Republican hopefuls in swing seats aren't walking away from Trump

WASHINGTON — Voters in Nebraska’s open 2nd District have twice rejected Donald Trump, but the presumptive Republican nominee for the seat is “humbled” to have the president’s backing.

Trump has been “doing great things,’’ said Brinker Harding, an Omaha City Council member seeking to succeed retiring GOP Rep. Don Bacon. “We’ve got tax relief for families. We’ve got ‘no tax on tips.’ I can go through the list.”

Trump’s public embrace of Harding came in the middle of another chaotic week for the president, one marked by a spat with the pope and continued high gas prices driven by an unpopular war.

Republicans were already facing midterm headwinds that could jeopardize the party’s narrow hold on the House majority. Then came the conflict with Iran and Trump’s low poll numbers: Just 33% of Americans approved of his job performance, according to a new Associated Press-NORC poll.

In competitive GOP primaries, a Trump endorsement is widely viewed as a golden ticket that can lift a candidate to victory. But in purple-shaded battlegrounds like Nebraska’s 2nd District that are key to the GOP’s effort to maintain its House majority, Trump’s seal of approval comes with risks as well as rewards.

“Being a Trump-endorsed candidate in a battleground district in this political environment isn’t ideal,’’ Roll Call elections analyst Nathan L. Gonzales of Inside Elections said in an email. But “even though Trump isn’t popular in battleground seats right now, GOP candidates need Trump voters to vote in order to have any chance of winning.”

An undisciplined president with a tendency to go off message could undermine a carefully plotted political strategy with a single social media post, heavy baggage for a Republican candidate seeking to cast a pragmatic image in a swing district.

“With a slim majority and the history of midterms going against the president’s party, the GOP does have its hands full,” Bacon, who has endorsed Harding, said in an email. “We need to deliver clear economic results alongside the secured border that was a focus of the last election. The president needs to stay on message to help those in the purple districts.”

Walking a careful line

Trump has framed the midterms as essential to preserving his policy agenda and staving off Democrat-led investigations and impeachment votes. Republicans hope his main super PAC, MAGA Inc., which has a war chest of close to $350 million, will spend on behalf of the candidates he’s endorsed and propel them to victory.

But when it comes to Trump, swing-seat Republicans walk a careful line in reconciling their party’s embrace of an erratic and increasingly unpopular president with the moderate underpinnings of their districts.

Nebraska’s 2nd District is closely divided, with a narrow plurality of registered Republicans and a sizable chunk of independent voters.

“It’s not a district where you can count on your party carrying you over the finish line,” said Kevin Smith, a political science professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. “You’ve got to appeal to those independents.’’

Bacon, Smith said, “was able to do that very successfully, because though he was a Republican — and a moderately conservative Republican — he made no bones [that] he was willing to speak out against his party, and that played well with the independents in the district.”

But unlike Bacon and other incumbents who’ve built their political brands over time, many GOP challengers have scant experience navigating the complexities of a high-stakes federal election.

Harding is pitching himself as a deficit hawk and a pro-business conservative with a long record of public service and a reverence for Ronald Reagan. His campaign website scarcely mentions Trump, though Harding pledges to help usher in a “new Golden Age for America,” invoking one of the president’s trademark phrases.

But Harding had eagerly awaited the president’s endorsement, which came on a Tuesday afternoon as he was heading to City Hall for a meeting.

“The president doesn’t just blanket endorse all Republican candidates,’’ Harding said. “To have his endorsement, knowing what this district is, says a lot about the confidence that the White House and leadership have in me and our campaign.”

Trump’s support, he added, “will be a benefit to our campaign.”

Democrats disagree. Denise Powell, one of the Democrats seeking the 2nd District seat, said “pandering to Trump” wouldn’t prove a successful strategy. Harding, she said, “has leaned really far to the right” to win the president’s support.

State Sen. John Cavanaugh, another Democrat in the race, said the district voters would continue rejecting Trump: “They’ll vote against him again by refusing to send his MAGA acolyte Brinker Harding to Congress.”

Inside Elections rates the race for Nebraska’s 2nd District as Tilt Democratic.

But alienating Trump voters in a divided district doesn’t make political sense either: Even in districts that Trump lost, Republican candidates need Republican voters to turn out, said Bill Cortese, a party campaign operative and former senior adviser to House GOP leadership.

“There’s this fallacy that Republican candidates can trade a base voter for a swing voter. It doesn’t work like that,’’ Cortese said.

Republicans haven’t solved the problem of ensuring Trump supporters turn out even when he’s not on the ballot, Cortese added. “So you’re not going to walk away from his endorsement because you need those folks fired up.’’

Beyond Nebraska

The race for Nebraska’s 2nd District — the so-called blue dot embedded in the deep-red state — isn’t the only contest for an open Republican seat that Trump waded into last week. He also announced his support for San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond in California’s 48th District, which grew several shades bluer following a Democrat-led redraw of the state’s congressional map.

The seat shifted from one that Trump won by 15 points to one Kamala Harris would have carried by 3, prompting Republican incumbent Darrell Issa to announce his retirement. Inside Elections rates the 48th District race Tilt Democratic.

Desmond, who has Issa’s backing, is favored to advance out of June’s all-party primary, which has attracted a stream of Democratic hopefuls.

“Thank you, Mr. President,’’ Desmond wrote on social media in response to Trump’s endorsement. “We’re going to win this race, bring common sense back to California, and make this state affordable for working families again.”

Sam Oh, a general consultant for Desmond’s campaign, said Democratic attempts to tie all Republican candidates to Trump were “tone-deaf,” adding that “voters see right through it.”

“Cycle after cycle, Democrats try to nationalize these races instead of addressing what’s happening locally,’’ he said. “Calling everyone a ‘Trump Republican’ is what Democrats do when their own record is too weak to stand on.”

In Arizona’s open 1st District, Republican Jay Feely is taking a different approach to Trump by fully embracing a MAGA message. The former NFL kicker and sports commentator, who faces a primary, picked up Trump’s endorsement back in January and stood with the president when he appeared in Phoenix last week.

“Our president is a fighter,” Feely told the crowd at the Turning Point USA event. “When he took a bullet and he stood up and he yelled, ‘Fight,’ that’s the gutsiest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Inside Elections rates the 1st District race a Toss-up.

But most Republicans believe that no matter where they fall on the ideological spectrum — from Chamber of Commerce types to MAGA loyalists — their opponents will paint all of them as Trump acolytes.

“Democrats are going to attack Republicans as rubber stamps for Trump regardless of whether the president officially supports them or not,’’ Gonzales of Inside Elections said. “They might as well try to raise some money to defend themselves.”