Ex-Governor Throws Hat In, Opening Way to GOP Race

03:59 - 16 February 2019

Bill Weld, the maverick former governor of Massachusetts, announced Friday that he would form an exploratory committee to challenge President Donald Trump for the Republican Party’s 2020 nomination, presenting himself as a dissident voice in a political party that has abandoned its mainstream roots.

Weld, 73, is the first Republican to announce he will run against the president. But Weld is unlikely to pose a major threat to Trump and he is in some ways an incongruous figure to leap into the presidential fray. Weld is a moderate Republican who ran for vice president in 2016 on the Libertarian ticket. His candidacy might be more of an act of protest than a conventional national campaign.

But appearing in New Hampshire, Weld called it a moral duty to stand against “the hard heart, closed mind and clenched fist of nativism and nationalism.”

“I hope to see the Republican Party assume once again the mantle of being the party of Lincoln,” Weld said, according to video posted by the news station WCVB. “It upsets me that our energies as a society are being sapped by the president’s culture of divisiveness of Washington.”

He continued: “We cannot sit passively as our precious democracy slips quietly into darkness.”

Several other Republicans are contemplating challenges to Trump in the primaries, including Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland and former Gov. John Kasich of Ohio. Trump’s aides have taken the threat of a primary challenge seriously enough to undertake a close review of the rules for the Republican nominating convention and to begin scrutinizing state party chairs and potential convention delegates for political loyalty.

But Trump and his allies have largely declined to go after potential primary rivals in public, trusting that his solid approval ratings with Republicans will insulate him and declining to issue vocal attacks that could have the effect of elevating a challenger.

Cassie Smedile, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, dismissed Weld and any other challengers who might emerge, citing Trump’s popularity with Republicans and his “long list of incredible accomplishments for conservatives and the country.”

“The RNC and the Republican Party are firmly behind the president,” she said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.