Republican campaigns scrambling to defend red seats they never expected to have to protect are competing for President Donald Trump’s time in the final days of the midterms, and they're using an unusual strategy to get his attention.
Campaigns are sending a stream of hopeful updates to the White House, including encouraging early-vote numbers and optimistic assessments of tough races, and some White House allies told Politico that rosy projections make a better sales pitch to Trump than “you’re-my-only-hope desperation.”
“Typically the underperforming squeaky wheel gets the grease,” said one veteran GOP operative who has shared early-vote data with Trump’s team. “But there’s also a way to squeak, like, ‘Hey, things are going better than expected.’”
Those pitches often go to White House political director Matt Brasseaux and to Trump’s longtime political adviser James Blair. Aides use the information to decide where to send resources, whether that’s a visit from Trump, a Cabinet member, a robocall or a social media post, according to six people familiar with the communications.
Trump regularly asks staff how Republican efforts are “playing” in the states he visits, a White House official said. The location of his Friday rally in Daytona Beach was chosen after talks with Florida campaigns.
Inside the West Wing, the midterms are still seen as a “dog fight.” Trump has held 19 rallies in 20 days, and the official said he pushed to add more appearances after asking why he had days off so close to the election.
“It is the catalyst behind conversations like, why are we taking Thursday off? Add it to the schedule. What are we doing? Let’s go,” the official said.
Some of the numbers are encouraging for Republicans. In Kansas, a senior adviser to Sen. Roger Marshall said GOP early voting has already exceeded the party’s 2022 total by nearly 50 percent. In Iowa, absentee ballot requests from registered Republicans are up nearly 40 percent.
The White House said it canceled Trump’s planned Kansas rally because officials feel “bullish” about the state, while the RNC said the same about Iowa, although both visits were returned to the president's schedule for Sunday.
Not everyone is convinced. Tom Bonier, a Democratic data analyst at TargetSmart, said Republicans are drawing optimistic conclusions based on assumptions about Election Day turnout. In Georgia, one GOP strategist called the party’s early-vote numbers “really, really bad — wipeout bad.”
Michigan GOP strategist Jason Roe said early voting in the district he’s working has improved, but Republicans are still struggling with independents.
“It felt like we hit rock bottom a couple weeks ago and the only direction to go from there is up,” Roe said. “But we might just be gaslighting ourselves.”