Midwest Republicans Begin Panicking Over Midterm Environment With Deep-Red Areas Now in Play

Republicans’ midterm crisis is only getting worse in the Midwest, where several high-profile GOP candidates are breaking with President Trump, calling for him to bring an end to the Iran war as quickly as possible. The conditions have grown so bad for the GOP in the region that Democrats are now more likely to flip a Senate seat in Kansas this year than Republicans are to win the Georgia Senate race, according to a gold-standard forecaster. The cracks began showing last week, when three Midwest House Republicans — all locked in tight re-election battles — voted for a resolution to bring the war to a close. Then came Congresswoman Ashley Hinson, the GOP Senate nominee in Iowa, who on Sunday called for the war to end. The GOP Senate candidate in Michigan, Mike Rogers, made the same call on Monday. On Tuesday, the Republican nominees for governor of Wisconsin and Michigan also said the war should end.By Wednesday, it became clear why Republican candidates were so rapidly running away from the president. Polling began showing a significant swing toward Democrats in places like Iowa and Kansas as fuel prices hit all-time highs. According to AAA Fuel Prices tracker, diesel in Iowa reached its highest price ever on Monday at $6.32 per gallon. The cost of diesel in Kansas then hit its own all-time high on Tuesday at $6.25 per gallon. On Wednesday, the Cook Political Report — which rates the likelihood of which party will control which office — decided to move the Kansas Senate race in the Democrats’ direction into the “lean Republican” column from the “likely Republican” column. The incumbent, Senator Roger Marshall, leads his Democratic opponent, pastor Adam Hamilton, by only one percent in an average of polling aggregators. At a recent debate, Mr. Marshall was incessantly booed by a crowd at the Kansas State Fair for a host of reasons. At one point, they began chanting “Florida! Florida!” after Mr. Marshall began talking about his and his wife’s home in Kansas — a reference to a Kansas City Star report detailing how Mr. Marshall had spent tens of thousands of dollars traveling to his vacation home in Florida over the course of four years. He was also jeered as he defended himself for suing former patients for unpaid debts while he was an OB-GYN.The problems in Iowa are not much better for the GOP. According to conservative talk radio host and activist Steve Deace — a fixture in Iowa Republican politics — GOP candidates have been told by their advisors that this could be the worst midterm environment since 2006, when Democrats took control of both chambers of Congress, winning five Senate seats and 31 House seats. That year, not a single Democrat in Congress who ran for re-election lost their race. In a lengthy X post, Mr. Deace wrote that 2026 “might end [up] being an even worse midterm environment than 2006,” writing that the Iran war is a “political albatross” on par with the Troubled Asset Relief Program — a $700 billion bailout fund passed by Congress at the outset of the Great Recession. While supporters argued the bill saved the world from another depression, TARP became a rallying cry for conservatives in 2010, when Republicans took control of the House in a landslide. Mr. Deace said pollsters have told GOP candidates that if they are running in a district that Mr. Trump won by 15 points, they are in a tied race with the Democrats. He says pollsters also told candidates that if they are running in a district Mr. Trump carried by ten points, then they are behind their Democratic opponents. “If the environment is this bad in my home state, where Trump has been the most popular political figure over the last decade, I can’t imagine where it is everywhere else,” Mr. Deace wrote.

Midwest Republicans Begin Panicking Over Midterm Environment With Deep-Red Areas Now in Play

Midwest Republicans Begin Panicking Over Midterm Environment With Deep-Red Areas Now in Play

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