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When you have a president with a low approval rating going into the midterms, the conventional wisdom is to keep him away from competitive races. But that’s not the approach President Trump and his political team are taking.
The president travels to Georgia today, a swing state with a key Senate race and a toss-up gubernatorial contest. It’s the latest example of Trump traveling to states and districts with competitive races. So far this year he has already campaigned with a dozen candidates in elections seen as toss-ups.
Trump’s approval rating is deeply underwater — even worse than it was in 2018 when Republicans lost control of the House in a blue wave where Democrats gained a net total of 40 seats. Facing those headwinds, presidents typically hang back and let candidates run their own races in their own districts. That’s what happened in 2006 when Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Charlie Dent faced a tough re-election.
“[President] George Bush understood that he wasn’t going to be an asset in my district at that time,” said Dent, who left Congress in 2018. “He didn’t take it personally. He understood. He wanted me to win.”
But Trump isn’t following the traditional playbook. Earlier this year, he held a rally with one of the most endangered Republicans in Congress, Rep. Mike Lawler, of New York.
“Mike Lawler’s fantastic,” Trump proclaimed at a rally at Rockland Community College. “He’s fantastic.”
So far this year Trump has made more campaign-related trips than he did during the same period in 2018, during his first term in office. At a Florida rally in May, Trump shouted out a senator and a congresswoman, both on the ballot in November, as well as his endorsed candidate for governor, Republican Rep. Byron Donalds.
“He’s so far ahead in the polls, I don’t have to ask him to come up,” Trump said of Donalds. “You know what my theory is? When you’re up by more than 20 points, I don’t want to waste the time, OK.”
He didn’t invite Donalds or any other candidate up on stage then. At Trump rallies, the president is always the star of the show and in 2026, he is also set to be the star of the midterms.
In an interview with the pro-Trump podcast The Mom View late last year, White House chief of staff Suzie Wiles explained the political strategy behind keeping Trump front and center.
“Typically in the midterms, it’s not about who’s sitting at the White House. You localize the election and you keep the federal officials out of it,” Wiles said. “We’re actually going to turn that on its head and put him on the ballot, because so many of those low propensity voters are Trump voters,” she added.
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President Trump won in 2024 by turning out people who are disengaged from politics and less likely to vote but got excited about him. Those voters might stay home without Trump on the ballot, while Democratic voters are highly motivated and generally seen as more reliable voters in non-presidential election years.
“Candidates want the president in their district,” said a Republican official who spoke on background to describe party strategy. “They know he’s a huge plus to get out the vote for us. The narrative that people shouldn’t be running with him [is] totally false.”
The official said the goal is to activate Trump’s 2024 coalition in 2026 and part of that is just reminding these less engaged voters that there is an election happening.
To that end, President Trump recently announced there will be a rare midterm convention in Dallas in September.
“This president is the best showman that’s ever existed,” RNC chairman Joe Gruters said in an interview with CBS Texas, hyping the convention. “And why not highlight him and put him front and center and do the Trumpapalooza.”
Calling it a Trumpapalooza doesn’t leave much doubt that the president will be the central figure in this year’s midterms, though that was probably inevitable whether it was the Republican strategy or not.
“We’ve seen in special elections since November of 2024, Democrats are running ahead,” said Democratic Rep. Suzan DelBene, who leads the campaign committee working to help Democrats win control of the House. “People are tired of what they’ve seen from this administration. Their life has gotten harder.”
“Republicans can’t run away from that.”
Former Rep. Charlie Dent offered this advice to swing district Republicans: “I would tell them to keep the president out of their districts, as far away as possible.”
But it’s not clear anyone is taking that advice. The White House is promising an active campaign year for the president with future stops planned in swing states including Pennsylvania, Michigan and out West.
