US Presidential: Pence, DeSantis… These Republicans who will challenge Trump

The candidates are multiplying against Donald Trump, as the Republican camp primary approaches which will send one of the conservatives to the starting blocks for the American presidential election in November 2024. Several candidacies, including that of the former vice -President Mike Pence on June 5, have been filed at the White House in recent days. They are already 9 to have officially announced their candidacy against the former president of the United States, who is far ahead of them for the moment in the polls with more than 53% of the voting intentions.

If the governor of Florida Ron DeSantis seems for the moment to be the only one to display a score allowing him to possibly weigh against the billionaire as idolized as hated, the multiplication of candidacies and the scattering of votes could play in favor of the septuagenarian, who announced in November 2022 his firm desire to return for a second term. The first debate between candidates for the primary is scheduled for August 23, in Wisconsin.

Mike Pence, the “traitor”

He will challenge his former boss. Mike Pence, ex-vice-president of Donald Trump during his first term (2016-2021), finally submitted his candidacy this Monday, June 5 at the White House. “I believe in the American people, and I have faith that God is not done with America,” the candidate said in her campaign launch videopublished on social networks, this Wednesday, the day of his 64th birthday.

Evangelical Christian, fierce opponent of abortion, Mike Pence had helped Donald Trump to conquer the religious right by being his running mate. After years of unwavering loyalty, he changed his tune following the assault on the Capitol, which rocked American democracy on January 6, 2021. On that day, Mike Pence led, as vice president, the session in Congress, during which the elected officials had to certify the victory of Joe Biden in the presidential election of 2020. Threatened with death during the assault on the Capitol (where he was present) for having refused to invalidate the Democratic victory, he since judged that the words of its former president had been “irresponsible”, posing as the last rampart of American democracy.

The split between the two men jeopardizes the chances of Mike Pence in the primary, which many activists loyal to Donald Trump continue to consider a “traitor”. He is currently leveling off at around 3.8% of voting intentions, far behind the former president, according to the average of the latest polls carried out by RealClearPolitics website.

Ron DeSantis, the most serious rival

He is the only rival who seems to be able to block Donald Trump for the time being. Re-elected triumphantly last November, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis ended up making a name for himself nationally at 44, and now reaches 22.4% in the polls (the highest score among opponents). Graduated from Yale then legal adviser to the special forces during the Iraq war, father and former star of university baseball, he now stands out as the reasonable alternative to Trump. “DeSantis is Trump with a brain”, summarized in January the FinancialTimes.

If he does not share Donald Trump’s excesses, the Reagan-style ultra-conservative nevertheless shares many of his ideas. Catholic with Italian roots, he won votes during his last mandate by multiplying the blows on immigration and education. He also seduced part of the Latino electorate in Florida (one in four voters), by passing several laws playing on conservative and family values. In March 2022 with a law prohibiting teachers from discussing the sexual orientation of a child before the age of 10, then extending the legal deadline for abortion from the 24th to the 15th week of pregnancy (sixteen weeks in France) .

Still far from the Trumpian score, the governor of Florida seems to be betting everything on the multiplication of legal threats against the tycoon. His strategy essentially consists of coaxing the many supporters of Donald Trump by avoiding criticizing him too frontally – until the 76-year-old ex-leader is forced to withdraw from the race. An unrealistic scenario for the time being. Another major obstacle for the governor: he is criticized for his lack of charisma. “The problem with DeSantis is that he would need to have personality transplanted,” Donald Trump recently mocked on his network, Truth Social. To do nothing to help, the long-awaited announcement of his candidacy on Twitter during a video exchange with Elon Musk has also turned into a fiasco, parasitized by numerous technical problems.

Nikki Haley, the opponent of the first hour

Daughter of Indian immigrants, Nikki Haley was the first Republican to challenge the ex-president by declaring her candidacy last February. At 51, the former governor of South Carolina and former UN ambassador is currently struggling to take off in the polls: she is credited with 1 to 5% depending on the surveys. She goes on trips to the field, to try to nibble at the huge gap that separates her from Donald Trump.

During the Republican Congress last March, she made Trump’s age her main angle of attack, notably calling again on Friday for “intellectual aptitude tests” for politicians over 75. Nikki Haley has always positioned herself as a strong internal opponent of Donald Trump, and violently attacked the candidate as early as 2016, saying he represents “everything I taught my children not to do in kindergarten” . Calling on Republicans to trust a “new generation”, she remains very conservative and notably supports the withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement or the end of the Iranian nuclear treaty.

Her American dream biography is a major asset: at 38, this daughter of Sikh immigrants from Punjab was elected governor in her very conservative state after a meteoric rise. She later became famous in the media by having the Confederate flag, a symbol associated with racist causes, removed in front of the seat of Parliament in Columbia. As a woman of color, her candidacy was nevertheless instantly criticized both among anti-immigration Republican elected officials and progressives who accuse her, as on the MSNBC channel (left), “of using” her color brunette to camouflage the arguments of white supremacists”.

Chris Christie, the most severe against Trump

He presents himself as the only candidate capable of standing up to the former president. Known for his combative style, the former governor of New Jersey and former ally of Donald Trump, Chris Christie announced Tuesday, June 6 to embark on the presidential race of 2024 by filing his candidacy with the federal electoral commission.

Chris Christie, still very low in the polls (around 1%), has already begun to attack Donald Trump, portraying him on Tuesday in front of his supporters as self-centered and dishonest. The former Republican president, “always finds someone or something to blame for what goes wrong, but always finds a way to take credit for whatever works,” blasted Chris Christie. The billionaire in return called him “boring” and a “failed governor”.

In 2016, Chris Christie had already sought the nomination in the Republican primary, before bowing and becoming a close adviser to Trump, then moving away again when the latter refused to recognize the Democratic victory. in 2021. The former governor has since criticized Donald Trump on several other fronts, notably referring to the multiple investigations targeting him and calling him a “Putin puppet” after the businessman’s ambiguous remarks on the war in Ukraine.