‘Fires are everywhere right now’: Trump hits the road to shore up red states

Por Alex Gangitano, Megan Messerly and Myah Ward — POLITICO – TOP Stories

President Donald Trump intends to spend the next 30 days campaigning for Republicans, many of whom are underwater in states the president easily carried two years ago.

Bastions of conservatism — including Alabama, Alaska, Iowa, Ohio and Texas — need Trump’s star power, and a visit by the president could persuade some of his most die-hard supporters to turn out to the polls. But each trip to play defense in red strongholds robs the GOP of a chance to put Democrats on the back foot in states that are traditionally competitive.

Trump’s upcoming travel — including to Alabama, Oklahoma and Ohio this week — puts a focus on what Republican donors and operatives have feared for months: that even a gerrymandered House map and whopping cash advantage won’t be enough to save the House or Senate from Democrats.

“The problem is that the fires are everywhere right now,” said one GOP donor, who like others in this story was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the party’s prospects.

Inside the White House, concern is particularly high over the Senate races in Alaska and Ohio, which the president both won handily in 2024. In Alaska, Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan lost by 8 points in a nonpartisan primary to the Democrat Mary Peltola. Trump is planning to make the trek to Alaska later this month to shore up Sullivan’s chances — a significant commitment of time and presidential resources that underscores how dire the situation is for Republicans.

“On a scale of 1 to 10,” said a person close to the White House, “10. In Alaska, because of the obvious situation of what happened in the primary, and in Ohio, because [Jon] Husted is proving not to be a compelling candidate.”

The White House referred a request for comment to the Republican National Committee. RNC spokesperson Natalie Baldassarre, in a statement, pointed to Republicans’ significant financial advantage in the races — coupled with the president’s upcoming travel schedule — as two signs of strength heading into the midterms.

“Democrats are struggling to scrounge up two cents to keep key seats in play. Meanwhile, Republicans are deploying our massive war chest, and President Trump is barnstorming the country to drive Republicans to the polls and support our candidates,” she said. “Anonymous bed-wetting strategists have no idea what they’re talking about and unlike them and the Democrats, we’re full steam ahead.”

Republicans close to the White House argue trips to ruby red states also have knock-on effects. In addition to boosting the Republican in a gerrymandered House race in Alabama, they expect the president’s Friday trip to Mobile, which is part of the Pensacola media market, to also provide a boost in Florida, where Republicans are also facing headwinds. And they expect media from the trip to Durant, Oklahoma on Thursday to bleed over the border to nearby Dallas.

But campaigning in red states comes at a cost. The president and his team can only be so many places over the next month and days spent in Alaska and Iowa are days not spent in Georgia and North Carolina, which hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate since 2008.

“They recognize how precious the president’s time is,” said a second person close to the White House. But “the reality is we have more field to cover than they do. That’s just a fact. We are defending more than [Democrats] are.”

The president’s focus on several states that haven’t sent a Democrat to the Senate in decades comes as a series of polls show Trump’s favorability reaching record lows. A Wall Street Journal poll released last week found 37% of Americans approve of the job that Trump is doing, the lowest rating for a president heading into a midterm election in Journal polls dating to 1990.

A GOP operative working on races in multiple states said that red states are in “a bad spot for a multitude of reasons,” including bad candidate recruitment.

“But [Trump] definitely is the biggest culprit because of how much the trade war has affected the farmers and the Iran war has affected the farmers and rural people,” the operative said. “It’s his fault.”

The average price for a gallon of gas is $4.48, up roughly 10 percent in the last month. Mortgage rates have topped 7%, a two-year high. And the Federal Reserve is widely expected to raise interest rates at least one more time this year, raising borrowing costs, in its ongoing effort to tamp down stubborn inflation, which was spurred, in part, by Trump’s war with Iran.

“The expanded map reflects the fact that very little has gone right economically for the last 18 months,” said one former Trump official. “Now they are scrambling to stop the bleeding.”

And it isn’t just the president. Vice President JD Vance is headed this week to Texas and Florida, two states the president won by double digits in 2024.

And recently he stumped for Roger Marshall in Kansas and for Republican gubernatorial candidate Zach Lahn and Senate candidate Ashley Hinson in Iowa. Hinson, notably, did not attend the event.

“Fucking Vance was in Kansas … not a good sign,” said a Texas-based GOP consultant. “We’re on defense everywhere. The map’s expanding for [Democrats], and there’s a limit to what the administration can do.”

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also went to Texas in September for a Head Start program event, joined by GOP Rep. Monica De La Cruz and in August, traveled to Iowa to go fishing with “MAHA gubernatorial race superstar” Lahn.

Some Republicans are particularly frustrated that Texas is in play, after Trump intervened in the GOP Senate primary there to support Attorney General Ken Paxton over incumbent Sen. John Cornyn. The five most recent polls in the state have Democrat James Talarico up by anywhere from 1 to 6 percentage points over Paxton. MAGA Inc., the super PAC closely aligned with the president, has spent $15 million so far on the Texas Senate race.

But many others expected a tough season as the party in the White House typically struggles during midterm elections.

An RNC official argued GOP donors have known for months that the map would be challenging. It’s why the RNC featured Hinson and Sullivan at its quarterly meetings with donors in the run-up to the election, the official said.

“A lot of our donors have been giving to the RNC, giving to the president, for quite some time, and they have kind of weathered the cycles of maps expanding and contracting as we go,” the official said. “This is nothing new. This is nothing outside of kind of the noise that they are used to hearing in a typical election cycle.”

Cook Political Report, an independent nonpartisan newsletter that analyzes elections, recently shifted three Senate races and 15 House seats toward Democrats in its ratings. It now lists seven races — those in Alaska, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, New Hampshire, Ohio and Texas — as toss-ups, with the North Carolina race as lean Democrat and the Kansas race lean Republican.

The best argument for sending Trump to red states is that he can change the electorate, pushing more low-propensity voters who showed up for him in 2024 but don’t typically vote in midterm elections to the polls. That might help a Sullivan or Husted pick up enough votes to squeak by.

“You can’t take anything for granted when you’re the party in power. It’s that simple,” said another person close to the White House. “Midterm elections are about turnout, and there’s nobody better at turning out voters than Donald Trump.”

It’s a logic some Republican operatives genuinely buy, fearing that his presence in a more traditional battleground could be more detrimental than helpful, considering his low polling numbers. Media from his appearances in red states will, for instance, show up on social media across the country — without risking a candidate having to appear on stage with the president.

“Midterms are base elections,” said a fourth person close to the White House. “The president’s party wins when his people show up, and there’s no better or bigger political engine than a Trump rally.”

And RNC officials maintain that Republicans are still competing in the purple states the party had originally planned to focus on. Trump, for instance, was in North Carolina campaigning for former RNC chair Michael Whatley earlier this month.

“I’ll say this: I wish that everybody could see everything at once, but he was in North Carolina two weeks ago. We announced Ohio this Saturday,” said a second RNC official. “At the end of all of this, people are going to look at the list … [and] they’re going to be like, the president went to places that were very strategically important.”

Fonte: POLITICO – TOP Stories