Politico reports that U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is indeed still considering seeking the GOP nod to succeed retiring Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts. Pompeo said in February that a Senate bid was “ruled out” only to open the door open again a month later, and he’s kept quiet since then about this race. However, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell isn’t being so subtle, and he told Politico this week, “He’s still my first choice” for this seat.
Senate Republicans have made it very clear that they see Pompeo as their best chance to prevent former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who lost last year’s gubernatorial election, from winning the Senate primary. Politico adds that the ultimate GOP nightmare scenario is a general election between Kobach and former Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, a race they fear Team Red could well lose.
McConnell and his allies, though, not only think that Pompeo could stop Kobach, but that he could also deter Sebelius from even running. We haven’t seen any indication that Sebelius, who resigned in 2009 to become Barack Obama’s secretary of health and human services, is considering a Senate campaign. Kobach, though, has been publicly considering running for months, but he hasn’t entered the contest yet.
However, while McConnell has made it extremely clear that he wants Pompeo to leave the State Department, not everyone in his caucus is so convinced. Pompeo has been one of the rare high-level officials to survive the Trump administration’s many purges, and Sens. Roy Blunt and Joni Ernst both said that they weren’t anxious to see him leave.
Some of Pompeo’s allies also don’t think it’s a good idea for him to depart the administration when there’s no obvious replacement, with one unnamed confidant calling the idea “irresponsible.” Trump himself also doesn’t seem to want to lose his secretary of state, and McConnell acknowledged that, while Pompeo was his number one pick for this seat, “I doubt that the president would agree with that.”
Kansas’ filing deadline isn’t until the start of next June, so we could be watching this seemingly endless soap opera for a long time to come. So tune in soon for our next edition of “Guiding Mike.”
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