Republican ex-senator Jeff Flake endorses Kamala Harris as anti-Trump right coalesces

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

Kamala Harris on Sunday picked up the endorsement of another prominent opponent of Donald Trump within the Republican Party, a sign that the remaining “#NeverTrump” wing of the GOP is rallying behind her.

Jeff Flake, a former senator from Arizona who left Congress in 2019, issued his endorsement in a statement released on Twitter. He further explained his motivations in an interview Sunday on ABC’s This Week.

“I’ll be supporting Kamala Harris for President and Tim Walz for Vice President,” wrote Flake in the post accompanying his video message endorsement. “I’ve served with Kamala in the U.S Senate. I’ve also served with Tim in the House of Representatives.”

He added: “I know them. I know first of hand of their fine character and love of country. I would encourage all Republicans who feel this way to do the same.”

His endorsement follows those of several other prominent Republicans: former vice president Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz Cheney, an ex-congresswoman who co-chaired the January 6 investigation, as well as her committee colleague Adam Kinzinger. It wasn’t a particularly surprising addition to the list, either; Flake supported Joe Biden publicly in 2020.

“I think Republicans believe in the rule of law in particular, and it's difficult to support a candidate who, having lost an election, tries to use the powers of the presidency to overturn that election,” said Flake on ABC. “I know a lot of conservative Republicans feel the way I do.”

That #NeverTrump coalition — which often materializes at events hosted by the center-right Bulwark publication — is not satisfied with those numbers, and has been publicly pressuring retiring GOP senator Mitt Romney, an avowed critic of Trump’s, to join them in endorsing Harris.

But Romney has been particularly blunt about his reasoning for not doing so: political expediency.

“My particular vote doesn’t have a big impact: I’m from Utah,” Romney said in a recent interview on MSNBC, downplaying the effect his endorsment would likely have on some independents and Harris-curious Republicans around the country. “In my case, having been the former nominee of the Republican Party, I want to make sure that I’m in a position after this election to have some influence on the direction of our party in the future. So I’m not going to go out and do something that would make that more difficult to occur.”

Flake, meanwhile, is not likely to re-enter electoral politics any time soon, at least while Donald Trump remains essentially in control of the conservative movement. He declined to seek re-election in 2018, early on into the Trump presidency, after serving in the GOP’s twin-chamber majority and voting with his party on Trump’s tax plan and effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Kyrsten Sinema, a Democrat who later left the party, became an independent, then dropped out of her own bid for re-election, replaced him in the seat.

Since leaving office, he has been a political expert for CBS News and currently serves as Biden’s ambassador to Turkey.