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Trump Humiliated by String of Endorsement Flops in Key Races

The Daily Beast (William Vaillancourt) · back to the audit
Three Republican candidates endorsed by Donald Trump lost their primary races on Tuesday, adding to the list of the president's failed efforts to sway election outcomes.

Two of the losses were in the president's adopted home state of Florida, a week after Mike Lindell came up well short in his bid for Minnesota governor, and two weeks after Tennessee Rep. Andy Ogles and Michigan Rep. Amir Hassan lost their seats. All three had Trump's support.

In Florida's 19th District, which includes Naples and Fort Myers, there was a crowded field to replace Rep. Byron Donalds, who won his gubernatorial primary on Tuesday. The ten candidates on the ballot included former North Carolina Rep. Madison Cawthorn, who lost his seat in 2022 amid scandals, and former New York Rep. Chris Collins, whom Trump pardoned at the end of his first term after he pleaded guilty to insider trading and lying to Congress. Trump endorsed neither, instead opting for Catalina Lauf, a failed Illinois congressional candidate in 2020 and two years later in a different district.

Lauf, a 33-year-old former Commerce Department adviser whom Trump appointed in 2018, lost to Jim Schwartzel, the president of Sun Broadcasting, by about 7 percentage points, the Associated Press projected.

The other Trump-endorsed candidate to lose in Florida was an incumbent: Rep. Cory Mills.

Mills, 46, fell to Ryan Elijah, a former reporter for Orlando-area television station WOFL and a House candidate in Indiana in 2010. The margin was more than 13 percent, according to the AP.

Mills, an Iraq War veteran, was first elected to the north central Florida district in 2022. His re-election bid was marred in part by controversy over an alleged physical assault of a woman in Washington, D.C., in February 2025. An arrest warrant for Mills from the Metropolitan Police Department to interim U.S. Attorney Ed Martin's office wasn't signed, NBC News reported. Mills has denied wrongdoing.

The third office-seeker to fall short despite Trump's endorsement was Wyoming gubernatorial candidate Megan Degenfelder, the state's education superintendent. With 38 percent of the vote counted, Degenfelder was down more than 17 points to rancher and state senator Eric Barlow, according to the AP.

Trump, 80, deflected on the string of losses on Tuesday night. "A lot of great WINS tonight!!!" he wrote on Truth Social.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Beast.