The shadow campaign to become former President Donald Trump’s 2024 running mate if he wins the nomination is taking shape, though multiple sources say there is no clear front-runner.
Trump has signaled he will ditch his previous No. 2, former Vice President Mike Pence, who has his eyes set on his own White House bid. More than a dozen Trump campaign veterans and former administration officials believe the former president will likely select a woman to join him on the ticket in an effort to win back the female voters he hemorrhaged to President Joe Biden in 2020.
Sources say that potential candidates must display one defining characteristic, an unflinching loyalty to the former president, and most of the MAGA figures who spoke to the Washington Examiner agree that four women in particular are on Trump’s short list: Gov. Kristi Noem (R-SD), Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R-AR), and former Arizona journalist Kari Lake.
Sanders, the youngest governor in the United States and the longest-tenured press secretary in the Trump White House, flew up political draft boards after she delivered what Trump supporters agree was an “exceptionally strong” response to Biden’s State of the Union on Feb. 7.
“She’s an expert communicator who knows exactly what it takes to cut it in a Trump administration,” one former White House official told the Washington Examiner. “Plus, she could serve as a counterbalance to the argument that Trump should not seek reelection based on his age. She represents the future of the MAGA movement.”
Noem was elected as South Dakota’s first female governor in 2018 after spending more than a decade in the House of Representatives and has made a name for herself as a leading Republican lawmaker in the so-called “culture wars.”
Multiple Trumpworld figures noted, somewhat bashfully, that the former president is supremely focused on pageantry, suggesting that Noem’s appearance could give her a leg up on the competition.
“Anyone who says that won’t play a factor in the president’s mind is lying to themselves,” one adviser stated. “Optics are everything.”
Stefanik, the current chairwoman of the House GOP conference, was elected as a centrist Republican in 2015 but, after serving on the president’s defense team during his first impeachment, has shifted increasingly to the right. She frequently touts her strong ties to Trump and even endorsed his 2024 run days before he announced his candidacy.
Lake is perhaps the strangest potential pick and one many current and former Trump advisers hope he avoids. The former Phoenix-area news anchor lost her Trump-endorsed 2022 gubernatorial bid against Democrat Katie Hobbs, but she only further endeared herself to the former president by repeatedly claiming that widespread fraud occurred in the 2020 election.
“She’s the one we have to watch out for,” one former Trump campaign official said. “If she ends up being the pick, this whole thing goes belly up.”
Three GOP operatives with experience in multiple presidential campaigns stated that Trump could benefit from picking former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who left the Democratic Party before embarking on her media career, or former Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, who “hasn’t shied away from criticizing Trump after Jan. 6.”