Why this underdog GOP candidate believes he has a chance to beat Trump in 2024
Ryan King
Video Embed
Former President Donald Trump is no longer alone in the 2024 fray.
Republican Steve Laffey just launched a long-shot presidential primary campaign last week and is convinced he has a pathway to achieve an upset victory. Laffey, who lives in Colorado with his family, is planning to move to New Hampshire and embark on a campaign blitz to make inroads with locals in the critical battleground state.
AMERICANS UNENTHUSED ABOUT TRUMP-BIDEN REMATCH: POLL
His message is simple: The Republican Party has strayed from its fiscally conservative roots, and the country is in need of dire structural reforms, or else, the future will be bleak for younger generations, such as his six children.
“We do not, in our country, directly confront our problems, and we have to. My party has avoided it,” Laffey told the Washington Examiner. “We are between the rock and the hard place because we didn’t make these structural changes and Social Security and other things in the debt.”
Laffey worked as an executive at Raymond James Morgan Keegan and also served as the two-term mayor of Cranston, Rhode Island, from 2003 to 2007. He took over the city when it was in dire financial straits and credits himself for the city’s turnaround. Laffey campaigned for the Ocean State’s Senate seat in 2006 but was bested in a primary and subsequently moved to Fort Collins, Colorado.
Pointing to America’s soaring debt-to-GDP levels and the easy-money monetary policy at the Federal Reserve, Laffey believes the United States is less than a year and a half from “losing the country.” If Republicans fail to “tell people the truth” about Social Security’s looming insolvency and enact reforms, the U.S. will be forced to undergo drastic measures to stave off default, Laffey fears.
“What we need is to stop the intergenerational stealing — that’s populist. The average young person has been taught the protest about some woke cause,” Laffey said. “[Under] my plan, [for everybody] who’s already got Social Security — there’s no changes. Everybody who’s 20 — it’s a completely different plan. Will some people get less? Yeah, the ages are probably 43 to 57 — they may get less.”
Many Republicans, including Trump, have eschewed Social Security reform as they fear the political ramifications, but Laffey believes the GOP has a duty to step up.
NIKKI HALEY ANNOUNCES STOPS IN NEW HAMPSHIRE
“It’s fiscally immoral, and it’s generational stealing from our children to keep saying this. We all know that Social Security has, like, $61 trillion unfunded liabilities. So that’s almost double the national debt, certainly almost triple what we actually borrow at the public level,” Laffey said.
Laffey also supports the 9–9–9 Plan championed by the late 2012 Republican presidential contender Herman Cain, whom he describes as a friend. He argues that comprehensive tax reform is important to boost the economy and fairness.
Prominent Republicans, such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, former Vice President Mike Pence, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and others, are rumored to be mulling a 2024 GOP primary run. When asked about the political experience they bring to the table, Laffey laughed.
“Wouldn’t it be better to have someone who was right?” he said. “Go ask Jeb Bush or Scott Walker, good governors, what it was like to be leading in the polls before they announced. Pretty much the kiss of death.”
Hearkening back to his past public policy punditry, Laffey argued that he correctly opposed the COVID-19 lockdowns and sounded the alarms early on about how pandemic relief, such as the Paycheck Protection Program, could become a bonanza for fraud. He also emphasized that unlike most of the speculated heavyweight 2024 contenders, his hands were freed of ties to Trump and his budgeting policies.
“It’s a real problem for people that President Trump really helped or [who] worked in his administration. That’s their problem,” Laffey said. “What do you really say when someone helped you become the governor and someone employed you for a number of years?”
Overall, Laffey has several major policy goals outlined by his campaign: fixing Social Security, “stop transferring wealth to China,” reforming the Fed, ending corruption in the federal government, tax overhaul, and education reform.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
In the meantime, Laffey is working to build up his campaign in the Granite State so that he can get to the presidential debates and make waves from there.
Most big-name Republicans have seemingly been reticent to throw their hat into the political ring right away, likely trying to avoid being Trump’s primary political punching bag for as long as possible. Haley is poised to become Trump’s first prominent challenger during an announcement in Charleston, South Carolina, next week.