Politics

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Former U.S. Senator David Durenberger, a Minnesota Republican who espoused a progressive brand of politics and criticized the GOP after his political career, died Tuesday at age 88.

Durenberger’s health had declined in recent months, his longtime spokesperson Tom Horner said. Horner told The Associated Press that Durenberger died Tuesday morning of natural causes. He was at his St. Paul home surrounded by family.

Durenberger — a former executive secretary to GOP Gov. Harold LeVander, former corporate attorney and former captain in the U.S. Army Reserve — won a U.S. Senate seat in 1978. He served three terms and championed health care reform. He pushed proposals to expand Medicare benefits, protect rights for disabled people, including the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act, and to promote gender equity.

“Senator Dave Durenberger was a true public servant,” Democratic U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, of Minnesota, said in a statement. Klobuchar, who holds Durenberger’s old seat, said he had personally showed her much kindness when she was first elected in 2006.

“He was a dedicated legislator who was always guided by his devotion to bipartisanship and improving people’s lives,” Klobuchar said. “His work to advance the Americans with Disabilities Act and prohibit discrimination against people with disabilities changed millions of lives for the better and made our nation stronger.”

Democratic Gov. Tim Walz will give a eulogy at Durenberger’s funeral next Tuesday at the former senator’s alma mater, St. John’s University in Collegeville, Horner said.

“His work on health care reform saved lives,” Walz said in a statement. “He was deeply kind, generous, and honest, and he put his work on behalf of Minnesota above all else. He valued collaboration and bipartisanship in the spirit of improving peoples’ lives.”

Durenberger’s first wife, Judy, died of breast cancer in 1970, leaving him a widower raising four sons. Dave Durenberger, his son, said he stayed an active father, attending their athletic matches.

When he ran for office in the late 1970′s, his sons helped stuff envelopes at their dining room table, joined parades and helped on the campaign.

“He was sort of our north star for how we needed to live our lives,” Dave Durenberger said.

As he rose through the Senate, Durenberger went through troubled periods in his personal life. He separated from his wife, Penny, in 1985 — a personal agony he openly discussed with several reporters at the time. He married Susan Foote, a former member of his staff, in 1995.

Dave Durenberger said his father in recent years was a frequent presence at his grandchildren’s school and sports events. Durenberger showed his family how to value people, regardless of their social status, he said.

“He tried to find the goodness or the common bond that he shared with everybody. Everybody had the potential to be his friend — whether it was the King of Jordan or the Jordanian immigrant driving a cab,” Dave Durenberger said.

But Senator Durenberger’s career took a downturn in 1990. He was unanimously censured by the Senate following an Ethics Committee investigation into payments he received for book royalties and federal reimbursements for stays in a Minneapolis condo. In 1995, Durenberger also pleaded guilty to five misdemeanor charges related to the condo payments.

“If there is a smudge on the Seal of the United States Senate, or on the Star of the North, as we like to call our state, I will work my hardest to polish both back to brightness,” Durenberger told his Senate colleagues after his censure.

He decided not to run for reelection in 1994. Following his exit from politics, he worked with a number of initiatives focused on health care policy. As chair of the National Institute of Health Policy at the University of St. Thomas Opus College of Business, he addressed systemic health care problems.

As the Republican Party tilted toward fiscal conservatives focused on slashing government programs, Durenberger became a critic. He told a Minnesota political podcast in 2005 that Democrats are “better equipped to carry the day” on health care policy, though he said at the time he would not become a Democrat.

In the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, he endorsed Democrats Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden over Donald Trump. And in 2018, he wrote a book with political reporter Lori Sturdevant titled, “When Republicans Were Progressive.” It mourned a nearly-extinct wing of the GOP in which lawmakers prided themselves on bipartisanship and sought to assist vulnerable people.

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Groves reported from Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

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COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Nikki Haley is moving closer to making her presidential campaign official.

On Wednesday, supporters of the former South Carolina governor will get an email invitation to a Feb. 15 launch event in Charleston, at which she plans to announce her campaign, according to a person familiar with the plans but not authorized to speak publicly about them.

News of Haley’s plans was first reported by The Post and Courier of Charleston.

Haley, 51, served as South Carolina’s governor for six years before serving as President Donald Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations. When she enters the race, Haley will be the first contender to join the contest against her former boss, who is currently the sole Republican seeking his party’s 2024 nomination.

Trump was in South Carolina Saturday for the initial campaign swing of his 2024 campaign, standing alongside Gov. Henry McMaster — who served as Haley’s lieutenant governor — and several GOP members of the state’s delegation, part of his leadership team in the early-voting state.

During the Trump administration, Haley feuded at times with other White House officials while bolstering her own public persona. Her 2018 departure fueled speculation that she would challenge Trump in 2020, or replace Vice President Mike Pence on the ticket, but Haley did neither.

Instead, Haley returned to South Carolina, where she bought a home on Kiawah Island, joined the board of aircraft manufacturer Boeing Co. and launched herself on the speaking circuit, reportedly commanding fees as high as $200,000. She penned two books, a step commonly taken by many on the road toward the White House.

After the Jan. 6 Capitol siege, Haley initially cast doubts on Trump’s political future but said she wouldn’t challenge him in 2024.

In 2021, Haley told The Associated Press that she “would not run if President Trump ran,” but she has since shifted course, ramping up activity through her Stand for America nonprofit and political action committee, and endorsing dozens of candidates in the 2022 midterm elections.

Late last year, during a visit to her alma mater, Haley told an audience at Clemson University that she would be “taking the holidays” to consider a run.

Asked recently why she is now considering a run in spite of her 2021 comments, Haley told Fox News “a lot has changed,” referencing, among other things, U.S. economic troubles.

She went on to say she felt she could be part of “new generational change,” an indirect reference to Trump’s advanced age.

In South Carolina on Saturday, Trump told WIS-TV that Haley had called him several days earlier to seek his opinion. Trump pointed out her earlier pledge not to run against him but said he made no attempts to stop her.

“She said she would never run against me because I was the greatest president, but people change their opinions, and they change what’s in their hearts,” Trump said. “So I said, if your heart wants to do it, you have to go do it.”

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Meg Kinnard can be reached at http://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP

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PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona Republicans on Saturday selected former state treasurer and Donald Trump aide Jeff DeWit to be the party’s next chairman, turning to a familiar face with relationships across the fractured party after its worst election in decades.

DeWit replaces firebrand Trump ally Kelli Ward, who helped the former president in his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss and was a vocal proponent of his false claim that the election results were fraudulent. She broke with precedent in last year’s primary, openly promoting a slate of election deniers who went on to lose the general election in November.

“I’m going to work for you and we’re going to unify,” DeWit said after winning. “And we’re going to get back to beating Democrats and winning elections.”

DeWit was supported by Kari Lake, who lost the race for governor but became a rock star on the right,; Mark Finchem, the defeated candidate for secretary of state; and retired Gen. Michael Flynn. Lake said shortly before the vote that Trump made a last-minute endorsement of DeWit as well, though the former president didn’t say anything on his social media accounts.

He won with 70% of the votes over several other nominees, including Steve Daniels, who was the choice of some of the party’s most ardent advocates of blowing up the election system. After helping to lead protests against face masks and critical race theory, Daniels founded the Arizona Patriot Party and wants all voting to take place in person on one day, with ballots counted by hand.

During Ward’s four-year tenure, the GOP lost three Senate races and the state’s three top offices — governor, secretary of state and attorney general. In recent weeks she’s faced criticism over the party’s spending, including an expensive election night bash in November that Republicans hoped would be a victory celebration before GOP candidates fell short.

DeWit was elected state treasurer in 2014 and resigned in 2018, shortly before his term ended, when he was confirmed as chief financial officer of NASA under Trump. He led Trump’s Arizona campaign in 2016 and was chief operating officer of Trump’s 2020 campaign.

Meanwhile, Arizona Democrats elected Yolanda Bejarano, a senior national official in the Communications Workers of America union, to be their party chair following the first contested election for Democratic chair in 12 years. Bejarano was backed by most of the state’s elected Democrats, but newly elected Gov. Katie Hobbs supported Steve Gallardo, the only Democrat on the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors.

Outgoing Democratic Chair Raquel Teran declined to run for another term, saying she wants to focus on her role as the state Senate minority leader. She said Friday she’s looking at running for the safely Democratic U.S. House seat being vacated by Ruben Gallego, who’s running for the Senate.

The 2024 election includes several races with national implications. Arizona is likely to be a battleground in the presidential race, and independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s seat is also on the ballot. Sinema, a former Democrat who alienated much of the party, has not said whether she’ll seek a second term, setting up the possibility of a rare three-way contest.

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HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Republican lawmakers who have spread election conspiracy theories and falsely claimed that the 2020 presidential outcome was rigged are overseeing legislative committees charged with setting election policy in two major political battleground states.

Divided government in Pennsylvania and Arizona means that any voting restrictions those GOP legislators propose is likely to fail. Even so, the high-profile appointments give the lawmakers a platform to cast further doubt on the integrity of elections in states that will be pivotal in selecting the next president in 2024.

Awarding such plum positions to lawmakers who have repeated conspiracies and spread misinformation cuts against more than two years of evidence showing there were no widespread problems or fraud in the last presidential election. It also would appear to run counter to the message delivered in the November midterm elections, when voters rejected election-denying candidates running for top offices in presidential battleground states.

At the same time, many mainstream Republicans are trying to move past the lies told by former President Donald Trump and his allies about his loss to President Joe Biden.

“It is an issue that many Americans and many Pennsylvanians are tired of seeing litigated and relitigated over and over,” said Pennsylvania state Sen. Amanda Cappalletti, the ranking Democrat on the Senate committee that handles election legislation. “I think we’re all ready to move on, and we see from audit after audit that our elections are secure, they are fair and that people’s votes are being counted.”

Multiple reviews and audits in the six battleground states where Trump disputed his loss, as well as dozens of court rejections and repeated admonishments from officials in his own administration, have underscored that the 2020 presidential results were accurate. There was no widespread fraud or manipulation of voting machines that would have altered the result.

The legislative appointments in Pennsylvania and Arizona highlight the divide between the two major parties over election law. Already this year, Democratic-controlled legislatures are moving to expand access to voting and heighten penalties for intimidating voters and election workers, while many Republican-led states are aiming to pass further restrictions, a trend that accelerated after Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election.

Democratic governors and legislative victories last fall will blunt the influence of Republicans who took steps or pushed rhetoric seeking to overturn the 2020 election.

But in Arizona and Pennsylvania, two lawmakers who dismiss the validity of that election — not to mention other elections since then — will have key positions of influence as the majority chairs of legislative committees that oversee election legislation.

In Arizona, Republican Sen. Wendy Rogers takes over the Senate Elections Committee after being appointed by an ally, Senate President Warren Petersen. He was one of two lawmakers who signed subpoenas that led to Senate Republicans’ widely derided audit of the 2020 election.

Rogers, who has gained a national following for spreading conspiracy theories and questioning elections, has faced repeated ethics charges for her inflammatory rhetoric, support for white supremacists and conspiracy-filled social media posts.

She now will be a main gatekeeper for election and voting bills in Arizona, where election changes are a top priority for some Republican lawmakers. Some want to eliminate voting by mail and early voting options that are used by more than 80% of the state’s voters.

She has scheduled a committee meeting for Monday to consider bills that would ban unmonitored drop boxes, prohibit drive-through voting or ballot pickup and impose what voting-rights advocates say are additional burdens on early voting.

In Pennsylvania, Republican Sen. Cris Dush takes over as chair of the Senate State Government Committee after pushing to block the state’s electoral votes from going to Biden in 2020. Dush also mounted an election investigation that he hoped would use the Arizona-style audit as a model.

He was appointed by the Senate’s ranking Republican, President Pro Tem Kim Ward, whose office explained Dush’s appointment only by saying that seniority plays a role and that members have priority requests.

In the first weeks of this year’s session, Dush has moved along measures to expand voter identification requirements and add a layer of post-election audits. Both are proposed constitutional amendments designed to bypass a governor’s veto by going to voters for approval.

Dush said he also plans to develop legislation to require more security measures for drop boxes and ballots.

“I’m going to make a promise to the people of Pennsylvania: The things that I’m doing here as chair of State Government, it’s going to be things that will be conducted in a fair, impartial manner,” Dush said in an interview. “You know, we’ve just got to make sure that we can ensure the integrity of the vote and people aren’t disenfranchised.”

Arizona and Pennsylvania have newly elected Democratic governors who presumably would veto hard-line GOP bills opposed by Democrats.

Still, Democrats, county election officials and voting-rights advocates in both states want changes to election laws that, with Dush and Rogers in place, may never see the light of day.

Alex Gulotta, the Arizona director for the voting rights group All Voting is Local, said he anticipates the Legislature there will pass a lot of “bad elections bills.” He said moderate Republican lawmakers who might have voted down problematic measures under a Republican governor now might let them pass because they know Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs will likely veto them.

“This is performative,” Gulotta said. “This isn’t substantive.”

The question, he said, is whether Rogers and other Arizona lawmakers can cooperate on “small fixes” where there is consensus. That, he said, will take “real statesmanship.”

Liz Avore, a senior adviser to the nonpartisan Voting Rights Lab, said the organization expects another busy period of lawmaking related to voting and elections ahead of the 2024 presidential vote, even as candidates who repeated Trump’s lies about a stolen 2020 election lost bids for governor, secretary of state and attorney general in key battleground states.

Democratic and Republican-led states are often moving in opposite directions, but some bipartisan consensus has emerged around certain aspects of election law, such as restoring voting rights to felons and expanding early in-person voting, Avore said.

Republican proposals, such as expanding voter identification requirements, are popular and have majority support, as do some Democratic proposals to broaden access, said Christopher Borick, a political science professor and pollster at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

But to be successful with voters, Republicans need to mind the lessons from 2022. Denying the outcomes of fair elections, he said, “is a loser for the Republican Party. Straight up.”

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Cooper reported from Phoenix.

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Follow Marc Levy on Twitter: http://twitter.com/timelywriter

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DANA POINT, Calif. (AP) — Ronna McDaniel has become the longest serving leader of the Republican National Committee since the Civil War. But now, she must confront a modern-day civil war within the GOP.

Frustrated Republicans from state capitals to Capitol Hill to the luxury Southern California hotel where RNC members gathered this week are at odds over how to reverse six years of election disappointments. And while there are many strong feelings, there is no consensus even among the fighting factions about the people, policies or political tactics they should embrace.

On one side: a growing number of elected officials eager to move beyond the divisive politics and personality of former President Donald Trump despite having no clear alternative. And on the other: the GOP’s vocal “Make America Great Again” wing, which has no cohesive agenda yet is quick to attack the status quo in both parties.

“It will be extraordinarily difficult, if not near impossible, for Ronna McDaniel to put the pieces back together,” said Republican fundraiser Caroline Wren, a leading voice in the coalition of far-right activists, conservative media leaders and local elected officials across the country who fought and failed to defeat McDaniel. “These people are not just going to forget.”

Indeed, as RNC members packed up from the Waldorf Astoria ballroom Friday, there was broad agreement that McDaniel’s reelection alone would do little to heal the gaping divide that plagues their party, even as she celebrated a notably decisive reelection victory.

Trump quickly congratulated McDaniel on his social media platform after privately helping her campaign. But conservative activist Charlie Kirk, a Trump loyalist, likened McDaniel’s successful reelection to a “middle finger” for the GOP’s grassroots who demanded change at the institution that leads the party’s political activities.

“The country club won today,” Kirk said from the back of the Waldorf Astoria ballroom where RNC members from across the country voted to give McDaniel another two-year term. “So, the grassroots of people that can’t afford to buy a steak and are struggling to make ends meet, they just got told by their representatives at an opulent $900-a-night hotel that, ‘We hate you.’”

A similar sentiment roiled the Republican Party earlier in the month on Capitol Hill as Kevin McCarthy struggled through days of embarrassing defeats in his quest to become House speaker before acquiescing to the demands of the anti-establishment MAGA fringe.

McCarthy’s inability to control the hardline Trump loyalists in his conference now threatens to undermine a high-stakes vote on the nation’s debt limit that could send shockwaves through the U.S. economy if not resolved soon. So far, House Republicans haven’t articulated a specific set of demands.

Some see the Republican divide as a byproduct of the GOP’s years-long embrace of Trumpism, a political ideology defined by its relentless focus on a common enemy and a willingness to fight that perceived foe no matter the cost.

McDaniel has repeatedly highlighted the perils of GOP infighting as she campaigned for an unprecedented fourth term as RNC chair. On Friday, she pleaded for Republican unity while citing a Bible verse once used by former President Abraham Lincoln before the Civil War.

“Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself will not stand,’” McDaniel said from the ballroom podium. “Nothing we do is more important than making sure that Joe Biden is a one-term president. But in order to do that, we have to be unified.”

It may get worse before it gets better.

The conclusion of the RNC’s winter meeting marks the unofficial beginning of the 2024 presidential primary season. Trump has already launched his candidacy and promises to wage a fierce campaign against any would-be Republican competitors.

The RNC is in the process of scheduling the first Republican presidential primary debates, which will likely take place in Milwaukee, the site of the party’s next national convention, in late July or early August.

While he has been slow to hit the campaign trail since announcing a 2024 bid last November, Trump has events in New Hampshire and South Carolina this weekend. Sensing political weakness in the former president, as many as a dozen high-profile Republicans are expected to line up against him in the coming months.

Should he fail to clinch the GOP’s next presidential nomination, Trump has already dangled the possibility of a third-party presidential bid, which would all but ensure Democrats win the White House again in 2024.

New Hampshire-based RNC member Juliana Bergeron reflected upon the state of her party as she prepared to take a red-eye flight back home to attend Trump’s Saturday appearance. The New Hampshire GOP is working through its own bitter leadership feud.

“The party in New Hampshire is divided. The party nationally is divided. I just think there’s a lot of space between the far right and some of the rest of us,” Bergeron said.

“I think it’s over,” she said when asked about Trump. “I want to see a new generation out there.”

And there are some signs that Trump’s MAGA movement may be ready to move on as well. Some privately acknowledged that Trump had lost control of his own movement, which worked to defeat McDaniel even as the former president and his lieutenants tried to help her.

While Trump declined to publicly endorse McDaniel, Wren said it wouldn’t have changed the grassroots’ demand for new GOP leadership even if he had.

“We’re not just sheep that follow a single endorsement anywhere,” Wren said. “We want to win elections and we’re not winning elections.”

Indeed, Republicans may need a successful national election to come together again. The next national election? Nov. 5, 2024.

“The hard work now begins for bringing our party together,” said former Trump chief of staff Reince Priebus, a former RNC chair who backed McDaniel’s reelection. “This isn’t going to be easy.”

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FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — Playing up the advantages of incumbency he hopes to ride to reelectio n, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear recently touted the state’s newest round of job-creation successes, honored a retiring police officer and highlighted recovery assistance for a flood-stricken region.

The Democratic governor packed all three feel-good developments into his most recent news conference Thursday. In his regular media events — and at frequent appearances across the Bluegrass State — Beshear has nurtured his own upbeat political brand. He’s known simply as “Andy” across a state that has mostly turned against his political party and become a Republican stronghold.

“I think people see that this administration isn’t trying to pull Kentucky to the right or left, but just to move it forward,” Beshear said when asked Thursday about a fresh round of good polling news more than nine months before the November general election.

A dozen Republicans are competing for a shot at trying to unseat Beshear, whose approval ratings remain high despite steady criticism from the other side. He’s won praise for his responses to devastating tornadoes and flooding as well as a string of economic development and infrastructure successes. His GOP challengers include Attorney General Daniel Cameron, state Agriculture Commissioner Ryan Quarles, former United Nations Ambassador Kelly Craft, state Auditor Mike Harmon and Somerset Mayor Alan Keck.

Beshear’s efforts to fend off red-state attacks by offering a steady dose of optimism come the year before national elections that will decide control of the White House and Congress. Beshear will have plenty of money to fight back, and the Democratic Governors Association has pegged his campaign as its top priority in 2023.

DGA spokesperson Sam Newton said the favorable polling stems from Beshear having “led the commonwealth through crises and delivered where it counts.”

The coming blitz of attack ads against the governor began recently when Craft tried connecting Beshear to President Joe Biden’s immigration policies on the nation’s southern border. Craft, who has made fighting illegal drugs a lynchpin of her campaign, blames those border policies for contributing to an influx of illegal drugs into Kentucky.

“We simply cannot wait any longer for Andy Beshear, Joe Biden and the federal government to secure the border,” Craft said in a follow-up statement.

Beshear, who has displayed a knack for strategic pushback, counterpunched by invoking the border’s defenders.

At his Thursday news conference, he declared that a “strong national security requires strong border security.”

Kentucky has done its part, he said, noting that hundreds of Kentucky National Guard soldiers have been deployed to the nation’s southwest border during his tenure and that a Kentucky guard member died while serving as part of the mission.

“For somebody wanting to be governor to talk about the border and to not mention the sacrifice and heroic service of our National Guard, and recognize their loss, I think is disrespectful and disqualifying,” the governor said.

For the most part, though, Beshear has tried to steer clear of national politics.

His ability to “operate mostly in non-ideological arenas” has positioned him as the early frontrunner, but the GOP has plenty of room to run against the incumbent, including his personal values that are “quite liberal,” said Scott Jennings, a Kentucky-based Republican political commentator and former adviser to former President George W. Bush with close ties to Sen. Mitch McConnell. Beshear’s policy disputes with the state’s GOP-dominated legislature also could become fodder for Republicans.

“He’s not unbeatable,” Jennings said. “There’s a path, but he starts the race ahead.”

Beshear’s deftness at steering clear of the national political fray was on display in recent days.

As he does at each weekly news conference, the governor touted new economic development projects Thursday — this time expected to create nearly 320 jobs and totaling more than $360 million in investments. Coming off a two-year stretch of record-setting private sector investments and job growth in Kentucky, the new projects show “we are not slowing down at all,” he said.

“With all of these new jobs and new industries we’re locating, we’re getting ever closer to reversing that trend of our kids leaving Kentucky to go somewhere else,” Beshear said.

During a recent visit to Pikeville in eastern Kentucky — where he announced assistance to expand access to clean water and support nonprofits — the governor promoted efforts, backed by state lawmakers, to help the region recover from last summer’s historic flooding. Beshear gives frequent updates on recovery efforts from tornadoes in western Kentucky and flooding in the east.

Pointing to the state’s resilience to overcome epic storms and the COVID-19 pandemic, Beshear said: “I truly believe as a state that we are turning the page from adversity to prosperity.”

At his Thursday news conference, the governor said he’s plugged into issues that matter most to families — good-paying jobs, affordable health care and quality education. It’s a reprise of his 2019 campaign, when he unseated the state’s former Republican governor, Matt Bevin. Public safety is another core issue, Beshear said Thursday as he honored a retiring police officer from Georgetown, Kentucky.

“To all our law enforcement across the commonwealth, we love you,” said Beshear, a former state attorney general. “We care about you. Please stay safe.”

Republicans, meanwhile, aren’t persuaded that Beshear can ride the feel-good vibes to a second term. They say he’s simply out of step with Kentuckians on too many issues.

“Andy Beshear can drape himself in whatever costume he likes, but it won’t change the fact that he is an ideological believer in the values of the Democrat Party,” said Kentucky Republican Party spokesperson Sean Southard.

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COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Former President Donald Trump kicked off his 2024 White House bid with stops Saturday in New Hampshire and South Carolina, events in early-voting states marking the first campaign appearances since announcing his latest run more than two months ago.

“Together we will complete the unfinished business of making America great again,” Trump said at an evening event in Columbia to introduce his South Carolina leadership team.

Trump and his allies hope the events in states with enormous power in selecting the nominee will offer a show of force behind the former president after a sluggish start to his campaign that left many questioning his commitment to running again.

“They said, ‘He’s not doing rallies, he’s not campaigning. Maybe he’s lost that step,’” Trump said at the New Hampshire GOP’s annual meeting in Salem, his first event.

But, he told the audience of party leaders, “I’m more angry now and I’m more committed now than I ever was.” In South Carolina, he further dismissed the speculation by saying that ”we have huge rallies planned, bigger than ever before.”

While Trump has spent the months since he announced largely ensconced in his Florida club and at his nearby golf course, his aides insist they have been busy behind the scenes. His campaign opened a headquarters in Palm Beach, Florida, and has been hiring staff. And in recent weeks, backers have been reaching out to political operatives and elected officials to secure support for Trump at a critical point when other Republicans are preparing their own expected challenges.

In New Hampshire, Trump promoted his campaign agenda, including immigration and crime, and said his policies would be the opposite of President Joe Biden’s. He cited the Democrats’ move to change the election calendar, costing New Hampshire its leadoff primary spot, and accused Biden, a fifth-place finisher in New Hampshire in 2020, of “disgracefully trashing this beloved political tradition.”

“I hope you’re going to remember that during the general election,” Trump told party members. Trump himself twice won the primary, but lost the state each time to Democrats.

Later in South Carolina, Trump said he planned to keep the state’s presidential primary as the “first in the South” and called it “a very important state.”

In his speech, he hurtled from criticism of Biden and Democrats to disparaging comments about transgender people, mockery of people promoting the use of electric stoves and electric cars, and reminiscing about efforts while serving as president to increase oil production, strike trade deals and crack down on migration at the U.S-Mexico border.

While Trump remains the only declared 2024 presidential candidate, potential challengers, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former Vice President Mike Pence and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who was Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, are expected to get their campaigns underway in the coming months.

After his South Carolina speech, Trump told The Associated Press in an interview that it would be “a great act of disloyalty” if DeSantis opposed him in the primary and took credit for the governor’s initial election.

“If he runs, that’s fine. I’m way up in the polls,” Trump said. “He’s going to have to do what he wants to do, but he may run. I do think it would be a great act of disloyalty because, you know, I got him in. He had no chance. His political life was over.”

He said he hasn’t spoken to DeSantis in a long time.

Gov. Henry McMaster, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham and several members of the state’s congressional delegation attended Trump’s event at the Statehouse.

Trump’s team has struggled to line up support from South Carolina lawmakers, even some who eagerly backed him before. Some have said that more than a year out from primary balloting is too early to make endorsements or that they are waiting to see who else enters the race. Others have said it is time for the party to move past Trump to a new generation of leadership.

South Carolina House Speaker Murrell Smith was among the legislative leaders awaiting Trump’s arrival, although he said he was there not to make a formal endorsement but to welcome the former president to the state in his role as speaker.

Otherwise, dozens of supporters crammed into the ceremonial lobby between the state House and Senate, competing with reporters and camera crews for space among marble-topped tables and a life-sized bronze statue of former Vice President John C. Calhoun.

Dave Wilson, president of conservative Christian nonprofit Palmetto Family, said some conservative voters may have concerns about Trump’s recent comments that Republicans who opposed abortion without exceptions had cost the party in the November elections.

“It gives pause to some folks within the conservative ranks of the Republican Party as to whether or not we need the process to work itself out,” said Wilson, whose group hosted Pence for a speech in 2021.

But Gerri McDaniel, who worked on Trump’s 2016 campaign, rejected the idea that voters were ready to move on from the former president. “Some of the media keep saying he’s losing his support. No, he’s not,” she said. “It’s only going to be greater than it was before because there are so many people who are angry about what’s happening in Washington.”

The South Carolina event was in some ways off-brand for a onetime reality television star who typically favors big rallies and has tried to cultivate an outsider image. Rallies are expensive, and Trump added new financial challenges when he decided to begin his campaign in November — far earlier than many had urged. That leaves him subject to strict fundraising regulations and bars him from using his well-funded leadership political action committee to pay for such events, which can cost several million dollars.

Trump’s campaign, in its early stages, has already drawn controversy, most particularly when he had dinner with Holocaust-denying white nationalist Nick Fuentes and the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, who had made a series of antisemitic comments. Trump also was widely mocked for selling a series of digital trading cards that pictured him as a superhero, a cowboy and an astronaut, among others.

He is the subject of a series of criminal investigations, including one into the discovery of hundreds of documents with classified markings at his Florida club and whether he obstructed justice by refusing to return them, as well as state and federal examinations of his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, which he lost to Biden.

Still, early polling shows he’s a favorite to win his party’s nomination.

“The gun is fired, and the campaign season has started,” said Stephen Stepanek, outgoing chair of the New Hampshire Republican Party. Trump announced that Stepanek will serve as senior adviser for his campaign in the state.

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Kinnard reported from Columbia, South Carolina, and Colvin from New York. Associated Press writer Michelle L. Price in New York contributed to this report.

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PHOENIX (AP) — Democrat Ruben Gallego held the first public events of his U.S. Senate campaign Saturday, taking aim at independent incumbent Kyrsten Sinema and casting his candidacy in a patriotic appeal to the American dream.

The fifth-term congressman recounted his journey from a poor family in Chicago to cleaning toilets as a Harvard student and a tough combat deployment as a U.S. Marine in Iraq.

“I knew if I worked hard and I kept my nose clean, this Latino kid was going to succeed in America. And I did,” Gallego told a crowd of several hundred supporters in Grant Park, a Central Phoenix hub of Latino political organizing.

Gallego began his campaign on Monday with a video posted to social media and embarked on a national media tour before returning to Arizona. In addition to his Phoenix rally on Saturday, he made similar appearances in Tucson and Casa Grande, and he planned stops Sunday in Flagstaff, the Navajo Nation and the reservation for the White Mountain Apache Tribe.

Gallego is facing the toughest campaign of his political career. Since winning a tough primary for his overwhelmingly Democratic congressional district in 2014, he’s never faced serious opposition. He now must introduce himself to voters outside his Phoenix district.

He touted his military service and his against-the-odds biography, saying that in many ways he’s “the product of that American dream.” But he pointed to the death of Tyré Nichols at the hands of five Memphis police officers as evidence there’s more work to do.

“The American dream has to include people like Tyré Nichols,” Gallego said. “It has to include Black men living without fear, and being able to live, period. They deserve the American dream, too.”

Sinema was elected as a Democrat in 2018 but left the party late last year, registering as an independent after years of growing estrangement from the party. She has not said whether she will run for reelection.

“The problem with Kyrsten isn’t that she left the Democratic Party,” Gallego said. “The problem is that she left and abandoned Arizona.”

Sinema has not directly commented on Gallego’s entrance in the race, but on Twitter last week she touted the bipartisan deals she’s helped negotiate and suggested campaigns can wait.

“Arizona just got through a brutal election season — I think we all could use a break,” Sinema wrote. “As I did with infrastructure, tribal water security, drought relief, LGBTQ+ rights, Chips, and so much more, I’m going to keep making good on my promise to deliver real results for our state.”

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DANA POINT, Calif. (AP) — Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel won her bid Friday to lead the GOP for two more years, prevailing in an election that highlighted fierce internal divisions that threaten to plague the party into the next presidential season.

McDaniel, whom Donald Trump tapped as RNC chair in 2016, won on the the secret ballot, 111 to 51, over Harmeet Dhillon, a California lawyer. The high-profile election played out inside a resort on the Southern California coast as the RNC’s 168 voting members – activists and elected officials from all 50 states – gathered for their annual winter meeting.

A relieved McDaniel invited her rivals to the stage immediately after the outcome was announced.

“With us united, and all of us working together, the Democrats are going to hear us in 2024,” she declared.

With the victory, McDaniel becomes the longest-serving RNC chair since the Civil War. While the vote itself wasn’t as close as some had expected, friends and foes alike agree that she will not be leading the RNC from a position of strength.

“The party is not united,” McDaniel’s chief rival, Trump attorney Dhillon, told reporters in the hallway soon after standing alongside McDaniel on stage. “Nobody’s going to unite around the party the way it is, which is seemingly ignoring the grassroots.”

Indeed, while Trump privately backed McDaniel, powerful forces within his “Make America Great Again” movement lined up behind Dhillon.

Backed by MAGA leaders in conservative media, Dhillon waged an aggressive challenge against McDaniel that featured allegations of chronic misspending, mismanagement and even religious bigotry against Dhillon’s Sikh faith — all claims that McDaniel denied. Above all, the case against McDaniel centered on deep dissatisfaction with the direction of the party after continuous election losses since Trump chose her to lead the committee following his upset 2016 victory.

The former president ignored the feud as he congratulated McDaniel on her “big WIN” on his social media network.

“Now we have to STOP THE DEMOCRATS FROM CHEATING IN ELECTIONS!” Trump wrote in capital letters, repeating baseless allegations of election fraud that have filled his political messaging for the past two years.

But some of Trump’s acolytes were not so willing to move on.

Conservative activist Charlie Kirk cited the Republican base’s overwhelming desire for change and said those members who voted for McDaniel would be held “accountable.”

“The RNC has contempt for their voters,” said Kirk, who sat among several Dhillon allies in the back of the hotel ballroom where the vote was held. “They basically just gave them a middle finger.”

While McDaniel prevailed, some of her supporters privately conceded they were open to a change in the committee’s leadership after three successive disappointing elections. But there were specific concerns about Dhillon – and the people around her.

The California Republican closely aligned herself with Caroline Wren, a former Trump fundraiser who was involved with raising money for the Washington rally on Jan. 6, 2021,that preceded the violent attack on the Capitol.

Dhillon’s chief surrogate at the RNC meeting this week was Kari Lake, the failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate who has spread debunked claims of voter fraud. Lake courted RNC members on Dhillon’s behalf inside the conference hotel.

From afar, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a likely 2024 presidential contender, spoke out against McDaniel on the eve of the vote as well.

“I think we need a change. I think we need to get some new blood in the RNC,” DeSantis said in an interview with Florida’s Voice, citing three “substandard election cycles in a row” under McDaniel’s leadership.

Meanwhile, Trump had quietly supported McDaniel, a niece of Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, and dispatched a handful of his lieutenants to Southern California to advocate on her behalf.

The former president avoided making a public endorsement at McDaniel’s request, according to those with direct knowledge of the situation who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. McDaniel’s team was confident she would win without his public backing, allowing her to maintain a sense of neutrality heading into the 2024 presidential primary season.

According to its rules, the RNC must remain neutral in the presidential primary. Trump is the only announced GOP candidate so far, but other high-profile contenders are expected in the coming months.

McDaniel is now set to lead the RNC through the 2024 election. Under her leadership, the committee will control much of the presidential nominating process – including the debates and voting calendar — while directing the sprawling nationwide infrastructure designed to elect a Republican president.

Also in the race on Friday was MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, a pro-Trump conspiracy theorist who won four votes.

Lindell has already endorsed Trump’s 2024 campaign and said he would not change his mind if his longshot bid was successful Friday.

“I’ve never not endorsed Donald Trump,” Lindell said. “I’m never moving off that space.”

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Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel won her bid Friday to lead the GOP for two more years, prevailing in an election that highlighted fierce internal divisions that threaten to plague the party into the next presidential season.

McDaniel, whom Donald Trump tapped as RNC chair in 2016, won the the secret ballot vote 111 to 51. The high-profile election played out inside a luxury resort on the Southern California coast as the RNC’s 168 voting members – activists and elected officials from all 50 states – gathered for the committee’s annual winter meeting.

With the victory, McDaniel becomes the longest-serving RNC chair since the Civil War. Yet friends and foes alike agree that she will not be leading the RNC from a position of strength.

While Trump privately backed McDaniel, powerful forces from within his “Make America Great Again” movement lined up behind McDaniel’s chief rival, Trump attorney Harmeet Dhillon.

Dhillon waged an aggressive challenge against McDaniel that featured allegations of chronic misspending, mismanagement and even religious bigotry against Dhillon’s Sikh faith — all claims that McDaniel denied. Above all, the case against McDaniel centered on deep dissatisfaction with the direction of the party after continuous election losses since Trump tapped her to lead the committee following his upset 2016 victory.

Ahead of the vote, Dhillon cited the Republican base’s overwhelming desire for change and threatened political retribution for RNC members who dared support McDaniel’s reelection.

“Ignoring the will of the voters in your state is a good way not to get elected again,” Dhillon told The Associated Press.

Before the vote, McDaniel pleaded with RNC members to put their differences aside after it was over.

“Coming together is the beginning. Staying together is progress. But working together is success,” she said. “We have to come together after this meeting and focus on what we have ahead of us.”

Several high-profile Trump allies publicly called for McDaniel’s ouster. Kari Lake, the failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate who has spread debunked claims of voter fraud, courted RNC members on Dhillon’s behalf this week inside the conference hotel. And from afar, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a likely 2024 presidential contender, spoke out against McDaniel on the eve of the vote.

“I think we need a change. I think we need to get some new blood in the RNC,” DeSantis said in an interview with Florida’s Voice, citing three “substandard election cycles in a row” under McDaniel’s leadership.

Meanwhile, Trump quietly supported McDaniel, a niece of Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, and dispatched a handful of his lieutenants to Southern California this week to advocate on her behalf.

The former president avoided making a public endorsement at McDaniel’s request, according to those with direct knowledge of the situation who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. McDaniel’s team is confident she will win without his public backing, allowing her to maintain a sense of neutrality heading into the 2024 presidential primary season.

According to its rules, the RNC must remain neutral in the presidential primary. Trump is the only announced GOP candidate so far, but other high-profile contenders are expected in the coming months.

McDaniel is now set to lead the RNC through the 2024 election. Under her leadership, the committee will control much of the 2024 presidential nominating process – including the debates and voting calendar — while directing the sprawling nationwide infrastructure designed to elect the next Republican president.

Dhillon, whose law firm earned more than $400,000 representing Trump and his political organizations in the 2022 midterms, had promised to leave her law practice if elected. The California attorney also vowed to remain independent in the 2024 Republican primary should she win.

Also in the race was MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, a pro-Trump conspiracy theorist who secured enough support to qualify for the ballot.

Lindell has already endorsed Trump’s 2024 campaign and said he would not change his mind if his longshot bid is successful Friday.

“I’ve never not endorsed Donald Trump,” Lindell said. “I’m never moving off that space.”

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