President Trump focused his time and energy on the campaign trail stumping for Republican Senate candidates he believed would further his “America First” agenda in Congress. It worked — but it may have cost the party its control of the House and torpedoed a chance to expand the president’s base.
“The political strategy worked as well as it could have,” said Michael Steel, a managing director at Hamilton Place Strategies and former aide to John Boehner when he was House speaker. “The real problem is how the president governs, always focused on appealing to his base rather than expanding his coalition.”
That verdict isn’t unanimous. Some strategists point out that while the president was often campaigning in states with big Senate races, he always invited the state’s House members and candidates to attend the rallies. He routinely pointed them out and invited them on stage. In the end, they argue, Republicans who lost Tuesday night have no one to blame but themselves and their voting records.
“I think that is a cute line that people throw in there,” David Bozell, president of the conservative group ForAmerica, told the Washington Examiner. “Every House guy is there at the rally if it is in that state. They are all there. They aren’t just forgotten about. I don’t buy the idea that he was just out there for senators,” adding that many Senate GOP candidates and incumbents did well because of the “Kavanaugh effect.”
The president spent the final weeks leading up to Election Day holding rallies — sometimes upwards of three-a-day — in states with key Senate races, like Ohio, Montana, West Virginia, Missouri, and Florida.
The party can’t necessarily argue with the results of the president’s strategy. Republicans were able to keep the majority in the Senate on Tuesday evening and even knocked off Democratic incumbents in Indiana, North Dakota, and Missouri. Trump’s presence in West Virginia three days before the election may have given a boost to Republican candidate Patrick Morrisey, closing the race from a double-digit Democratic lead weeks before the election to single-digit Democratic margin of victory Election Day.
In the end, nine of the president’s chosen candidates eked out victories Tuesday night.
But not all of Trump’s handpicked recruits fared so well. Trump-backed Senate candidates in Ohio and Pennsylvania completely bombed, despite the president visiting and campaigning in the state in the final weeks and months of the election. Of the 21 Senate candidates the president endorsed, 9 lost their respective races and two are still undecided.
Arguably the biggest casualty of the president’s acute focus on Senate races were vulnerable House Republicans. While there were areas of the country — the Pacific Northwest, the Northeast, and the West Coast — Trump could not effectively rally in because he would have done more harm than good, there are some candidates, like Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., who could have used a last-minute boost from the president. Rohrabacher lost his reelection bid by just over two-thousand votes.
Democrats needed to pick up 23 seats in order to take control of the House with 218 seats. As of Wednesday evening, Democrats had locked in a majority of 222 seats, with several races still left to call.
Overall, though, history suggests it could have gone much worse for the president. In 1994, for example, Democrats controlled the House leading up to the midterms. The party had 28 members announce retirement and Republicans took them to the cleaners, picking up 54 seats and claiming the majority in what is now known as the “Republican Revolution.” In a similar vein, Democrats lost 63 House seats in 2010.
Still, not focusing enough on the House could have been a significant misstep for the president and his administration. Democrats are expected to launch a series of investigations into Trump, members of his administration, and possibly congressional Republicans when they take control of the House next year.
Impending House impeachment articles and a litany of investigations could be why Trump was so keenly focused on Senate races over the House this cycle. With a stronger Republican majority in the Senate, it might further insulate him against any attempts to remove him from office if Democrats take the House. Furthermore, a Republican-held Senate could work as a counterweight to Democrats’ investigations into his administration — as the president himself argued the morning after the election.
