- Tennessee Republicans are tweaking residency rules to scuttle a Trump-backed candidate.
- Morgan Ortagus, who served as a spokesperson for Trump's State Department is their target.
- Ortagus could get booted from the ballot before the April 7 qualifying deadline.
Tennessee Republicans are hustling to halt a Donald Trump-endorsed candidate Morgan Ortagus' congressional campaign just months after the former State Department employee joined the House race.
Ortagus, a former TV personality who worked as a spokeswoman for the Trump administration's State Department from 2019-2021 got the boss' blessing in January to run for retiring Democratic Rep. Jim Cooper's seat. In his endorsement, — one of at least 100 he's made — Trump described Ortagus as "very strong and impressive."
Ortagus announced her candidacy a few weeks later even though she'd only moved to Tennessee within the last year and she recently demonstrated how little she knew about the area by flubbing a district-centric quiz on local radio.
State Republicans are annoyed about having Trump's rubber stamp stick them with what they consider an outsider in the race. One way Tennessee Republicans are working to hamper her campaign is by throwing up procedural roadblocks to get her out of the race before the qualifying deadline of April 7, NBC News reports.
A new state Senate-passed bill requiring state-wide candidates to have been a local resident for at least three years is pretty much designed to weed out Ortagus, according to The Tennessean, given her newcomer status.
"I'll leave state matters to the state legislature," Ortagus said in a prepared statement about the local pushback, adding that she intends to remain in the fight "to defend President Trump's agenda."
Trump, Tennessee GOP executive committee leaders, and Republican National Committee members did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the internal row.
Ortagus is one of nine Republicans vying to represent the Nashville area on Capitol Hill. Cooper, a 16-term lawmaker ran unopposed in 2020. He beat GOP candidate Jody Ball by a 2-to-1 margin in 2018, garnering 68% of the vote to Ball's 32%.
Frank Nicely, the Tennessee state senator who sponsored the new residency requirement bill, is backing former Tennessee House Speaker Beth Harwell for the House seat. But he wants Trump to know there are no hard feelings.
"If he was endorsing a Tennessee candidate that lived here, met the qualifications the party puts out, that's one thing," Nicely told NBC. "But shipping somebody in and endorsing is a different thing."
Ortagus has also been endorsed by former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.