Trump's October Rally Blitz Is Mostly in Red States as Republicans Play Defense
After promising to visit 35 competitive races, Trump has campaigned with fewer than a third of those candidates and keeps landing in territory he won easily in 2024.
At a Rose Garden dinner in early September, President Trump told about 30 Republican candidates in competitive races that he would spend the last month before the midterms campaigning for them. "I'm going to go to every one of those 35 places and we're going to see if we can get everyone elected," he said. A month and a half later, the schedule looks different. Trump has campaigned with fewer than a third of the candidates at that dinner, and the White House has never said which 35 places he meant.
His October rally blitz has instead taken him to Ohio twice, Texas twice, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Arizona, Montana and Alaska, mostly states he carried comfortably. "What the hell am I doing in Tennessee?" he asked a cheering crowd. On the tarmac between stops in Arizona and Montana, he said the visits were a way of saying thanks. "I do it to thank them," Trump said. "I also do it because we have some great people there that are running and I want to make sure they win."
The map explains some of it. Republicans are on defense in places they have long won without much effort. Trump flew eight hours to Alaska to campaign for Sen. Dan Sullivan and Rep. Nick Begich, both facing races that are too close for comfort in a state Trump won by 13 points in 2024. The Republican National Committee says he will visit Kansas on Monday, where a toss-up Senate race would have been hard to imagine a month ago.
RNC Chairman Joe Gruters said the goal is to get the base to turn out. "It's turnout, turnout, turnout," he told NPR from a rally in Arizona. "You put the president on the ballot." Trump regularly tells supporters to vote as if he were on the ballot, a strategy that runs against the usual playbook for presidents whose approval is underwater and whose party faces headwinds. Trump claims the polls are wrong.
His message changes little from stop to stop: his past election wins, the One Big Beautiful Bill, and a reminder that gas prices were lower before the war with Iran began. He also teases a $5,000 dividend for every American adult if Republicans win both chambers, an idea he first floated at a Republican midterm convention and which has met resistance from elected Republicans.
North Carolina shows the strain. Trump is set to appear in Greenville on Tuesday, but Republican campaign committees have begun canceling ad reservations meant to help his chosen Senate candidate there, Michael Whatley, a sign they see the race slipping away. A congressional district in eastern North Carolina that was redrawn to favor Republicans in Trump's mid-decade redistricting push is now rated a toss-up by the Cook Political Report.
Anderson Clayton, chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party, predicted the redistricting would backfire. "He's trying to drum up any amount of support that he can at the last minute," she said. "But I don't think that North Carolinians are going to fall for it again."
