With less than one month to go until Election Day, President Donald Trump is embarking on a final campaign blitz to protect the GOP’s control of Congress.
He’s starting on defense.
Trump is kicking off his last weeks of campaigning with a string of rallies in deep red states, trying to boost struggling GOP candidates in unexpectedly competitive Senate races that could determine whether the party holds its majority.
His latest stop on that tour is Monday, when Trump travels to Grand Island, Nebraska, to rally with incumbent GOP Sen. Pete Ricketts, who’s fending off a competitive challenge from independent Dan Osborn.
Recent polls suggest the race is close, with Ricketts and Osborn separated by just a few percentage points. Nebraska hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate since 2006, when a blue wave propelled Democrats to majorities in both chambers of Congress.
The visit comes as Nebraskans are grappling with diesel prices over $6 per gallon and reeling from Trump’s decision to temporarily suspend tariffs on beef imports, which has rattled farmers and ranchers in the Cornhusker State.
Despite those headwinds, Republicans are embracing Trump’s appearance.
“That’s a good place for the president to be,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told MS NOW ahead of Trump’s trip to Nebraska. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, a former chair of the Senate GOP campaign arm, said that Trump’s visit to Nebraska “is probably gonna benefit Pete Ricketts’s unexpectedly close race.”
Ricketts is accepting Trump’s help, too. The senator is expected to appear with Trump at the rally. And Ricketts played up Trump’s visit during an interview with CNN last week.
“The president is going to be coming to Nebraska. We’re going to welcome him there and talk about the things we’ve done,” Ricketts said, citing provisions in the GOP’s reconciliation bill.
“All that helps our farmers and ranchers,” he said. “So we’ve got a lot of good policy that we are going to talk about.”
Ricketts’ emphasis on farmers and ranchers follows his pushback on Trump’s decision to temporarily lift tariffs on beef imports.
During an interview with CNN, Ricketts also recognized the squeeze that elevated fuel prices have had on his state — “it just adds to the financial burden,” he said — but he argued it’s a necessary cost for ensuring Iran doesn’t acquire a nuclear weapon.
“Yes, there’s no doubt that high fuel prices put a strain on the budgets for every Nebraska family,” Ricketts said. “And as you mentioned, the high diesel prices are putting the same sort of budget crunch on our farmers and ranchers and making it very difficult for them at a time when commodity prices are low as well.”
Trump’s visit to Nebraska is the latest in a string of red-state campaign visits for the president. Last week, Trump traveled to Texas to boost Republican Ken Paxton, who’s trailing Democrat James Talarico in polls. Over the weekend, he also held a rally in Ohio, where incumbent Sen. Jon Husted is struggling to keep up with former Sen. Sherrod Brown, who’s mounting a competitive comeback bid.
He’s also visited Oklahoma and Alabama, and he’s scheduled to return to Texas on Wednesday.
While Trump’s emphasis on red states is an unconventional strategy for the closing weeks of a midterm campaign, the data suggests it’s not unwarranted.
A series of New York Times/Siena polls found GOP candidates are trailing or statistically tied with their Democratic opponents in five states where Republicans are defending Senate seats.
In Texas, Talarico is leading Paxton, 51% to 45% — an edge outside the margin of error. In Ohio, Husted is trailing Brown 46% to 49%. In Alaska, incumbent GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan is behind former Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola, 43% to 50%. In Kansas, incumbent GOP Sen. Roger Marshall is tied with Democrat Adam Hamilton at 45% each. And in Iowa, GOP Rep. Ashley Hinson is leading Democrat Josh Turek by just one point, 48% to 47%, in the battle to succeed retiring Republican Sen. Joni Ernst.
Republicans have defended the red-state swing.
“In politics and in elections, taking things for granted is a dangerous proposition,” a Republican operative working on Senate races told MS NOW, requesting anonymity to discuss the midterms candidly. “The best candidates are the candidates who run like they’re three points behind all the way through to the end, because the second you start taking things for granted is when mistakes start happening or you get caught flat-footed.”
A former Trump political official, who was also granted anonymity, predicted that the White House is “going to places to kind of take them off the board early,” before traveling to swing states, like Michigan, closer to Election Day.
Still, the visits are raising eyebrows in GOP circles.
“I don’t get it,” Cornyn said of Trump’s visits to traditionally red states, pointing to the Oklahoma and Alabama trips.
While he said the Nebraska stop is an exception for Ricketts’ “tough race,” he questioned the president’s apparent strategy of just exciting the most devoted Trump fans.
“I don’t think the answer to our political challenges right now is another rally,” Cornyn said. “The president seems to think that’s the antidote to all political problems.”
Sen. Jim Justice, R-W.Va., said the GOP’s current predicament is a product of its own messaging shortcomings.
“We did a lot of really, really good stuff, and we’ve done a lot of good stuff since then too — we are so horrible at marketing ourselves, it’s unbelievable,” Justice said. “And now we’re having that ‘Oh you know what’ moment, where all of a sudden, all across this country, everybody’s awakening to, ‘Oh my, look what the polls are now.’”
He pointed to farmers in the midwest — citing Nebraska, Iowa and Kansas — and contended that average Americans “are really hurting.”
“If you can’t pay the bills, you know, no matter how much you love us as Republicans, we’re in control,” Justice said. “And if you can’t pay the bills, you got a real problem with us, and so that’s just how it feels.”
Trump, for his part, has defended the red-state swing, contending that it’s a way to show appreciation for his longtime supporters.
“I’m here really because, you know, sometimes even though you don’t have to come here, you got to pay respect to the people that have loved you right from the beginning,” Trump said. “So that’s really the reason I’m here.”
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