Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
DEMOCR ATS IN RUST BELT STATES TREAD FINE LINE WITH TRUMP
Patrick Morrisey, the Republican Senate nominee in West Virginia, said in his acceptance speech, addressing the president. “I’d like you to come back as many times as you can between now and November.”
The pressure on Morrisey’s opponent, Sen. Joe Manchin, mounted immediately Wednesday as an outside group allied with Trump released an ad urging West Virginians to call Manchin and demand he vote for Gina Haspel, the White House nominee to lead the CIA, who is facing tough questions about the agency’s use of torture on suspected terrorists.
Manchin announced later in the day that he would vote for Haspel, giving the White House a sheen of bipartisan support.
“I’ll always try to work with the president of the United States, because as an American, you want the president to succeed and the country to succeed,” Manchin said through a spokesman.
Manchin’s stance showed how Democratic incumbents in states Trump carried must thread a needle — showing voters they respect the president but distancing themselves from some of his major policies.
In Ohio, once a swing state but increasingly shading red, Democrats believe the key to winning back the governor’s mansion and the Legislature, as well as retaining a U.S. Senate seat, is to focus on Ohio issues and not get mired in the discord of Washington.
“You don’t win Ohio if you get pulled off message and you’re basically debating Trump or making every election here a referendum,” said David Pepper, the chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party.
But maintaining that posture may prove difficult. Early Wednesday, Trump took aim at the Democratic nominee for governor, Richard Cordray, a bête noire of Washington Republicans for his past leadership of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Congratulating Mike DeWine, the Republican nominee who will face Cordray, the president wrote in a tweet, “His Socialist opponent in November should not do well, a big failure in last job!”
As the races proceed, surrogates for Cordray like Sen. Elizabeth Warren are likely to take hammer and tongs to the president to rally the Democratic base.
For his part, Cordray wants to focus on “kitchen-table issues that Ohioans tell us are most on their minds,” he said in an interview at his campaign office, where he lounged in socks but no shoes.
In an interview, DeWine rebuffed the suggestion of an impending Democratic surge.
“Ohio is always a competitive state, but this idea of this big blue wave that’s rolling through the country certainly missed Ohio last night,” he said, pointing out that more voters turned out for him than for Cordray. He received roughly 495,000 votes compared with the roughly 423,000 Cordray received, according to election night figures.
Democratic leaders may not admit to seeking a “referendum” on the president in states where he remains popular. Yet, they know that is precisely what has driven the Democratic base to turn out strongly in earlier contests in the past year in Virginia, Pennsylvania and Arizona, where Democrats made unexpected gains.
The country’s next high-profile special election is in August for an open House seat near Columbus, Ohio. Once a solidly Republican seat in a district Trump carried easily, the race is a tossup, according to nonpartisan analysts, thanks to an energized Democratic base. The candidates were finalized Tuesday: Danny O’Connor, a Democratic official in Franklin County, will oppose Troy Balderson, a Republican state senator.
In the U.S. Senate race, Ohio Republicans chose Rep. James B. Renacci to try to unseat Sen. Sherrod Brown, whose oldschool progressivism — opposing trade deals, championing labor — aligns with part of Trump’s blue-collar appeal.
“My message is consistent and will continue to be — I’m going to fight for the little guy regardless of whether she works in an office or works in a diner,” Brown said in a telephone interview.
He suggested he would not make a point of going after Trump.
“I will do what I do,” he said. “I don’t have this grand strategy. I think if you do this job the way you should, elections largely take care of themselves.”
In Indiana, Sen. Joe Donnelly, one of the most vulnerable Democrats, noted that he had voted with Trump 62 percent of the time in the Senate and had backed 70 percent of the president’s nominees.
“If President Trump is right on an issue, I will be with him every time,” Donnelly said in a conference call with reporters Tuesday night. “When he’s not, I will pass. My job is not to be a cheerleader for the president; my job is not to be a cheerleader for a party leader or a party.”
Donnelly is matched against Mike Braun, a wealthy businessman who ran as a political outsider and who Republicans believe will serve as validation of Trump’s policies and anti-Washington appeal.
“This will be the ratification of Donald Trump,” said Robert Grand, a lawyer in Indianapolis and one of the state’s most prominent Republicans. “Everybody says Donald Trump is in trouble. This will say maybe not.”