and one of the most closely watched in the nation, especially with Republicans holding a narrow Senate majority heading into the midterm election cycle.

Heller is facing pressure from both sides with a primary challenge from perennial candidate Danny Tarkanian, who is clinging closely to the president, and a tough potential general election race against Democratic Rep. Jacky Rosen.
And he’s the only Republican senator running in a state won by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton while having to navigate around Trump, whose sometimes divisive politics don’t play well in a state where more than 17 percent of the electorate was Latino in 2016. Heller carefully distanced himself from Trump on several issues in the interview, especially those important to Latinos.

Heller said the president's threat to shut down the government if Congress refuses to give him a down-payment on his border wall in upcoming spending bills would only hurt the GOP.

“I don’t like shutting down the government,” Heller said. “There will be no excuses and nobody else’s fault but the Republican Party if this government does shut down.”

He did say, however, that Congress should give Trump the funding he wants, which is presumably the $1.4 billion he asked for in his budget. “I think as Republicans we need to be reasonable and work with the president on this and let's make sure he gets the funding he needs.”

Heller said he has “always supported the border wall” and border security, but said a continuous physical wall along the border isn’t necessary, saying the border patrol should determine what type of security is necessary.

“Where it’s necessary to build the wall, they’ll build a wall,” Heller said of the Department of Homeland Security. “There are some of the areas that, frankly, you can’t build it just because of the dynamics of that particular region.”
And with Trump considering a move to rescind DACA protections for undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children, Heller said he thinks those protections should stay in place.

“I like the current law the way that it is in place and I continue to support it,” he said, adding that he is pushing for immigration reform. “Let’s help and support these individuals and find a pathway they can become United States citizens if that’s what they want to do.”

“I will certainly fight on behalf of the Hispanic and Latino communities to make sure these individuals aren’t unfairly treated,” he said.

Trump and Heller have been at odds over health care for the past several months after the senator strongly opposed any reduction to the Medicaid expansion through the Affordable Care Act, which gave more than 200,000 Nevadans access to Medicaid. A super PAC supporting Trump began, then took down, television ads attacking Heller for his opposition.

“We have our differences,” Heller said of Trump. “I know the president wakes up every morning trying to figure out what’s best for America and I wake up every morning trying to figure out what’s best for Nevada. There’s going to be inherent conflicts in that. But at the end of the day, hopefully we’re close.”

But Heller wouldn’t say if Trump represents the values of the Republican Party. When asked if Trump is divisive, Heller said, “People do say that. I don’t respond to his tweets.”

"Most of what he’s done right now is pretty conservative and frankly 99 percent of his agenda that I’ve seen out there has been conservative and a lot of it I can support," he added.

In the Senate’s effort to repeal Obamacare, Heller opposed the repeal and replace bill as well as a straight repeal. He did, however, vote for the most scaled back version known as the “skinny” repeal. It failed though because three Republicans voted against it.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/con...r-wall-n796751