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ICYMI: Stivers can’t name district Trump should campaign in [Politico Magazine]

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

In case you missed it, NRCC Chairman Rep. Stivers could not name a single battleground district that he’d want President Trump to campaign in.

“Rep. Stivers’ inability to name a swing district that he’d want the Republican President to campaign in points to President Trump’s toxicity across the entire battlefield, including in districts he won,” said DCCC Spokesman Tyler Law. “It’s clear that as Trump’s record-low approval ratings continue to drop, he threatens the reelection prospects of vulnerable House Republicans across the country.”

They’ll clap, but will they campaign with Trump?
Politico Magazine
By Edward-Isaac Dovere
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/01/30/house-republicans-trump-battleground-steve-stivers-216550

Don’t mistake all the standing ovations on Tuesday night for House Republicans wanting to be anywhere near President Donald Trump between now and November.

A new Morning Consult/POLITICO poll found that just 27 percent of registered voters believe that Trump’s support will have a positive impact on Republicans running for Congress this year, and 40 percent believe he’ll have a negative impact.

Stuck in the middle is Ohio Rep. Steve Stivers, the chair of the NRCC, who in an interview for the latest episode of POLITICO’s Off Message podcast could not name a single battleground district where he’d send Trump, despite the president’s promise earlier this month to campaign for Republicans four to five days a week into the fall.

[…] Asked to name one such district, Stivers pointed to the March 13 special election in the Pennsylvania 18th, a heavily Republican open seat outside of Pittsburgh, where Trump traveled last week for an event he said was to support the Republican candidate (though White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders later maintained that the taxpayer-funded trip was all official business).

The Pennsylvania district is heavily Republican, and while Democrats have started advertising there as the polling has tightened, they still consider the district, where Republicans had an 11-point advantage in 2016, a long shot.

That’s as specific as Stivers would get.

[…] But the first reason, he says, is a factor everyone knows about, but which Republicans rarely tout out loud: “I think it starts with the congressional lines,” Stivers said, pointing to the successful gerrymandering after 2010. Later, asked if that validates Democrats’ argument that Republicans have tilted elections to their advantage, Stivers shrugged off the criticism: “You can say that, but the people elected them.”

The easiest measure for how worried House Republicans are: On Monday, New Jersey Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen announced he’d become the 20th House Republican to retire without running for another job, after raising the hopes of Stivers and other party leaders just last week with a big campaign fundraising filing. That’s on top of the unexpected retirement in Pennsylvania by Rep. Pat Meehan , revealed to have settled a sexual harassment case against a young female aide whom he called his “soul mate” and allegedly grew hostile against when she did not reciprocate.

The NRCC wouldn’t share its polling on how voters in battleground districts view Trump. But the DCCC gladly shared some of its own: In the 23 districts which Hillary Clinton won but are represented by Republican members of Congress, Trump averages a 37 percent approval rating; in the 12 open districts currently held by Republicans, Trump averages a 41 percent approval rating; and in the over 60 other districts Democrats are trying to make competitive, Trump also averages a 41 percent approval rating.

It’s not a topic that the Republicans running are eager to discuss.

An aide to Rep. Barbara Comstock, in the D.C. suburbs of Virginia, didn’t respond to the question of whether she’d want Trump to campaign for her.

Rep. John J. Faso, in the Hudson Valley of New York, punted questions to an aide who said he was too busy to talk, then didn’t respond to questions about Trump.

[…] Young Kim, the congressional candidate Ed Royce (R-Calif.) endorsed for the seat he ducked out of trying to defend, said she hadn’t considered the possibility that Trump might campaign for her.

“I’m going to talk to my consultants,” she said. “That’s not an issue that I’m considering.”

[…] Not everyone is so standoffish. In Nevada, former Rep. Cresent Hardy, running for the seat he lost last cycle, said he supports Trump’s policies despite how frustrated he is with some of Trump’s comments, and would welcome the president to the district, though “I don’t know if it would be helpful or not.”

[…] “The president traveling across the country with how unpopular he is, is something Republicans are more focused on than we are,” said New Mexico Rep. Ben Ray Luján, the chair of the DCCC. “A lot of districts that would have been extremely tough for us to win are now open seats. That was not part of the original Republican calculus, or, I would argue, part of the original NRCC budget.”

[…] But voters are clearer on what they feel about Trump’s influence on the Republican Party: Overall, 43 percent say they have a less favorable view of the GOP under Trump, compared with 31 percent who say they have a much more favorable view of the party.

I asked Stivers if Trump makes him proud to be a Republican. He avoided answering directly.

READ FULL STORY HERE

 





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