This week, the Senate Leadership Fund raised its spending in Texas to $100 million on behalf of Ken Paxton, the Republican Senate candidate in a state the party has not lost in decades. One hundred million dollars, in Texas, in September. According to CNN’s report on the state of the midterm effort, the number is less a show of strength than a symptom: inside Donald Trump’s political operation, the mood has curdled, the Senate map looks sicker by the day, and the House is the chamber his advisers are more worried about losing.
Trump’s advisers privately concede, CNN reports, that there is little expectation the president can win over large numbers of independents and swing voters — the voters who supplied part of his margin in critical states in 2024. With his approval ratings at an all-time low, the question circulating through the inner circle is an old one: how does an unpopular president best help his party hold Congress? One Trump adviser offered CNN a blunt assessment.
It’s obviously going to be f***ing rough
That adviser’s best-case scenario is the Democrats’ 2022 outcome under Joe Biden: lose the House narrowly, keep the Senate. Previous Republican confidence about holding the upper chamber, CNN reports, is dwindling.
The response is a calendar. Senior advisers, including chief of staff Susie Wiles, have assembled a schedule that puts Trump on the campaign trail most days in October, in battleground and deep-red states alike, though two administration officials said not every stop is confirmed. Trips to Alabama and Oklahoma are planned for next week, but a GOP official called those “outliers.” The plan: “He’ll be playing hard in Florida, Texas, Michigan and Ohio — he’ll be on the road just about every day in October campaigning. We’re leaving it all on the table.” Even in purple states, another official said, Trump will be sent to conservative areas. Advisers believe the only hope of holding ground is turnout, and that the president can supply it. “The system is built around what areas we need to goose turnout 2-3 points,” one operative told CNN.
Trump made the pitch himself on Monday morning in a Truth Social post on the midterms: “I’ll be out there spending money, and helping every one of them get elected. I won most of these places, often by a landslide. MAGA, pretend I am on the ballot. Don’t let them open your Borders, and allow crime to again flourish.”
The theory behind the travel, several people working on midterm strategy told CNN, is that the election can still be won on turnout alone. If enough base voters reach the polls, the thinking goes, the campaign needs to persuade very few persuadables. “The cake is already baked. There’s no getting away from Trump for these guys. So we have to lean into it,” one official said. “The left is going to attack [Republican candidates] as being close to Trump no matter what, so why not get the benefit out of it, which is max turnout.” A GOP campaign official put it more simply — “It’s all a turnout game” — and said the campaign committees and Trump’s political operation have shared data from day one “to make sure we’re hammering the exact people we need to turn out.” Sources noted this is not the traditional playbook for a president this unpopular, but that Trump has always defied typical expectations.
Advisers also privately admit the flaw in the design: Trump motivates people who despise him. “The issue with putting his name on the ballot is it could ultimately serve as a bigger driving force for Democratic voters who hate him,” the campaign official said.
Meanwhile, the candidates are doing their own arithmetic. Republicans in purple territory and even some red districts have broken with the president over the Iran War, the economy and immigration — a distance that was already visible weeks ago, when the Senate map began tilting and Republicans edged away. Mike Rogers, the GOP Senate nominee in closely watched Michigan, cut an ad lamenting that “Groceries cost too much. We have to bring prices down.” Of the war that America launched with Iran, Rogers said: “The war with Iran needs to end and end quickly. When it does, energy costs will plummet, but Michigan families can’t afford to wait for that to happen.” The GOP’s Senate candidates in Iowa and Ohio have echoed the sentiment; other Republican lawmakers have voted to limit Trump’s war powers; House members in Florida and Texas have criticized the administration on immigration; several candidates have scrubbed Trump references from their websites. A GOP official involved in strategy waved it off: “they need to run the races they need to run, and we’re obviously encouraging them to do what they need to do.”
As a gauge of how radioactive the brand may be, consider the money. Republican groups, including Trump’s MAGA Inc. PAC, have begun hemorrhaging cash, and much of what Trump’s PAC is spending is flowing through two newly formed groups with conspicuously unaligned names: No Going Back PAC Inc. and Safety & Affordability PAC Inc.
The White House’s public posture is unbothered. Spokesperson Davis Ingle said in a statement that Trump has “built one of the most robust coalitions in political history” and “understands how to communicate with them,” calling the president “the unequivocal leader, best messenger, and unmatched motivator for the Republican Party.” Advisers also hope the October blitz raises money.
Vice President JD Vance is cast as the disciplined surrogate, one who stays on message in a way the president does not — though the campaign does not see him as an ace for truly competitive territory, since he is still read as an extension of Trump, and both men are viewed as capable of doing more damage than good in certain swing districts. Vance has been workshopping messaging directly with GOP lawmakers and candidates and, as the RNC’s finance chair, raising so-called hard money. “JD’s primary responsibility has been fundraising,” one source told CNN, calling the task urgent after a Supreme Court ruling earlier this month let party committees like the RNC buy television ads at discounted rates.
Behind it all sits the data operation Trump’s team built during the 2024 campaign, now shared with the Republican National Committee and the House and Senate campaign arms; James Blair, who left the White House to run the political operation for the midterms, weighs in on where both men go. The administration has done the same calculus for the Cabinet: senior staffers working with Wiles choose stops and priorities, and Trump’s political team tracks and ranks officials’ campaign involvement — points for traveling to swing districts, deductions for overseas trips, the standings shared in group settings as encouragement. At a summer meeting at the Waldorf Astoria in Washington, CNN reports, Blair credited Small Business Administrator Kelly Loeffler with leading the table, with Acting Secretary of Labor Keith Sonderling in second.
And the $100 million in Texas? One Republican operative said it was moving the needle “some,” without confidence it could overcome headwinds the party attributes largely to the president himself. Asked what could change the tide, the operative offered the only remedy on the table: “Go back in time and never start the war with Iran.”