{"id":15799,"date":"2025-11-18T20:31:57","date_gmt":"2025-11-18T20:31:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/republicans-to-trump-we-need-you-on-the-campaign-trail\/"},"modified":"2025-11-18T20:31:57","modified_gmt":"2025-11-18T20:31:57","slug":"republicans-to-trump-we-need-you-on-the-campaign-trail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/republicans-to-trump-we-need-you-on-the-campaign-trail\/","title":{"rendered":"Republicans to Trump: We need you on the campaign trail"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Fresh off their staggering electoral losses this month, Republicans are urging President Donald Trump to start hitting the campaign trail for them next year with control of Congress on the line.<\/p>\n

And in a sign of their rising anxiety over Democrats’ renewed enthusiasm, the requests for rallies have started rolling in.<\/p>\n

Wisconsin GOP Chair Brian Schimming said Trump\u2019s team is \u201ccertainly aware\u201d he wants to see the president visit the purple state next year, where he won by his thinnest margin in 2024 and his party is defending two competitive House seats and trying to win statewide races. Schimming plans to reup his ask when visiting Washington this week. In Tennessee, where Democrats are working to flip a House seat in a special election next month, Republican Matt Van Epps\u2019 campaign requested the president hold an in-person rally in the deep-red district<\/u><\/a> he won by 20 points last year. (Trump held a tele-rally for Van Epps last Thursday night.) Rep. Derrick Van Orden has told Trump he wants the president to campaign with him in his western Wisconsin swing district next year.<\/p>\n

Depressed turnout is a persistent problem in non-presidential years. And Republicans acknowledge that Trump, whose approval ratings are underwater, can be a liability as well as an asset.<\/p>\n

But he remains a singular motivator for the MAGA base, according to interviews with 11 Republican Party chairs, officials and operatives across the Rust and Sun Belt states. They said Republicans must step up their voter-outreach efforts heading into the midterms, when Democrats need only to net three House seats to regain control of the lower chamber. And they\u2019re looking to Trump to be their triple threat \u2014 with his trademark rallies, endorsements and deep campaign coffers.<\/p>\n

By comparison, Trump largely avoided campaigning for Republicans<\/u><\/a> in this month\u2019s off-cycle elections, later blaming poor candidate quality<\/u><\/a> for the party\u2019s withering defeats. He avoided showing up in New Jersey, where GOP gubernatorial contender Jack Ciattarelli was projected to lose by a slim margin and ended up getting routed by double digits. He never uttered the name of the Virginia Republican candidate for governor, who lost by nearly 16 points. And he lagged miles behind California Gov. Gavin Newsom\u2019s fundraising juggernaut that helped propel a Democrat-backed redistricting measure to swift victory.<\/p>\n

Now, even as the GOP descends into in-fighting<\/u><\/a> over the release of files connected to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and state-level Republicans throughout the country buck Trump\u2019s redistricting push, his party is clamoring for ever more of the president.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrump is the ace in the hole,\u201d said Tom Eddy, the Republican chair in Erie County, Pa., a presidential bellwether Trump won in 2016 and 2024, but where Democrats swept key local races<\/u><\/a> earlier this month. \u201cIt\u2019s a matter of which party is more motivated. And right now, obviously, the Democrats are.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Republican strategist who works on North Carolina races, granted anonymity to speak candidly, painted a dire portrait of the party\u2019s stakes as Democrat Roy Cooper makes the party\u2019s best shot at flipping a Senate seat next year.<\/p>\n

\u201cAny Republican not preparing for a turnout challenge in 2026 is whistling by the graveyard,\u201d the strategist said. \u201cIf Trump is on the ballot, Republican turnout is strong. And if he\u2019s not, it craters. It collapses. There\u2019s an entire group of people who are Trump voters, but Trump alone. There seems to be no way to get them to the ballot.”<\/p>\n

James Blair, Trump\u2019s top political director, said on a post-election episode of Blue Light News\u2019s \u201cThe Conversation\u201d<\/u><\/a> that the president will be \u201cfar more involved in the midterms.\u201d Trump has already endorsed the majority of House incumbents and across many Senate races, though he\u2019s yet to clear the field in Texas, Georgia and New Hampshire, where fierce primaries are underway. Two of his top political operatives \u2014 Trump 2024 co-campaign manager Chris LaCivita and pollster Tony Fabrizio \u2014 are advising campaigns across the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith a lot of campaigning next year, with a lot of resources in the right districts for the right candidates,\u201d Republicans\u2019 turnout woes are \u201can overcomeable problem,\u201d Blair said on \u201cThe Conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Blair cautioned that victory shouldn\u2019t be entirely Trump\u2019s responsibility, adding, \u201cThe president will campaign a lot to get people out\u201d but \u201ccandidates still have to connect with these voters, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

Blair, LaCivita and a White House spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment for this story.<\/p>\n

Republicans brushed aside Trump\u2019s recent hands-off approach<\/u><\/a>, noting the party lost in blue-leaning states where the president is unpopular. But they saw warning signs in the margins. Turnout data shows Republicans lost ground in the places that voted most for Trump last year, suggesting his voters were less likely to cast ballots outside of a presidential year.<\/p>\n

Across Virginia, in precincts where Trump won at least 80 percent of the vote in 2024, turnout this year fell below 70 percent of last year\u2019s levels, according to a Blue Light News breakdown of the results. Statewide, that figure was 77 percent.<\/p>\n

In southwest Virginia\u2019s Buchanan County, where Trump won more than 85 percent of the vote, turnout for the gubernatorial election was less than 60 percent of the prior year. Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger received about 73 percent of former Vice President Kamala Harris\u2019 vote total while GOP Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears got just 57 percent of the votes Trump had received.<\/p>\n

Republicans shrugged off Earle-Sears as a weak candidate and attributed the results to typical swings toward the opposition party in off-year elections. But as Trump himself has suggested<\/u><\/a>, it indicates Republicans have yet to figure out how to replicate his coalition when he\u2019s not on the ballot.<\/p>\n

Republican officials and operatives say Trump is still the \u201cbiggest base motivator\u201d they have \u2014 a nod to his singularity and to the uncertainty of who else in the GOP has the gravitas to command his MAGA movement.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got to make it clear what the stakes of it are \u2014 because they don\u2019t want to go back to another Joe Biden,\u201d Schimming said, acknowledging the party\u2019s challenge in reaching irregular voters.<\/p>\n

Republicans across battleground states are working to remind their voters of economic pain under the Biden administration \u2014 and warning that Democratic control of even one chamber of Congress could lead to investigations that could distract from, if not derail, Trump\u2019s agenda.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re also pushing early voting as a way to reach lower-propensity voters and to keep them engaged outside presidential cycles, even as Trump tries to end the practice<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Republicans acknowledge some candidates would benefit from distancing themselves from the president on unpopular policies<\/u><\/a>, like cutting health care benefits and imposing tariffs, in a midterm election that will serve as a referendum on his second term. Their concerns hark back to 2018, when Democrats picked up 40 House seats in a repudiation of Trump\u2019s first term.<\/p>\n

After Democrats rode affordability messaging to wins in last week\u2019s elections, Republicans said they need to stay focused on cutting costs. To that end, the White House laid out in a Friday memo how the administration is working to lower prices.<\/p>\n

Some Republicans also said Trump needs to focus less on his grievances, like putting millions of dollars from his political operation into primarying<\/u><\/a> GOP Rep. Thomas Massie in a safe seat in Kentucky over the lawmaker\u2019s opposition to Republicans\u2019 megalaw and his push to release the Justice Department files on Epstein.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t waste your time going after Thomas Massie,\u201d said Todd Gillman, a Republican Party district chair in Michigan, where the GOP is looking to snag the Senate seat being left open by retiring Democrat Gary Peters, hold the House seat Rep. John James is leaving to run for governor and wrest back control of statewide offices.<\/p>\n

Instead, he said, \u201ccome to Michigan and fight for John James\u2019 seat so we don\u2019t lose it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jessica Piper, Elena Schneider, Andrew Howard, Sam Benson and Liz Crampton contributed to this report.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fresh off their staggering electoral losses this month, Republicans are urging President Donald Trump to start hitting the campaign trail for them next year with control of Congress on the line. And in a sign of their rising anxiety over Democrats’ renewed enthusiasm, the requests for rallies have started rolling in. Wisconsin GOP Chair Brian […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15799\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}