Conservative talk show host and former Republican California gubernatorial candidate Larry Elder will “likely” announce a run for president in 2024 “soon,” a close friend of Elder’s told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Elder, host of “The Larry Elder Show,” who previously indicated he would launch a run for the GOP nomination by the end of March or early April, can be expected to announce a campaign by the end of the month, Tom Tradup, a close friend of Elder and vice president of SALEM Radio Network, told the DCNF in an interview. Elder launched into the national spotlight when he ran as a Republican for California’s 2021 general election recall to remove Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom from office.
The conservative host will likely run on restoring traditional values in America, and will capitalize on his often used slogan, “we’ve got a country to save,” according to Tradup.
“If he makes a decision to run, it’s because he truly does want to help this country move forward,” said Tradup. “[Americans] are tired of having word-processed, overly lawyered campaign statements that they run through the deflavorizor so that they won’t offend anybody. What you end up with is these candidates running who don’t stand for anything.”
Elder has made recent trips to key early primary state Iowa and has a political action committee, Elder For America, that continues to rake in donations nationwide, said Tradup. The PAC raised nearly $1.7 million in 2022, according to the Federal Election Commission.
An Elder campaign will harp on the importance of the traditional, nuclear American family where children are born into families with a married mother and father, according to Tradup. Elder believes this is the biggest issue the country faces and wants to end “the GOP’s failure to play hardball with radical Democrats in Washington.”
Through welfare, leftists destroy the nuclear family, inducing women to marry gov’t and men to abandon their financial/moral responsibility. Fatherless causes crime, victims are disproportionately “people of color.” Release the perps because they are victims of “systemic racism.“
— Larry Elder (@larryelder) December 26, 2021
In the recall election, the conservative host led the replacement side of the ticket, ending with 48.4% support with roughly 3.5 million votes, however, 69.1% voted not to recall Newsom.
Tradup noted that Elder running against Newsom was a “tough putt” in such a predominately blue state, but insisted it wouldn’t deter him from running for president, as the demographics aren’t the same across the country. He touted Elder’s success on the alternative ballot, where he picked up 57 out of the state’s 58 counties.
“Any Republican running in California is going to have a tough time because of the heavy, heavy Democratic registration,” said Tradup. “But the rest of the country is going to be very open to hearing the message that Larry Elder delivers.”
If Elder enters the race, he will join former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, conservative businessman Vivek Ramaswamy and former President Donald Trump, to whom Elder has defended in lieu of his indictment.
“I think Larry would laugh off any of the nicknames that Trump might come up with for him, but I don’t know that the president would attack him,” said Tradup.
Many people can’t handle criticism like the former president’s tactics, which shows how “thin-skinned” many politicians are, said Tradup. Elder could also face Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in a 2024 Republican primary, who has recently risen to prominence by his track record in Florida and his double-digit polling next to the former president.
“He’s got a winning personality that I believe, with all due respect to the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis doesn’t have. He’s got the policy chops, but so did Jeb Bush,” said Tradup.
It occurs to me that ever since the democrats somehow secured the election of Joe Biden, lots of people from every walk of life have decided “If he can do it, I can do it.” Ordinarily, this might be a good attitude, but it sure seems like there’s going to need to be a lot of culling of candidates before this is over.