Just 33% of adults approve of President Trump's job performance, according to Associated Press-NORC polling from July, with Trump also drawing poor marks on the economy, immigration and foreign policy. Against that backdrop, a small number of Republican congressional candidates have begun subtly distancing themselves from the president as the two-month sprint to the November midterms opens.
The shift is easy to miss. In Texas, congressional candidate Carlos De La Cruz's campaign website once read 'AIR FORCE VETERAN. SMALL BUSINESSMAN. TRUMP CONSERVATIVE.' It now reads 'NATIVE TEXAN. AIR FORCE VETERAN. SMALL BUSINESSMAN. PROVEN CONSERVATIVE.' De La Cruz's campaign rejected any suggestion he was backing away from the president.
Eric Flores, a former assistant U.S. Attorney running against Democratic Rep. Vicente Gonzalez Jr. in South Texas, once listed 'SUPPORT PRESIDENT TRUMP'S AGENDA' as his No. 2 priority on his homepage. That line has been replaced with 'LOWER THE COST OF LIVING' — a top concern for voters. Trump's name has been moved off the homepage entirely, appearing only on a separate endorsements page.
In Kentucky, Ralph Alvarado, running in the heavily Republican 6th Congressional District, removed all references to Trump from his campaign homepage.
National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Mike Marinella dismissed the trend as a 'manufactured storyline,' saying 'President Trump and House Republicans have delivered historic results for the American people, and our candidates are eager to take that record directly to voters alongside the President on the campaign trail.'
Trump himself is signaling he intends to remain front and center. He will headline a two-day Republican convention in Dallas after Labor Day, when voters typically start paying closer attention to the midterms. Stumping recently in South Carolina, he told supporters bluntly: 'So what I really want you to do is pretend, please, that I'm on the ballot. Just say that I'm on the ballot one more time.'
Republican strategist Jason Roe, who advises Rep. Tom Barrett in a competitive Michigan district, put it plainly: 'The whole Republican brand is that we're aligned with Trump so you gain nothing from it' by breaking away.
The episode says less about Trump's grip on the party than about which issue Republicans believe actually wins elections. Every candidate cited by the AP swapped Trump branding for cost-of-living messaging, not for criticism of the president's record. That is a tell: voters are grading Republicans on grocery bills and mortgage rates, not on loyalty tests, and campaigns with any sense of the market are pricing that in.
Democrats will nonetheless try to nationalize every House race around Trump regardless of what any individual website says, a familiar tactic from a press corps eager to turn a handful of homepage edits into a party-wide revolt. The numbers come first: Trump's approval is weak, but the NRCC's core argument — that there is no substitute for the base he alone turns out — remains untested until ballots are actually counted in November.
