When Joe Kent ran for Congress last year, he was a political neophyte challenging a six-term incumbent congresswoman for the Republican nomination. But he also had one of the most valuable boosters in Republican politics: the now-former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.<\/p>\n
Mr. Carlson made Mr. Kent a regular on his prime-time show, which in turn helped make Mr. Kent\u2019s campaign.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was up against a Republican who was backed by the full weight of the Republican establishment,\u201d said Mr. Kent, who lost in the general election. \u201cBeing able to get on Tucker for free and have him say, \u2018I hope you win, I agree with what you\u2019re saying,\u2019 was really important.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr. Kent\u2019s experience reflects what made Mr. Carlson a singular figure in Fox News\u2019s stable of anchors until the network abruptly took \u201cTucker Carlson Tonight\u201d and its host off its channel last month. Supporters and detractors alike say Mr. Carlson\u2019s political power was rooted in his ability to place people and ideas from the vanguard of right-wing politics in front of the largest conventional conservative audience in media.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe really provided a populist nationalist platform in legacy national media in prime time,\u201d said Stephen K. Bannon, a former Trump adviser and editor in chief of Breitbart, a right-wing website. \u201cHe\u2019s the only one.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whether he can play a similar role as a conduit between the far right and the mainstream without Fox is perhaps the biggest question raised by Mr. Carlson\u2019s hints about his next move.<\/p>\n
Last week, he said he would be starting a new show on Twitter, apparently walking away from a $25 million Fox contract to do so. But the particulars of his plans \u2014 the platform\u2019s mercurial owner, Elon Musk, tweeted last week that \u201cwe have not signed a deal of any kind whatsoever\u201d with Mr. Carlson \u2014 remain largely vague, and Mr. Carlson did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n
Fox, which is in negotiations with Mr. Carlson over his departure and could seek to block his move to another platform, has not commented.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo matter what, it\u2019s a paradigm shift,\u201d said Jason Damata, the chief executive of Fabric Media, a media and advertising consultancy.<\/p>\n
The exact scale of the shift will depend on whether Mr. Carlson can break from the precedent set by earlier Fox stars. The anchors of Fox\u2019s prime-time block have long been among the largest-looming figures in conservative media. But their departures have had little impact on the habits of the networks\u2019 viewers. Past stars like Glenn Beck, Megyn Kelly and Bill O\u2019Reilly have typically moved on to lucrative but lower-profile next acts.<\/p>\n
Mr. Beck, arguably Mr. Carlson\u2019s closest analogue among his predecessors, attained enormous influence in the Tea Party movement after jumping from CNN Headline News to Fox News in 2008. After parting ways with the network in 2011, he began his own subscription-based streaming network, effectively trading a Fox-size audience for tens of millions more in annual revenues from a comparatively small viewership of loyal fans and mostly receding from political prominence.<\/p>\n
Mr. Carlson\u2019s impact, like Mr. Beck\u2019s, has been closely tied to the particular nature of the Fox platform.<\/p>\n
\u201cFox is on cable, it\u2019s a channel they set to by default on a lot of military bases, doctor\u2019s offices, gyms \u2014 that\u2019s where Tucker picked up so many viewers,\u201d said Nandini Jammi, the co-founder of Check My Ads, a brand safety consultancy, and previously the co-founder of Sleeping Giants, an organization that led campaigns pressuring companies to pull advertising from Fox News. \u201cThat\u2019s where Tucker picked up so many viewers.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAre those viewers going to go through a conversion process of giving Tucker their email addresses, actively seeking out his content, and sustaining him?\u201d Ms. Jammi continued. \u201cThat\u2019s a very difficult business to build.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ms. Jammi was skeptical of Mr. Carlson\u2019s ability to maintain the same footprint on the shakier ground of Twitter, a platform with a user base vastly larger than Mr. Carlson\u2019s Fox audience but a far more difficult place to build a durable, committed following.<\/p>\n
It was access to the Fox audience that made Mr. Carlson\u2019s show a coveted booking for right-wing activists, politicians and social media personalities, including many with large social media presences.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe reach more of a hard-core activist base,\u201d Mr. Bannon said of his \u201cWar Room\u201d podcast. \u201cHe reached a different audience \u2014 if you leave the 75-year-olds aside, a lot of people who are businessmen and entrepreneurs, people who are nominal Republicans but are not hard-core and, I would say, are relatively low-information.\u201d<\/p>\n
To his detractors, this made Mr. Carlson a uniquely concerning figure, who acclimated conventional Republican audiences to far-right ideas. His shows \u2014 \u201cTucker Carlson Tonight\u201d and its long-form sibling, \u201cTucker Carlson Today,\u201d on the Fox Nation streaming network \u2014 played a significant role in mainstreaming the idea of the \u201cgreat replacement,\u201d a racist, anti-immigrant conspiracy theory prominent among white nationalists.<\/p>\n
In a 2021 \u201cTucker Carlson Today\u201d episode, Mr. Carlson spent more than an hour interviewing the far-right blogger Curtis Yarvin, who expounded on America\u2019s need for a monarch figure who could break the power of the country\u2019s elites and institute a benevolent autocracy.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think you\u2019re crazy,\u201d Mr. Carlson told Mr. Yarvin. \u201cI think you\u2019re pretty far out in a way that\u2019s worth thinking about.\u201d<\/p>\n
And some Republicans bemoaned Mr. Carlson\u2019s elevation of politicians like Mr. Kent. Mr. Carlson brought Mr. Kent on his online show, \u201cTucker Carlson Today,\u201d for an hourlong interview just four months after he declared his candidacy against Jaime Herrera Beutler in southwestern Washington State in early 2021.<\/p>\n
The two stayed in touch, and Mr. Kent became a regular on Mr. Carlson\u2019s prime-time show throughout the primary, in which he eventually secured Donald J. Trump\u2019s endorsement and toppled Ms. Herrera Beutler, one of 10 Republicans to vote to impeach Mr. Trump after Jan. 6.<\/p>\n
In the general election, however, Mr. Kent was dogged by reports of associations with prominent white nationalists and Proud Boys and lost a solidly Republican seat.<\/p>\n
Mr. Carlson had once included Mr. Kent on a segment championing a slate of \u201csurging outsiders\u201d in races across the country. The list also included Blake Masters and Kari Lake in Arizona, Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, and J.D. Vance in Ohio.<\/p>\n
All of them but Mr. Vance lost their races in November.<\/p>\n