The most recent round of runoffs were a resounding success for the MAGA Movement: Rep. Barry Moore, a House Freedom Caucus member and longtime Trump supporter who was endorsed by the president, comfortably defeated rival Jared Hudson, a former Navy SEAL sniper, in solidly red Alabama's GOP Senate runoff.
In Georgia's Republican Senate runoff, an 11th hour endorsement by Trump this past weekend helped boost Rep. Mike Collins, a MAGA champion, to victory over former college football coach Derek Dooley, who was backed by establishment Republican Gov. Brian Kemp.
And, in Georgia's GOP gubernatorial runoff, the candidate Trump backed, Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, who was also endorsed by term limited Governor Brian Kemp this past weekend, was defeated by Rick Jackson.
now you are thinking, but wait, I thought you said MAGA won the runoffs.
MAGA did win the runoffs, because the MAGA Movement is increasingly looking beyond President Trump for Trump-like change agent candidates.
Does this mean Donald Trump is no longer the leader of the MAGA Movement? Clearly, he still is.
As a FOX News source observed, "Rick bearhugged Trump. All of his ads and material was about how he's going to be Trump's favorite governor. So, the race was not really a referendum on Trump."
Rick Jackson’s victory does mean is that MAGA has become a mindset, rather than a political coalition centered on Donald Trump’s outsized personality and his 2016 agenda.
And that mindset is one of unalterable skepticism toward anything and anyone who has even a hint of establishment connections, be they longtime incumbency (Burt Jones served in the Georgia State Senate for a decade from 2013 to 2023) or association with establishment donors and endorsements, of which Lt. Gov. Burt Jones had plenty.
A similar dynamic played out in the Iowa runoff, when President Trump’s 11th-hour endorsement of Republican Rep. Randy Feenstra of Iowa in the race to succeed retiring GOP Gov. Kim Reynolds failed to boost him on to the November General Election.
Rep. Feenstra, a good guy with a solid conservative MAGA voting record, was narrowly edged by Zach Lahn, a businessman, farmer and former political strategist who was backed by the political wings of MAHA — the acronym for the Make America Healthy Again movement aligned with Trump Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — and Turning Point USA, the powerful Trump-aligned conservative organization co-founded by the martyred Charlie Kirk.
From our perspective these results are not evidence that voters are breaking up with President Trump. The fact that MAGA has at least become a mindset, if not yet a fully formed and agreed upon political agenda, is a good thing, and demonstrates it is capable of becoming a self-sustaining political movement with a future beyond Doanld Trump’s tenure as President.
