Matthew X. Wilson reports today on the Republican primary race to succeed Mitch McConnell. As he notes, Nate Morris, who founded the waste-management company Rubicon Technologies, is having some success portraying himself as the Trumpiest and most MAGA candidate of them all.
But there are some complications to this narrative. One of his rivals in the race, former state attorney general Daniel Cameron, scores some real hits against Morris. In 2019, Morris signed “the CEO Action for Diversity and Inclusion Pledge.” After the killing of George Floyd in 2020, he wrote, “The protests we are seeing are a manifestation of the pain and anger that so many are feeling” and added that this pain and anger needed to lead to “real, measurable, and decisive action.” He did not condemn rioting. And in 2021, Rubicon endorsed the Paris climate agreement. None of that sounds very MAGA, or even especially conservative, to me.
One oddity of the race is that while Morris is emphasizing a hawkish stance on immigration, the other candidates, Cameron and Representative Andy Barr, are closer to Trump’s stated position than he is. Morris says we should have no legal immigration at all until all illegal immigrants have left the country. Trump, who has said repeatedly that he wants more legal immigration, has not endorsed this position. But given that Cameron and Barr have fully supported Trump’s border policies, Morris may have figured he needed a way to get to their right, even if it meant getting to Trump’s right, too.