'You could vote against Trump twice': Weld campaign plots New Hampshire strategy

MANCHESTER, N.H. — Former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld, the lone Republican challenger to incumbent President Donald Trump, addressed a local chapter of the Rotary Club in Manchester, New Hampshire at lunchtime on Monday.

Weld, who served as Massachusetts Governor in the 1990s before running as a vice presidential candidate on the Libertarian ticket in 2016, described himself as "kind of on the libertarian side" and vowed to "enlarge the electorate that will vote in the Republican primary." A pro-choice Republican, Weld told the midday audience of around 50 people that he opposed the highly restrictive abortion laws recently passed in Alabama and other red states.

Former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld spoke from behind a podium to the local chapter of the Rotary Club in a private dining room at an Italian restaurant along the Merrimack River in Manchester, New Hampshire.

He also pitched himself as "a major environmentalist" who helped to clean up Boston Harbor. He lamented the rollback of clean air and clean water protections under the Trump administration. "Crony capitalism is alive and well in Washington," he said.

The social liberal and fiscal conservative even told the Rotarians that he supported funding for the arts and the humanities. "You might not think it," he smiled. 

Yet when he was asked whether he would continue cutting spending or consider raising revenue to close the deficit, he sounded like a party-line Republican. "It will be a cold day in July before I say we need more revenue to the federal government," he said.

In response to the first question of the afternoon, Weld similarly praised the Affordable Care Act for extending health care coverage to 20 million people, but called the legislation "too government-heavy" for requiring premiums to be the same for everyone of a given age regardless of preexisting conditions. He proposed health savings accounts as the solution, one of the centerpieces of the failed American Health Care Act legislation supported by former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan in 2017.

Weld otherwise focused on foreign policy, where he offered harsh words for the President. He called exiting the Iran nuclear deal "a colossal blunder" and warned against rising tensions with the Islamic republic. "My inclination would be non-interventionist with regards to boots on the ground," he said. 

The final question asked Weld, who spoke from behind a podium in a private dining room at a renovated mill, about the consequences of a Trump victory for the Republican Party in 2020. "I guess it would be a fine thing for the Republican Party if you look at the implications of him being on the ballot," he said before predicting "the end of the Republican Party in Washington" in the long term.

In the end, the Boston Brahmin objected to Trump's personality more than anything. He called the President's day-to-day behavior "not a good Rotarian approach" and "like the bread and circuses in the Roman Empire."

Claira Monier, a former regional director of the Department of Health and Human Services in the Reagan administration and a New Hampshire co-chair of the Weld campaign, said after the event that her candidate would reach out to independents and Democrats in the Republican primary. "We might convince them by saying you could vote against Trump twice," she said. 

She believed that Weld could win the New Hampshire primary because Trump lost the state to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016. A longtime insider in Republican Party circles, she also cited "a lot of voters who are not happy" because of "racist stuff" like the "Send her back" chants directed at Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar. Republicans "don't mind his policy, but wish he'd keep his mouth shut," she added.

Whereas she said the Democratic candidates are "targeting millennials where they're going," Monier said the Weld campaign would target the business community and senior citizens with their appearances. "They vote too," she laughed. She thought both constituencies, well-represented among the Rotarians, would turn away from Trump because of his character despite the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. "We are American," she said. "We can read. We watch TV."

As for Weld, Monier likened the 74-year-old to her hero, former President Ronald Reagan. "He's getting better, coming on stronger," she said. "He is getting his stump speech down. He's comfortable to say a few jokes."

This work is made possible by the Russell H. Bostert Memorial Fellowship at Williams College.