The 2024 presidential election is unique because both President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his Republican challenger, President Donald J. Trump, are one-term options. Either man offers the potential for the first 12-year ticket since President George H.W. Bush succeeded President Ronald W. Reagan for a 1981-1993 one-party run.
Putting aside the dark fantasy of the second Biden term followed by Vice President Kamala Harris moving into the Oval Office, the play is on the Republican side.
There are roughly 10 names being floated as possible Trump running mates, all of whom would become the heir apparent the moment Trump is sworn in for his first time, four senators: Florida’s Marco Rubio and Ohio’s J.D. Vance, Arkansas’ Tom Cotton and South Carolina’s Tim Scott; two congressmen: New York’s Elise Stefanik and Florida’s Byron Donalds; one former Trump cabinet officer: Dr. Ben Carson and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum.
The media reports are that the Trump campaign sent each of these eight the vetting questionnaire. My RedState colleague Ward Clark discussed these names in his piece: “The Trump Veepstakes Continue With More Names on the List.”
An early frontrunner for the spot, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, was absent from the list. Also absent is the man who, I predict, will be selected as Trump’s vice president and the man who I believe could win two terms on his own: Virginia Gov. Glenn A. Youngkin.
With Youngkin as his vice president, Trump has a hardworking conservative who came into political life in the Trump era, not someone who joined politics before MAGA transformed the Republican Party.
The prospect of a 12-year ticket gives Americans the hope of political stability after the turmoil that has dominated national politics since 2008.
Youngkin is termed out as the commonwealth’s governor, and he is looking for his next act. After passing on the chance to challenge Democrat Sen. Tim Kaine this cycle, Youngkin could face Democrat Sen. Mark Warner in 2026 after his term is over. Both Kaine and Warner are former governors.
The Warner challenge is still out there, but no one turns down vice president.
Forget what you heard about running mates having no impact on the presidential campaign. No one ever said the vice-presidential candidate carried the top of the ticket, but the suitable running mate helps a great deal.
With Youngkin on the ticket, Trump has an emissary to the reluctant Republicans and suburban voters, who need that permissive excuse to support Trump.
This is not to say that Youngkin is a moderate or pushover.
In his push to hold onto legislative seats in 2023, Youngkin proposed his own 15-week abortion ban for a state where the previous governor did not accept a child’s right to life after it was born.
Youngkin’s most recent executive order directed the commonwealth to clean up the voter rolls.
His first executive order dismantled Critical Race Theory in Virginia’s K-12 public schools.
Youngkin Is in Play Because Virginia Is in Play
The governor told CNN host Jake Tapper on June 6 that polling favors Trump.
“Well, at least all of the polling that I’ve seen, and, Jake, you’ve seen it as well, is that the jerseys are on pretty tight right now,” he said. “I think there’s been some clear decisions made by a huge number of voters, there’s not that many that are undecided.”
Youngkin said he is confident voters will choose Trump over Biden.
“I think again, as the issues get discussed and debated between now and November 5, there’ll be a clear difference between President Trump and President Biden,” he said. “I think Americans and Virginians are ready for strength back in the White House.”
The last Republican to win Virginia was President George W. Bush in 2004, with 54 percent to Sen. John F. Kerry’s 46 percent.
In 2020, Trump lost to Biden with 44 percent to 54 percent.
Those 10 points are gone now, according to a Roanoke College poll conducted May 12 through May 21 with 711 likely voters. The poll showed Biden and Trump tied at 42 percent.
Significantly, Trump is sitting just about where he was in 2020, but Biden lost 12 points.
The same poll shows that 52 percent approve of Youngkin’s job performance, and 53 percent think the commonwealth is going in the right direction. Seventy percent of the same population thinks America is going in the wrong direction.
Youngkin, the former co-CEO of the Carlyle Group, was elected in 2021 with 51 percent.
The next poll was the Fox News poll, conducted June 1 through June 4 with 1,107 registered voters. It showed both men tied at 48 percent to 48 percent.
It is counterintuitive, but the poll of registered voters is probably more accurate than the poll of likely voters because Trump voters are not regulars; that is, they tend to only show up for Trump.
The challenge for Biden is to repeat his extraordinary 2020 turnout. President Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, along with Hillary Clinton in 2016, won Virginia with just under two million votes. Biden garnered 2.4 million votes for his 2024 win.
The Roanoke poll shows that Youngkin has the popular support to lock down the commonwealth if he was on the ticket with Trump.
Youngkin Never Went NeverTrump
Immediately after Virginia elected Youngkin, the former Rice University basketball player was touted as a possible challenger to Trump’s comeback.
People close to the Youngkin camp did entertain the idea that if Trump and DeSantis were at a stalemate going into Thanksgiving 2023, Youngkin could run up the middle.
In fact, his 2021 campaign consultant, Jeff Roe, said Youngkin was definitely a potential candidate.
Despite all of this static, Youngkin has never criticized Trump, and he routinely passes on the opportunity to do so.
Youngkin thanked Trump for supporting his win.
Trump himself took some pride in ownership for the Youngkin win, which came 11 months after he moved out of the White House but a year before he announced his 2024 campaign.
Speaking on the April 5, 2022, John Fredericks Show, Trump told Fredericks that Youngkin thanked him for his win.
John Fredericks: You are the reason Glenn Youngkin is the governor of Virginia because had you not gotten involved in it Terry McAuliffe wins hands down.
Trump: No chance—by the way, he wrote me a beautiful letter thanking me and all. I will tell you that right up front. He was very nice, but Youngkin would not have won the race – not even close.
I did a teleconference call to the state. We had a tremendous number of people – hundreds of thousands of people and everyone one of those people went out and voted. No, he would’ve lost, and MAGA was really excited about that when I did that, and they acknowledged that.
As if to seal the deal, when Youngkin came into office, he hired veterans of Trump world and officially endorsed the president in March.
LaCivita Is the Virginia Connection
There are two people running Trump’s 2024 campaign, Susie Wiles and Christopher LaCivita.
Wiles lives in Florida. LaCivita lives in Virginia, where he has spent the majority of his professional life, going back to his first jobs in politics for George Allen and his campaigns for congressman, governor, and senator—after he came home as a Purple Heart Marine veteran of the Gulf War.
When Youngkin won the 2021 gubernatorial election, he was not on the Youngkin campaign—that was run by consultant Jeff Roe and his firm Axiom—but as a partner in FP1, LaCivita was close enough.
In the 2021 cycle, LaCivita and FP1 worked on the successful GOP campaigns for Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears and Attorney General Jason S. Miyares.
If Youngkin vacates his office to become vice president, his client, Sears, will become the next governor. Sears would then be allowed to run for her own term in 2025 because the term limit only applies to elected terms.
Trump’s New Appreciation of TikTok Signals Connection to Youngkin Ally Yass
It just so happens that the biggest GOP contributor to Republican candidates this cycle is a huge fan of Youngkin.
In the 2023 Virginia legislative fight, Jeffrey Yass donated $2 million to Youngkin’s Spirit of Virginia PAC.
Yass, the leader of the Susquehanna International Group, contributed $10 million to the Club for Growth to produce and broadcast TV ads blasting Trump in Iowa. However, the ad campaign had to be discontinued when it became apparent that each of the 40 commercials, in one way or another, helped Trump.
Yass’s hostility towards Trump was not salved when Trump, on Aug. 6, 2020, signed an executive order that effectively outlawed TikTok because Susquehanna holds a 15 percent position in TikTok’s parent ByteDance—a position that could be worth $15 billion.
A court put the hold on the Trump ban, and then Biden rescinded the EO altogether.
Speaking of social media positions, Susquehanna also told The New York Times that it is a market maker in Trump’s Trump Social platform. This does not mean Susquehanna is an institutional investor, but rather that its traders work positions to facilitate other traders building or liquidating their own positions.
In February, Yass, the Club for Growth, and Trump agreed to bury the hatchet, so they are now committed to winning in 2024.
Part of that commitment was Trump’s realization that if TikTok went away, it would give a free ride to Facebook, whose CEO Mark Zuckerberg spent $400 million to defeat him in 2020.
So far, there have been no reports of Yass donating to the Trump campaign, but with all that TikTok business and Club for Growth awkwardness out of the way, picking Youngkin for vice president is what makes it work.
