Lara Trump’s Political Prize Beckons With Florida Senate Vacancy
(Bloomberg) -- As Donald Trump stacks his cabinet with loyalists, he appears to be angling to put another devoted ally on Capitol Hill: His daughter-in-law, Lara Trump.
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With Marco Rubio poised to relinquish his US Senate seat to become secretary of state, jockeying is underway in Florida to replace him. The president-elect hasn’t publicly endorsed a candidate for the role, but he previously paved the way for her to co-chair the Republican National Committee and has praised her as “dedicated to all that MAGA stands for.”
Several prominent Trump allies, including Elon Musk and his mother, Maye, have publicly signaled support for Lara Trump to get the job.
Trump, 42, has never held or run for office. But her family ties would make it difficult for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to deny her an appointment she seems eager to fill. A veteran of Donald Trump’s three presidential campaigns, she proved a popular surrogate and fundraiser after she became co-chair of the RNC in March.
Although she lacks a traditional resume for a US senator, she excels at something Donald Trump values highly: making him look good. On the campaign trail and on television, the working mother of young children with a huge Instagram following became an important emissary to key voter groups skeptical of Trump, such as suburban women. By drawing on her unique personal relationship with her father-in-law, she was able to present him in an appealing light.
As the wife of Trump’s son Eric, she also has a rare — and prized — qualification that looms large as Trump and Republicans prepare to take over Washington: her surname. In a new Time magazine interview, the incoming president extolled several of his children, as well as Lara, touting the importance of the Trump name. ”They’re very capable people,” Trump said, and “they have a name, which seems to be a very good name.”
For Donald Trump, steering his daughter-in-law to the US Senate would be another test of the Republican Party’s tolerance for putting inexperienced loyalists in positions of power – something he’s done repeatedly with nominations for top positions, including by tapping Pete Hegseth, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Matt Gaetz. Even when Gaetz’s attorney general nomination imploded, Trump replaced him with another longtime supporter, Pam Bondi, a former Florida attorney general.
The Senate appointment poses a thorny political dilemma for Donald Trump’s onetime primary rival DeSantis.
“He’s got two roads here,” Peter Schorsch, the publisher of Florida Politics, an insider publication, says of the state’s governor. “He can do what the president-elect seemingly wants, which is appoint Lara Trump to the Senate. Or he can assert his independence and then have Trump barking at him for a year and a half and the entire MAGA universe going after him.”
For Lara Trump, the appointment would be a plum prize for someone who’s long eyed elective politics and who helped lead the RNC through an extraordinarily tumultuous election. Earlier this week, she announced plans to step down from that role, setting herself up to assume another high-profile role in what could become a Trump political dynasty.
Her joining the Senate would also reinforce the perception that she and her husband are taking over the roles played by Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner in the first Trump administration as the family’s key political emissaries in Washington and beyond. “They’ve chosen to kind of take a step back and focus more on their family right now,” Lara Trump said at a Bloomberg News event in July, referring to her in-laws. “Clearly, I’m here. I’m very involved [and] my husband, I can tell you, will be out on the campaign trail for sure.”
Electoral Ambitions
Lara Trump grew up in Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina, later moving to New York City and working as a producer on the tabloid television show Inside Edition. Her marriage to Eric Trump in 2014 brought her into the family fold.
During the three Trump presidential campaigns, she emerged as a prominent surrogate. Over the last year, as she barnstormed swing states backed by a small army of pink-jacketed “Women for Trump” volunteers, it often seemed as if she herself was running for office.
During an October campaign stop at a Charlotte food bank, she addressed a question about her future North Carolina campaign aspirations by making clear that she was open to the possibility.
“I would never say never to anything,” she told reporters, adding that she’d “considered a Senate run here two years ago,” before deciding that her children were still too young. “We’ll see what the future holds,” she said.
After her father-in-law’s reelection victory last month, Trump’s political focus appears to have shifted southward. During a Nov. 21 video appearance at a Washington Post conference, she expressed interest in being appointed to fill Rubio’s Senate seat in Florida, where she and Eric have lived for the last several years.
In a statement to Bloomberg News, Trump reiterated her interest in the job. “I am truly humbled by the overwhelming support shown to me as a potential choice for Florida’s next senator,” she said. “I don’t take lightly the confidence and trust that has been placed in me as this opportunity would represent a chance to contribute positively to the state that my family and I now call home.” She also praised DeSantis, “whose leadership and hard work has made Florida a place where Americans have flocked in record numbers.”
While Donald Trump has often favored friends and acquaintances for jobs in his administration, former government ethics officials say that maneuvering to install a family member in the Senate would be highly inappropriate and unusual.
“It’s like something out of the medieval era, where family members and retainers of a monarch or a potentate are installed in positions of power to cement the royal line,” says Norm Eisen, an expert on ethics and anti-corruption at the Brookings Institution who served as White House special counsel and ethics czar under Barack Obama. “Lara Trump has no traditional qualifications. She’s never served a moment in office.”
Valuable Assets
Even so, she doesn’t lack for fans and supporters, at least in some Republican circles. Donald Trump cleared the way for her to become the co-chair at the RNC, alongside Michael Whatley. The insular group of 168 Republican committee members doesn’t usually reach outside its ranks for leadership. “It’s not how the game is normally played,” says Sean Spicer, an RNC veteran and spokesman in the first Trump administration.
But Lara Trump’s famous name and sizable personal audience – she’s a frequent Instagram poster with 2.2 million followers and also hosts The Right View, a conservative podcast – ultimately came to be seen as valuable assets at an RNC that was being outraised by its Democratic counterpart.
“I don’t think anyone outside of Washington could have told you who the RNC co-chair was during my tenure,” Spicer said. “But Lara brought instant credibility and attention to the role, and was a massive asset as a high-profile surrogate and fundraiser.”
Still, she is stuck with the perception that the only reason she’s vaulted to the upper echelons of Republican politics is because of her father-in-law — one that will only intensify if DeSantis appoints her to the Senate. “Of course it’s nepotism,” says Tom Davis, the former Virginia congressman and former chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee. “But that’s hardly unheard of in politics.”
Indeed, Lara Trump isn’t even the first RNC co-chair to land the job thanks to a relative in the Oval Office. Ronald Reagan’s daughter, Maureen Reagan, was elected co-chair in 1987, during her father’s second term.
Even if Lara Trump gets the Senate appointment, her time in office could prove fleeting: A special election would be scheduled for 2026, so to keep the seat she’d soon have to win over Florida voters. The winner of that contest would serve until 2028, when the regular election would be held for the next six-year term.
Selecting her to fill Rubio’s seat would also anger a lengthy list of Senate hopefuls in Florida. Among DeSantis’ favorites are his Chief of Staff James Uthmeier, Lieutenant Governor Jeanette Nuñez, and Jose Oliva, the ex-speaker of Florida’s House, Bloomberg News reported in November.
Schorsch, the Florida Politics publisher, suspects this is one reason why DeSantis hasn’t yet announced Rubio’s replacement, even though Trump nominated him about a month ago. The governor still harbors presidential ambitions and doesn’t want to alienate Republican allies in Florida or in Washington.
“It’s DeSantis’ best opportunity to mend fences with Mar-a-Lago,” Schorsch says. “I don’t know why he’s dragging it out and making it such an ordeal. It’s either going to be Lara Trump — or else.”
--With assistance from Michael Smith.
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