Wisconsin Senate leader Devin LeMahieu backs Nikki Haley over Trump in Republican primary

MADISON - A top Wisconsin Republican prefers former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley in the 2024 Republican primary for president, calling her less polarizing than the former president who is leading the polling race by double digits.

Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel he thinks Haley would "be a nice contrast to Joe Biden."

"But, you know, my endorsements haven't worked well in the past. So I'm not endorsing people," he joked about previous statewide candidates he endorsed who did not win their races. "It's up to the Republican voters to decide the primary."

Both leaders of the Republican-controlled state Legislature are not backing Trump in the 2024 GOP presidential primary.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, who has been a target of Trump's ire since 2021 when Vos refused to entertain impossible proposals to decertify the 2020 election, said earlier this year he will work to keep Trump from becoming the nominee.

LeMahieu did not discount Trump's chances if he ends up becoming the GOP nominee.

"I think he still has a chance to win Wisconsin. But I think other candidates might have a better shot, who maybe aren't as ... polarizing," LeMahieu said.

Since Trump launched his first campaign for president in 2015, Wisconsin Republicans have had a complicated relationship with the former president and reality television star who won Wisconsin in 2016 in a historic win for the GOP. Four years later, Trump lost the state but refused to accept the results and is still waging a baseless campaign against the state's election system.

Since Trump was elected in 2016, Wisconsin Republicans have lost every statewide race except three: Brian Hagedorn's bid for the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 2019 and this fall's reelection of U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson and the election of John Leiber as state treasurer.

Following Republicans' 2022 loss in the governor's race, LeMahieu said some voters told him Trump’s endorsement of GOP candidate Tim Michels was a reason not to vote for Michels.

“She said, ‘I will never vote for someone who goes to Donald Trump and asks for an endorsement, I just won’t do it,'” LeMahieu said at an event hosted by Wispolitics.com.

The shift is especially pronounced in the Milwaukee suburbs, once a reliable voting powerhouse bloc for Republicans but since 2016, has shifted toward Democrats.

Vos said last year Trump would not win talking about 2020.

"No candidate wins talking about the past. They just don't. So I want to talk about the future. I want somebody who's going to talk about the future. And I don't know who that's going to be. I don't know how it's going to work yet. But whoever runs in 2024, if they spend all their time talking about what should have been, we're going to lose," Vos said.

With about a year to go before the 2024 election, Biden holds a narrow lead in Wisconsin in a hypothetical rematch with Trump, according to a November Marquette University Law School Poll.

Biden leads Trump 50% to 48% among registered voters, well within the survey's margin of error.

But Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis leads Biden by 50% to 48% while Haley is far ahead of Biden by 53% to 44%.

Molly Beck can be reached at molly.beck@jrn.com.