'Insulting': How Trump tried and failed to kick GOP candidate out of Indiana race

Over the course of President Donald Trump’s two terms, he has endeavored to assert himself as the final say across GOP electoral races large and small. While he has often been successful at forcing his party’s candidates to bend to his will, in a race for the Indiana state Senate, Trump’s efforts to push one Republican out in favor of another have one conservative candidate accusing the White House of “threatening” behavior.

The Indiana state elections drew Trump’s attention after several sitting lawmakers opposed his redistricting plan last year. As a result, the White House has now thrown its support behind candidate Brenda Wilson in hopes of unseating state Senator Greg Goode, who voted against redistricting.

The administration became concerned, however, that Republican candidate Alexandra Wilson — no relation to the other candidate — would confuse and divide the vote because she has the same last name. As a result, reports NBC, the White House began leveraging wide-ranging tactics to pressure Alexandra Wilson out of the race, from offering a job to threatening personal attacks.

It started with a barrage of phone calls from three White House aides, including political director Matt Brasseaux, deputy chief of staff James Blair, and Midwest regional political director Marshall Moreau. These were followed by calls and texts from Indiana Lieutenant Governor Micah Beckwith, Governor Mike Braun’s chief of staffJoshua Kelley and a staffer for a Republican activist group.

In the first call with Brasseaux, the White House political director attempted to cajole Wilson into accepting a job in exchange for dropping out, offering her an administrative role. She declined.

“I had a hard time not feeling insulted the entire call,” she later explained. “The admin position — I have a career, my job — that was a fraction of what I make a year.” She also felt like Brasseaux didn’t take her assertion that there were genuine local issues she’d like to address seriously.

The calls from the aforementioned figures kept coming all day, the last from Lieutenant Governor Beckwith, who later told NBC, “I just said I don’t know if you guys really thought this one through, because this probably could end poorly for this woman.”

The next morning, the pressure campaign ramped up with a string of calls and texts. “They were very, very pushy,” Wilson said.

That evening, she received a call from Deputy Chief of Staff James Blair, who noted that he was on a plane with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, before making veiled threats to reveal charges she’d faced at the age of 19 for resisting arrest (Wilson is now 34) and her husband’s DUI.

“I just wanted to talk about that brass-tacks reality that I think is going to be really ugly,” Blair warned.

“I was a child. I made a mistake,” Wilson explained about the charge, which had been resolved with a plea deal, then was later expunged from her record. “It was right after my mother passed away suddenly. I made a poor choice. Everybody makes mistakes. I have been a law-abiding citizen since then.”

When Wilson concluded the call, which she says was “a little threatening,” she made it plain that she had no plans to drop out of the race.

The next day, which was the last day candidates were allowed to quit, a local conservative attorney filed a petition with the state Election Commission to disqualify Wilson, alleging that her candidacy was a “trick” to hand the race to the Democrats. He argued that she wasn’t eligible to run due to her felony arrest at 19, even though it had been pleaded down to a misdemeanor and eventually removed from her record. After a series of deadlocked votes by the Commission, Wilson was ultimately allowed to remain on the ballot, though the attorney says he plans on appealing the decision.
“I have been accused of dirty tricks, political dirty tricks,” said Wilson. “This is exactly what is a political dirty trick. I’m a legitimate candidate with concerns for my district that would like to represent my district, and I have every right to be involved as anybody else on the ballot.”

• george conway
• noam chomsky
• civil war
• Kayleigh mcenany
• Melania trump
• drudge report
• paul krugman
• Lindsey graham
• Lincoln project
• al franken bill maher
• People of praise
• Ivanka trump
• eric trump