Why Bill Weld Is Really Running Against Trump

The former Massachusetts governor thinks he can rebuke the president even without beating him.

President Donald Trump strolled to a dominating victory in New Hampshire last night. “Wouldn’t a big story be that I got more New Hampshire Primary Votes than any incumbent president, in either party, in the history of that Great State,” he tweeted. “Not an insignificant fact!”

On a night when Bernie Sanders became the clear Democratic front-runner and Amy Klobuchar found a new wave of momentum, Trump wanted his preeminence in the Republican Party to be known. Commanding more than 85 percent of the vote, Trump spun it as an unqualified victory. It was nearly identical to the share of the vote that Ronald Reagan carried as the incumbent in 1984, and Trump won a higher percentage of the vote than Barack Obama, both George Bushes, and Bill Clinton did in their reelection primaries.*

But from his watch party in Manchester last night, facing the Merrimack River, former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld, who received 9 percent of the vote in the state’s Republican primary, was still holding on to hope. “Longtime Trump advisor Steve Bannon said that if Donald Trump loses 3% of the traditional Republican vote, he won’t be re-elected,” he said in a written statement. “I guess he won’t be re-elected.”

On Thursday, tucked inside a basement college classroom in Durham, New Hampshire, that could have doubled as a bunker, Weld described the stakes of his campaign. His expectations were the floor, he told me, leaning back and opening a bag of popcorn. If he got even a semblance of support, it meant that Republicans—and independents, who are able to vote in the state’s primary—were receptive to someone other than Trump. If Trump’s command of the Republican Party is complete, Weld at least hopes to be the firewall preventing Trumpism from spreading beyond the GOP.

“I’ve always been on the libertarian edge of the Republican Party,” he said. “But I certainly don’t feel a member of this party as it’s represented in Washington, D.C., right now.” There should be no illusions as to whether Weld will win the nomination. (He almost certainly won’t.) The president boasts a 94 percent approval rating among Republicans, according to the latest Gallup poll. But being an underdog has its benefits. “There’s nothing for me to be fearful about,” Weld said.