How Did Republicans Let This Guy Become Their Senate Candidate?

Plus: A defense contractor with a sick streetwear label

(Composite / Photos: Logan Riely/Getty Images for BIG3, Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images / Shutterstock)

Former NBA draft pick Royce White won the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate in Minnesota Tuesday, locking in a chance to unseat incumbent Democrat Amy Klobuchar. While polling indicates that White’s chances of actually winning are slim to nil, his ascent in the GOP—uninterrupted by criticism, let alone condemnation, of his odious views and behavior—typifies Senate Republicans’ poor recruiting this campaign cycle.

The broad perception in D.C. was that Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee for the 2024 cycle, has been on something of a recruiting hot streak. He had developed a reputation for tapping electable, uncontroversial candidates to help the party pull off a course correction from the failures and follies of 2022. In that cycle, Democrats narrowly maintained their Senate majority despite favorable conditions for a turnover, in large part because they got to run against the likes of Dr. Oz and Herschel Walker.

This cycle, Daines scared off proven losers like Matt Rosendale, who had to step aside for former Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy in Montana, and even snagged popular moderate ex-governor Larry Hogan to run in place of a throwaway candidate in Maryland, making that race far more competitive than it has any right to be.

But as the campaign season has progressed, many of Daines’s Senate candidates have tripped and fallen into one of two categories: politically toxic wingnuts on one side, or ultra-rich carpetbagger types on the other. Many of them are polling far below Donald Trump in their states.