WH officials promised ‘money and personal attacks’ in bid to push out GOP Senate candidate in Indiana:
Indiana state Senate hopeful
Alexandra Wilson was promised “money” and threatened with “personal attacks” by White House officials in an attempt to boot her from a Republican primary, according to a new report.
According to a Friday
report from NBC News, Wilson has become a point of focus for President
Donald Trump’s team and Republicans. After a redistricting
plan backed by Trump was rejected, he has reportedly taken a special interest in elections in the state and there has been a heavy effort to get Wilson out of the race. Trump has backed
Brenda Wilson (no relation to Alexandra Wilson), a member of the Vigo County Council, against state Sen.
Greg Goode, who voted against the redistricting plan.
The NBC News report refers to multiple calls and messages that Alexandra Wilson shared concerning the race.
According to the report:
Over several days in February before the deadline for primary candidates to withdraw, White House officials peppered Alexandra Wilson with phone calls, text messages and voicemails that she recorded and shared exclusively with NBC News. In the calls, White House aides first tried to entice her to leave the race with possible job options. On another call, they later warned her about the money and attacks that would follow if she didn’t.
Wilson said she was contacted by White House aides
Matt Brasseaux,
James Blair, and
Marshall Moreau concerning the race. She was also reportedly hit up by Indiana Lt. Gov.
Micah Beckwith, the governor’s chief of staff, and a staffer for a conservative group. All were pressuring Wilson to drop out of the race before a deadline to drop in February.
According to the report, on February 11, Wilson received a call from Brasseaux, who directly gave her a White House contact to inquire about a job other than state senator.
“I’m going to ask the point-blank question here: Is there a pathway to where you would put some thought into another route to making an impact in your community?” the official asked.
Wilson was also warned at a later point that her past criminal charge could come back to haunt her. When she was 19, she was charged with resisting arrest. The felony charge became a point of contention and legal debate in the race despite Wilson getting the charge pled down to a misdemeanor. Her record was expunged in March.
Blair told Wilson that another point of confusion in the race could be her sharing a last name with another candidate.
“I just wanted to talk about that brass-tacks reality that I think is going to be really ugly. And I think we’re sort of working at cross purposes with two people with the same last name on the ballot,” Blair reportedly said.
“I had a hard time not feeling insulted the entire call,” Wilson said about talking to Brasseaux, who she said had little hope of offering her a job better than her current as a network engineer.
She said, “The admin position — I have a career, my job — that was a fraction of what I make a year. Let alone I had been adamant during that call of these are the local issues going on and this is what I’m passionate about.”
Wilson said Brasseaux and other White House and state officials were “very, very pushy” in getting her to drop out.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt responded to the report by saying that “President Trump is the decision-maker in these races, and it’s incumbent upon his team that he’s empowered to find out the facts about all of these races across the country. His team is again doing their jobs to ensure the best outcome and as many wins across the board as we can get.”
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