It wasn’t long after former President Donald Trump announced his endorsement for Morgan Ortagus in Tennessee’s newly drawn 5th Congressional District that a number of local Republicans began plotting how to nuke her candidacy.
Three months later, a group of Tennessee GOP officials voted in secret at a secure location to do just that, blocking the former State Department spokeswoman and two others from the August primary ballot.
National GOP figures and local activists upset by the outcome have criticized the process as underhanded and corrupt, while state party officials and Tennessee Republicans have defended the move — the strongest pushback to one of Trump’s primary picks thus far — as simply following its own rules. Party officials overwhelmingly voted to end her candidacy, even as interviews with more than a dozen stakeholders, officials and candidates, many of whom professed their full support for the former president, revealed a split over Trump’s effort to influence the race.
“I heard this over and over: ‘Well, I’m all for Trump, but he doesn’t need to be telling us who the hell to vote for,” said one member of the state party’s executive committee, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the vote. “This is Tennessee … Don’t tell me what the hell I gotta do.”
Scores of Trump’s other endorsements in GOP primaries across the country have come under scrutiny as primaries kick off in earnest this month. Trump has been eager to cement his continued influence over the party by endorsing early and often, though some Republicans have indicated they wish the former president would stay out of contested primaries or feel he has received bad advice on his picks.
In Pennsylvania, Trump allies and local GOP officials have questioned his endorsement of Mehmet Oz in the Senate primary, pointing to Oz’s limited history in the state and what they see as a lack of conservative bona fides. In Ohio, more than 30…
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