GOP Chair Says Trump Should Have Run
Donald Trump, who on Friday ended his public flirtation with a run for governor of New York, should have jumped into the race, the state Republican Party chairman said over the weekend.
Ed Cox, who leads the New York Republican State Committee, is a big supporter of Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino, who officially announced a gubernatorial bid earlier this month. But Cox had argued recently that having both Trump and Astorino in the race would benefit the Republican Party, a point he reiterated on Saturday.
“It would have been tremendous for both he and for Rob Astorino, the two months between now and the designating convention on May 14, to be each in their own way going after Andrew Cuomo,” Cox told City & State. “So I regret that he didn’t run. I think that would have been very good.”
Trump had made it clear that he would only run if the Republican Party united around him and if there were no primary. In a speech last month, he argued that a primary battle would leave the eventual nominee damaged in the general election against Cuomo.
However, Cox said that he met Trump when Astorino was getting into the race and tried to reassure him by explaining that there would be only a closed-door designating convention, while a traditional primary was unlikely. Cox, who already gave Astorino a large campaign contribution, pledged to stay neutral if Trump ran.
“It would have been a very exciting insider’s race—not a primary, which is something that I emphasized very strongly to Donald Trump when we had dinner together in Palm Beach,” Cox said. “There was an interview process, a screening process to go through between now and the designating convention. The primary would come after that, and we all, including myself, would discourage a primary, and it probably would not happen. Whoever was designated would have been going forward without a primary. I want to make it clear that he didn’t have to worry about a primary from that point of view. I urged him to get in, and made it clear I could not unify the party.”
Trump was less charitable on Friday, when he tweeted the news that he was staying out of the race. “The top leadership of the New York State Republican Party is totally dysfunctional – they haven’t won a major election in many years,” he said in another tweet Friday afternoon.
With Trump now out, Astorino looks to have the Republican line uncontested. Of course, one complicating factor is the potential candidacy of Carl Paladino, the Republican nominee in 2010, who may mount a third-party bid this time around.
Cox said he wondered how Paladino could get on the ballot, since the Conservative Party line, is also expected to go to Astorino. Paladino has suggested that he could create a new party line to pave the way for a run.