Lara Trump’s political prize beckons with Florida Senate vacancy

Joshua Green, Tribune News Service

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. With Marco Rubio poised to relinquish his 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 Gov. 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. Last 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.”

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.