Democrats sense Pompeo is wounded: Senate race is ‘effectively abandoning ship’
For months, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo enjoyed widespread speculation in Washington and Kansas not over whether he would have a future in politics, but how high he would go.
The two immediate choices before him – remain as President Donald Trump’s secretary of state, or leave to run for Senate in Kansas next year – both appeared low-risk and high-reward throughout the summer.
But testimony and records released this week, directly implicating Pompeo in a fast-moving congressional impeachment inquiry, have stymied his potential exit. The option of a graceful, uncontroversial resignation — the sort enjoyed by Trump’s first ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, who also has future political ambitions — has likely expired.
Republican leaders have wanted Pompeo as a candidate for the Senate in his home state. They see him as the best choice to take Kansas off the map and eliminate the possibility that the seat, opening up with the retirement of Sen. Pat Roberts, flips in 2020. With a June filing deadline, he could depart more or less at the time of his choosing. Victory would also give him a premium platform for a 2024 presidential bid.
Pompeo now faces a fraught choice, not only over timing but whether to leave a State Department mired in the Ukraine controversy and Trump in the midst of a congressional debate over whether to remove him from office.
Should Pompeo enter the campaign, Republicans still believe he would cruise to victory in the GOP-leaning state, which hasn’t sent a Democrat to the Senate since 1932. Trump echoed that confidence in an interview on Friday. “He would win in a landslide because they love him in Kansas,” he told Fox & Friends.
The emerging Democratic strategy serves, in part, to undermine the secretary were he to enter a Republican primary against Kris Kobach, the hard-line conservative with ties to Trump, who would compete with Pompeo for the president’s most ardent supporters.
And there are other potential benefits for Democrats beyond winning the long-shot race.
Democratic operatives now see Pompeo’s potential departure as an opportunity to portray Trump and his administration as materially weakened by an investigation likely to result in the president’s impeachment– only the third such instance in the nation’s history.
“Everybody was worried about Pompeo in the beginning, but now I would love to see him get in,” said Chris Reeves, Kansas’ Democratic National Committeeman.
“If he leaves as secretary of state to run for Senate, he is effectively abandoning ship,” Reeves continued. “It would be one of the biggest votes of no-confidence in Trump.”
Republican operatives regard this as more of a wish than a strategy. Jared Suhn, a Kansas-based GOP consultant, said it’s naive to suggest Pompeo wouldn’t have an easy path to victory in either the primary or general election.
“He wouldn’t just cement our ability to keep the seat in November but his entry would also help the entire GOP ticket in Kansas,” Suhn said.
And a senior GOP strategist in Washington involved in Senate races said that Democratic attacks related to the impeachment inquiry would backfire in Kansas, a state Trump won by double digits in 2016.
“They’re reaching and the only strategy that they’re able to come up with might work in Rhode Island but not Kansas,” the strategist said.
Impeachment and a new calculus
Some administration officials told McClatchy over the summer they expected the secretary would enter the race. More recently, White House officials have demurred, stating that – while they believe Pompeo would seek Trump’s advice and consent – such a decision will ultimately rest with the secretary himself.
And Pompeo’s consideration of the Senate candidacy has been a long-running, open secret. The secretary has repeatedly traveled to Kansas this past year, and multiple sources have confirmed that he met with likely supporters, including Charles Koch and donors affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
But testimony to the House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday by Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, may have changed that calculus.
The ambassador shared texts and emails that revealed contact with Pompeo and his top aides on an effort to trade a White House meeting – and, potentially, $391 million in congressionally-mandated military assistance – for political investigations into Democrats by the government in Ukraine.
And on Friday night, the State Department was compelled by a court order to release records documenting Pompeo’s communications with the president’s personal attorney, Rudolph Giuliani, as he lobbied for the removal of the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch.
Departing before the impeachment inquiry concludes, around the new year, might expose Pompeo to additional legal jeopardy. Leaving shortly afterward might appear like an abandonment of a recently impeached president.
“He’s going to try to get out scot-free and that’s going to be really, really hard,” said one House Democratic aide working on the inquiry, who noted that the secretary would abandon the shield of executive privilege should he resign. “I think he can, but I think the Democrats plague him with this through any run.”
Kansas Democrats have long pinned their hopes for winning the seat on the possibility that Republicans will nominate Kobach, a former Kansas Secretary of State, who ran what was widely regarded as an ineffective, poorly-organized campaign in his loss to Democrat Laura Kelly.
In his interview on Friday with Fox & Friends, Trump seemed to acknowledge the threat Kobach poses to the seat.
Pompeo would likely run “if he thought that there was a chance of (the GOP) losing that seat,” Trump said. “I think he would do that.”
Democrats see a vulnerable candidate
Still, Reeves said, Pompeo would be vulnerable on two fronts. Republican rivals could attack him for abandoning Trump. Democrats could hammer him for his alleged role in pressuring Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
“He would be a weakened candidate, mired in scandal, who would be seen as disloyal to Trump,” Reeves said. “If you’re willing to vote for somebody who runs away from disasters they create, then I guess Pompeo is your guy.”
But State Sen. Barbara Bollier, the Democratic frontrunner, took a small jab at Pompeo on Wednesday when asked about Sondland’s testimony that the secretary of state was fully looped in on the efforts to engage Ukraine.
“That news is quite troubling for any of us,” said Bollier, a Johnson County lawmaker who switched parties last year.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which gave Bollier an early endorsement, also took a shot at the secretary and indicated the party has no plans to forfeit in Kansas if he enters the race.
“Politicians who put their party and self-interest ahead of what’s right don’t do well at the ballot box,” said Lauren Passalacqua.
Pompeo’s friends in Kansas said they are unsure what his ultimate decision will be.
“Mike Pompeo deciding to run has worldwide implications. He’s a responsible, smart person, I just can’t imagine he’s going to tip his hand to anyone,” said Alan Cobb, president of the Kansas Chamber of Commerce and a Pompeo confidant.
Cobb rejected the notion that this week’s testimony had any effect on Pompeo’s standing in either the state or the nation.
“I don’t think Sondland’s testimony was damaging in any way to Pompeo or the president,” said Cobb, who served as an adviser on Trump’s 2016 campaign.
Cobb explored his own Senate run, but announced last month that he would forgo the race. Kansas’ filing deadline is not until June, but Cobb said his friend would likely have to make a decision about a campaign earlier – by February or March – to get his operation ramped up.
Russell Fox, a political scientist at Friends University in Wichita, said the televised impeachment hearings have increased the pressure on Pompeo to make a decision about his political future.
“As the hearings go public there’s going to be this pressure for Pompeo to essentially defend the people who work for him and the pressure to defend the president. And that pressure has really increased,” Fox said.
“Obviously, I can’t read his mind. But I can’t imagine somebody like Pompeo, who is a very calculating and careful person, I can’t imagine that he doesn’t have some sort of invisible line.”
Fox said leaving the Trump administration prematurely would carry grave risks for Pompeo even in deep red Kansas.
“There’s always the possibility that if he resigned from the administration, somebody like Kris Kobach could rile up the base by saying, ‘ah, look he was a secret Never Trumper all along,’” Fox said.
A Kansas source who knows Pompeo said the secretary has delayed his decision about the race multiple times. The source said that Pompeo was at one point expected to make a decision by September, but impeachment proceedings have complicated his calculus.
“If he and the president have a falling out, he’ll leave,” said the source who asked for anonymity to speak candidly. “If they don’t, it’s going to be up to the president.”
This story was originally published November 24, 2019 at 6:00 AM.
