Politics

Mitt Romney won’t say he’s for Harris because he wants ‘to have a voice’ in a post-Trump GOP

Published

2 years ago

November 11, 2024

Mitt Romney won’t say he’s for Harris because he wants ‘to have a voice’ in a post-Trump GOP

Sen. Mitt Romney once again declined to say whether he’s voting for Kamala Harris in the election, suggesting that his reticence now will enable him to have some influence over the direction of the Republican Party in a hypothetical post-Trump future.

“I’ve made it very clear that I don’t want Donald Trump to be the next president of the United States,” he said Tuesday when asked about the election at a forum at the University of Utah’s Hinckley Institute of Politics. “I want to continue to have a voice in the Republican Party following this election. I think there’s a good chance that the Republican Party is going to need to be rebuilt or reoriented.”

Despite being a fierce critic of TrumpRomney has refused to endorse the Democratic nominee publicly in the previous two elections. The Utah senator said he wrote in his wife, Ann Romney, in the 2016 election, and he revealed that he did not vote for Trump in 2020 but declined to say whether he voted for Joe Biden. This year, Romney has said again that he won’t vote for Trump, but he has remained tight-lipped about whether Harris has his vote.

“I believe I will have more influence in the party by virtue of saying it as I’ve said it,” he said on Tuesday. “I’m not planning on changing the way I’ve described it.”

Romney’s outspoken opposition to Trump has left him at odds with most of his partyin which even former rivals and critics have come around to support the Republican presidential nominee. Yet Romney’s refusal to back Harris publicly has also set him apart from prominent anti-Trump Republicans who have done so, like former Rep. Liz Cheneywho was even campaigning with Harris in Wisconsin over the weekend.

Romney, meanwhile, has downplayed the significance of his choice in the election. “My particular vote doesn’t have a big impact because I’m from Utah,” he told MSNBC in May. And he has said before that he wants to hold on to influence within his party down the line, which he evidently believes cannot happen if he endorses a Democrat.

But the former GOP presidential nominee, who has bemoaned what he sees as waning centrism in American politics, conceded to CBS News that he does not really belong to the GOP anymore — and that was a year ago. He lamented the direction of the party under Trump’s influence and said he no longer sees in most of his party the traditional Republican values he believes in.

There is also the question of what a post-Trump GOP would even look like. But considering the right’s growing extremismthe Republican Party that Romney hopes to influence in the future may be even more alien to him than it is now.

Clarissa-Jan Lim

Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking/trending news blogger for BLN Digital. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.

Politics

World Cup fuels ticketing reform demands

Published

13 hours ago

June 21, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Demands are growing for a political reckoning over ticket scams at the World Cup — and beyond.

The National Independent Venue Association and Fan Alliance, organizations representing and advocating for entertainment venues and artists respectively, sent a joint letter to Congress on Thursday, calling on lawmakers to ban speculative and ghost tickets, cases where resellers flog tickets they don’t actually have.

The letter — addressed to Speaker Mike Johnson, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer — includes nearly two dozen accounts of fans who say they were scammed out of thousands of dollars trying to get tickets to the World Cup, which began last week. The groups are also asking fans to share their own stories with elected officials via the Fix the Tix Fan Action Center that launched last week.

“Every one of these stories erodes the public’s faith that consumers should and will be protected from fraud,” NIVA Executive Director Stephen Parker and Fan Alliance founder Donald Cohen wrote. “We urge Congress to work with us to prevent fraud like this in the future and finally enact ticket resale consumer protections that will protect Americans and ensure affordability.”

The letter flagged fans like Dacy Gillespie, who bought World Cup tickets for her sons on Christmas, only to learn on match day — months later — that the seller couldn’t deliver them. And Skylie Shore, who Parker and Cohen said spent well over $6,000 on tickets to the Scotland-Haiti match on June 13, but was forced to wait outside the stadium because she couldn’t access them as fans marched in on gameday.

“These examples reveal a consistent pattern: consumer deception, speculative ticket sales, and broken-hearted American families at the hands of resale ticketing companies like StubHub,” Parker and Cohen wrote.

In a statement, StubHub spokesperson Jack Sterne said that the platform does not allow speculative ticket sales, and blamed FIFA for users’ difficulty in accessing their tickets.

“We understand that attending the World Cup represents a significant investment in time and money, and we take our responsibility to every fan who books through our platform seriously,” Sterne said in a statement. “Many of the issues fans are facing trace back to the event organizer’s technology infrastructure, newly announced transfer restrictions, and a new app that was launched just a month ago.”

In response, FIFA said in a statement that the organization “can guarantee the validity and delivery of tickets purchased through its official platforms” and that FIFA.com/tickets “is the official ticket sales channel” for the tournament.

NIVA and Fan Alliance are urging congressional leadership to place universal price-gouging limits on ticket resale, enact stringent fines on perpetrators and a violation-reporting mechanism for ticket scams, and require secondary ticketing platforms to produce data on ticket fulfillment and consumer complaints.

The groups are not the only ones monitoring for evidence of shady ticket practices. Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway issued a consumer guidance in advance of the tournament, urging match-goers to beware of fraud and promising to hold offenders accountable. And the FBI in May put out a public service announcement, warning fans against purchasing tickets on copycat websites modeled on FIFA’s.

“With the World Cup coming to Kansas City, excitement is high and, unfortunately, so is the potential for fraud,” Hanaway said in her statement. “Missourians should be able to enjoy this once-in-a-generation event without fear of being deceived. My office will hold accountable anyone who seeks to exploit our families, and we stand ready to assist anyone who encounters suspicious activity.”