When Donald Trump ran for president in 2016, U.S. Rep. Earl “Buddy” Carter didn’t endorse him until six weeks after he had clinched the Republican nomination and 11 days before the party’s national convention in Cleveland.
Not this time around.
Nearly two months before the Iowa caucuses, the first real test in the campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, Coastal Georgia’s congressman declared Trump “the candidate best positioned to win back the White House and put an end to Joe Biden’s border and crime crisis while rebuilding our economy from the wreckage of Bidenflation.”
Carter’s endorsement on X, the social media website formerly known as Twitter, came mid-day on Thanksgiving eve, after Washington and the media world had largely unplugged.
Since then, Carter has not explained the timing of his announcement. His office has not issued a news release, either.
Carter’s decision, however, sparked conversations among some Coastal Georgia’s Republican leaders about whether the 66-year-old pharmacist is trying to curry favor with the MAGA wing of the party and stave off a primary fight next spring.
With the Republican Party apparatus in Coastal Georgia having shifted further right than at any time since Carter took office in 2015 — part of the larger split occurring statewide — the ground now seems fertile for that sort of challenge next year.
Lingering suspicions
The 66-year-old Port Wentworth native has been primaried in two of his five campaigns for Congress, the last time in 2020, when he defeated Nine Line Apparel co-founder Daniel Merritt and Army veteran Ken Yasger with 82.2% of the vote.
Carter has worked hard to prove his pro-Trump bona fides. During Trump’s four years as president, he voted for the president’s position 95.1% of the time, according to FiveThirtyEight.
But since then, Carter has differed with his more aggressive conservative colleagues in the House on some fundamental matters, issues where local MAGA leaders find fault. Although Carter seeks to cut red tape and shrink the federal government — and in the case of the Internal Revenue Service, abolish it — he isn’t fundamentally opposed to the processes and agencies of the federal government.
That puts him at odds with the grassroots Republicans in Coastal Georgia who now enjoy increasing sway.
The newly elected leadership of the Chatham County party and the state delegates representing the 1st congressional district view the multimillionaire ex-pharmacist, who recently sold his house in Pooler and bought a property on St. Simons Island, as a prime example of the Swamp, that cabal of the rich and powerful, both Republicans and Democrats, who control Washington.
That view was reinforced with Carter’s evasive response to Trump’s announcement in November of his candidacy for 2024. Carter won no good will when, citing a previously planned family vacation, he skipped the state GOP convention in Columbus in July, in which Trump was the headline speaker.
Suspicions among some Coastal Georgia Republicans burst into public view earlier this month, when the Chatham County GOP criticized Carter’s draft legislation supporting the naming of the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
“The citizens of Georgia do not want to give the United Nations any authority over part of our state,” the statement said. The World Heritage Site designation “can and does result in the centralization of policy-making authority at the federal level, particularly by the Executive Branch.”
Short memories
By rushing to endorse Trump, Carter is likely making a series of bets about his political future.
The first is that his support of the first American president or former president ever to be indicted in the country’s 234-year history — let alone a conviction on any one of the 91 felony counts filed against the former president across four jurisdictions — won’t hurt his reelection chances or his prospects for higher office.
As well, Carter appears to believe that Gov. Brian Kemp and other members of the anti-Trump wing of the state GOP won’t penalize him for endorsing a candidate they believe damages the Republican brand.
Finally, Carter appears to have decided that, no matter what Trump’s own future looks like, his own longevity revolves around courting the local MAGA wing of the party.
That can be seen in Carter’s communications and campaign strategy, which focus on conservative media outlets such Fox Business News, the One America News Network, and the John Fredericks Radio Network, as well as on organizing events with friendly audiences around Coastal Georgia..
Carter’s margin of victory over his Democratic opponent Wade Herring in last year’s election — 59.1% of the vote to Herring’s 40.9% — shows that he faces little blowback locally for his choice to embrace Trump, the discredited lies about the 2020 election or the violence that stained the peaceful democratic transition of power on Jan. 6, 2021.