Ambitious GOP senators dive into midterms while Trump weighs his 2024 plans

Tom Cotton likens it to a faraway target at the shooting range. Tim Scott says any talk of it is premature. Ted Cruz allows that it’s in the back of his mind.

Whether Republican senators demur or not, the 2024 presidential primaries are not far off. And for those who want to position themselves in case Donald Trump shows vulnerability or takes a pass, the last few days of the midterms amount to the race’s starting gun.

As Trump finalizes his own midterm rally schedule, a half-dozen GOP senators have launched their own campaign expeditions that party insiders are sure to notice. That group includes Florida's Rick Scott, Iowa's Joni Ernst, as well as Scott of South Carolina, Cotton of Arkansas, Cruz of Texas and even Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

No one wants to get ahead of the former president, of course. But there's a sense among Republicans that some senators may run even if Trump does — and many more will if the former president backs off.

So as the calendar turns to November, GOP politicians are leaping onto their best stage: hotly contested congressional campaigns.

“We’ve got to win the White House in ’24. And I think that is absolutely critical. But the first step is taking Congress back,” Cruz said in a phone interview from a stop in Tennessee amid his nationwide tour for GOP candidates. “Everybody who can help us win in 2022 should be doing everything humanly possible to make it happen.”

He added of the next two years: “It’s critical that we nominate and elect a strong conservative who can turn this country around. That’s what ’24 is going to be all about: Determining who that person is. And before we get there, we’ve gotta get through 2022.”

Senate Republicans already have competition in the midterms limelight beyond Trump's own rallies. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis publicly endorsed Colorado GOP candidate Joe O’Dea after Trump attacked him, while former Vice President Mike Pence has campaigned for Arizona Republican candidate Blake Masters and New Hampshire Senate hopeful Don Bolduc.

Cruz is running a particularly high-profile operation this year, complete with a monthlong, 25-stop “Truth and Courage” bus trek aimed at electing as many conservatives as possible to both the House and Senate. He’s also directly appealing to donors to raise money for his preferred candidates — and he's raised plenty of cash.

Then there's Cotton who, according to an aide, has raised money for more than a half-dozen Senate candidates, advises several on their races and talks strategy with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

“It’s all hands on deck now, whether it’s me or Tim Scott or Joni Ernst,” Cotton said on the sidelines of an Ohio stop for GOP Senate hopeful J.D. Vance. The Arkansan then offered an aggressively sunny midterms prediction: “We’re going to hold all of our seats and pick up several of their [Democratic] seats as well.”

That means it's no time to sit idle if you're a GOP senator with higher ambitions. Even as Trump has hinted his plans to seek the nomination, there’s a wide recognition within the party that the contest could become a free-for-all.

Cruz is one of the most open about his aspirations for a second White House bid. Yet as Trump stays vague on his timing, the two-term Texan says he’s also considering whether to run for Senate again in 2024, a year when Rick Scott and Josh Hawley of Missouri will also be up for reelection.

Another factor to weigh: Cruz is ascending to the top Republican spot on the Commerce Committee next year — a big shift for a senator who made his name battling with GOP leaders and dueled Trump in the last lap of the 2016 primary.

Meanwhile, Tim Scott appeared at events and town halls all over the country despite being on the ballot this year, including with Fox News host Sean Hannity. He’s showed up dozens of times for GOP candidates, and his affiliated super PAC is throwing millions of dollars into the battle for the Senate.

Both Cotton and Scott were asked at a recent Vance event in Ohio about their presidential plans. Cotton said the topic takes a back seat to what’s in front of him: “There’s a time to shoot at the 300-meter target, but you’ve got to make sure you hit the 50-meter target. And right now [2022] is the 50-meter target.”

Another emerging trail star who's preparing to ascend to the No. 4 GOP leader job, Ernst, is playing in Senate races from blue Washington to red Ohio. She declined consideration as Trump’s running mate in 2016 but could easily find herself in the mix again for a national office.

“We’ve heard a lot about a red wave in November — but that’s not just going to happen. Yes, recent history is on our side for the midterms, but it takes hard work. You have to engage directly with the voters, hear from them, and make the case,” Ernst said in a statement for this story. “I’ve been helping our candidates do just that."

She added that if Republicans do indeed flip both chambers, the party has “to prove to voters they made the right choice by not only putting a check on Joe Biden but improving the lives of our families.”

As the conference's campaign committee chair, Rick Scott's been ubiquitous himself in the media and on the stump — more so than some previous chairs. The Florida senator’s appeared in 10 states with Senate races over the last two weeks, including Iowa and New Hampshire.

Another senator who has openly discussed another run is Marco Rubio, who first needs to close out his reelection campaign in battleground Florida this fall.

As for 2016 presidential candidate Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), the Trump critic-turned-adviser said there’s no sequel to his ill-fated White House run: “He’s trying to win control of the Senate. Nothing more, nothing less,” a spokesperson for Graham said.

And Hawley endorsed Vance and Arizona Senate nominee Masters early in this cycle's primaries. Those moves eventually aligned him with Trump, though they picked different nominees in Hawley's home-state primary. Both Rick Scott and Hawley say they plan to run for Senate reelection in 2024.

Like Hawley, Cruz was active in the midterms' Senate primaries, endorsing victorious candidates Rep. Ted Budd (R-N.C.) and Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt while backing losing hopefuls Josh Mandel in Ohio and David McCormick in Pennsylvania. Cruz also has taken an expansive interest in House races, trying to flip Democratic seats in South Texas while raising money in batches for the second cycle in a row.

Racing around the country campaigning has meant spending about five nights at home this month and missing his daughter’s birthday, Cruz said. The hard push is worthwhile, as he tells it, because the kind of majority Republicans will end up with is as important as control of Congress.

Republican voters, Cruz said, are “incredibly frustrated that there are lots of candidates who sound great on the stump, and they get to Washington and they get sucked into the swamp.”