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President Donald Trump has about three years and six months left in his second term, but one top GOP figure has already opened up a commanding lead in the race to succeed him as the Republican Party standard-bearer.
An Emerson College poll released on Friday revealed that Vice President J.D. Vance has a whopping 34-percent lead in a hypothetical Republican primary race over his next-closest potential rival, Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
The survey found Vance garnering support from 46 percent of GOP primary voters, while Rubio only received 12 percent.
The next-highest hypothetical vote-getters were Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., with DeSantis — who unsuccessfully challenged Trump for the GOP nomination in last year’s election, getting 9 percent of support, while Kennedy garnered support from 5 percent of respondents despite being a registered Independent, not a Republican.
Vance’s commanding lead among potential Republican primary voters could be an indicator that the GOP faithful see him as the natural heir to Trump’s nationalist-populist iteration of Republicanism. But it could also be a result of Vance’s high-profile role giving him higher name recognition than Rubio despite the ex-Florida senator spending years on the national political scene.
Trump, who has often floated — perhaps in jest — the idea of running for and serving an unconstitutional third term, has been reluctant to throw support behind any possible political heir so early in his term.
But in an interview with NBC News last month, the president seemed to favor his fellow Floridian over his current vice president when asked who he saw as a successor, mentioning Rubio’s name before Vance’s during an appearance on Meet the Press.
“You look at Marco, you look at J.D. Vance, who’s fantastic … you look at — I could name 10, 15, 20 people right now just sitting here,” he said after moderator Kristen Welker asked about his confidence that his brand of MAGA republicanism would outlast his time in the White House.
A White House official later told NBC that they’d been surprised by Trump elevating Rubio’s name over Vance’s, but it wasn’t exactly out of place for the president to do so given his history of stoking and reveling in competition and rivalry among his inner circle.
Another White House aide said Trump sees both men as “both very loyal and very talented,” while an ally of the ex-Florida senator said people in Rubio’s orbit are “feeling really good about how things are playing out” given Trump’s decision to allow Rubio to also serve as his national security adviser — the first time a president has allowed his Secretary of State to have that dual role since Henry Kissinger did so under President Richard Nixon five decades ago.
The Rubio ally acknowledged Vance has the advantage in an eventual GOP primary race but said the Secretary of State has “the pole position” should the vice president falter for any reason.
Another Rubio ally noted that in Trump-era politics, one can fall just as fast as one can rise.
“Vance is the guy for now, but as we have seen, for now isn’t forever,” they said.
