President Trump is set to play an outsized role in two important GOP Senate primaries on Tuesday as Republicans hope the winners help them keep their majority in the fall.
The president’s enduring popularity in West Virginia and Indiana has made both three-way primaries a contest to see who can be the most Trump-like and win enough support from his base to move into the general election season.
“Trump’s playing a huge role in both of those states,” said David McIntosh, head of the Club for Growth. “Like everywhere in the country, Republican primary voters really want candidates who are going to support the president and support his agenda.”
“So you see every candidate pounds his chest and says, ‘I’m the most pro-Trump and my opponents — they bet against the president.’ It’s a repeated line,” McIntosh continued. “Voters are smarter than that and sort it out, but it is a huge variable.”
In West Virginia, Rep. Evan Jenkins, R-W.Va., state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, and Don Blankenship, a recently imprisoned coal baron, have sidled up to the president whenever given the chance. At a tax reform event in the state last month, Jenkins and Morrisey were seated on either side of Trump.
Meanwhile, Blankenship has tried to be the outspoken outsider like Trump was in the 2016 GOP presidential primary field with limited success. Donald Trump, Jr., the president’s eldest son, called on West Virginians not to support Blankenship. The recently incarcerated energy executive retorted that the younger is an “establishment” figure.
At the moment, Blankenship trails both GOP candidates, with Jenkins holding a slight lead over Morrisey, according to a Fox News poll, in the race to take on Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va.
“To put it simply, he is everything,” said one Republican strategist on Trump’s impact in the primaries. “His image has fully eclipsed what in previous primaries has been a half-dozen or so items on an issue’s checklist for every candidate who wants a Republican nomination.”
While there are also three candidates vying for the GOP nod in Indiana, the race has different dynamics at hand, including the lack of a Blankenship figure in the race. Most Republicans believe Mike Braun, Rep. Todd Rokita, R-Ind., and Rep. Luke Messer, R-Ind., would all make solid general election candidates against Sen. Joe Donnelly, R-Ind., who many believe is the most vulnerable Democrat up for re-election.
Braun, an Indiana businessman and former state House member, has become the favorite in the race after self-funding his campaign to the tune of more than $6 million.
However, Rokita and Messer are not counted out as the two rivals have embarked on a contest of who can help the president more before Tuesday. On Wednesday, Messer released a letter signed by 18 House conservatives nominating Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. On the same day, Rokita introduced a resolution to end the ongoing probe by special counsel Robert Mueller.
Nonetheless, the winner in both states — with the possible exception of Blankenship — will also earn the support of Trump, who has put multiple Democratic senators on notice in the past month. At the tax reform event last month, Trump went after Manchin for his vote against the GOP tax law, and most recently he’s leveled broadsides against Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., after he released allegations against Ronny Jackson, Trump’s nominee to head the Department of Veterans Affairs, and derailed the nomination.
“Every state is different, but you never want the president with the loudest megaphone and the largest Twitter following ganging up on you,” said Ron Bonjean, a GOP operative. “You don’t want them beating you up because he will have some kind of impact.”
“He is an expert at branding opposition candidates. Look at what he did to 16 other Republican candidates during his own presidential primary, and that was on that level,” Bonjean said. “On the state and district level, he can do the same thing. He can create a massive branding impact against sitting Democratic senators.”
