Trump Rallies in Louisiana After GOP Off-Year Election Losses
Trump Rallies in Louisiana After GOP Off-Year Election Losses
(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump hit the campaign trail a day after Republicans suffered defeats in off-year elections that signaled weakness for the party heading into 2020.
Trump struck a combative tone on Wednesday night in Monroe, Louisiana, delivering a wide-ranging speech that veered from endorsing Republican gubernatorial candidate Eddie Rispone to decrying the House impeachment inquiry and denigrating the whistle-blower who reported Trump’s controversial call with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
Trump’s speech came on the heels of Republican defeats in Virginia and Governor Matt Bevin’s apparent loss to Democrat Andy Beshear in Kentucky on Tuesday -- despite a last-minute visit by the president to the Blue Grass State.
But Trump’s draw in Louisiana was still evident. Rispone, who briefly took the stage, declared the state “Trump Country” and heaped praise on the president.
While Trump praised Rispone, he also used his time on stage to attack the impeachment inquiry hanging over his presidency and rail against the Democrats vying for the party’s nomination to take on Trump in 2020.
“Make no mistake, if the Democrats get back in you will have a depression the likes of which you’ve never seen before,” Trump said, adding that Democrats had “betrayed” the people of Louisiana on immigration policy.
Rispone is looking to unseat Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards in a Nov. 16 run-off election because neither won a majority last month in the state’s non-partisan primary.
On Wednesday night, Trump’s campaign announced that he would return to the state for another rally on Nov. 14, two days before the election.
Off-year elections historically have not been great predictors of presidential elections, in large part because the president is not on the ballot. But Tuesday’s races were embraced by Trump as tests of his political standing. The results in key swing states showed a major erosion for the Republican Party among in the suburbs.
“Republicans are whistling past the graveyard if they don’t acknowledge the obvious in their challenges winning over suburban voters,” said Colin Reed, a GOP strategist.
Republicans suffered similar losses in suburban areas in the 2018 midterm elections and 2017 off-year contests. While Trump has solidified the GOP’s support in rural areas, this year’s contests further laid bare the problems that Trump and GOP members of Congress could face in 2020.
Political Coattails
“Donald Trump is not popular in the suburbs. We know that. The big unknown is whether Democrats put up a nominee who is equally unpopular,” Reed said.
Trump claimed victory after Tuesday’s races, pointing to Kentucky Republicans’ success in down-ballot elections as well as Republican Tate Reeves’ victory in the Mississippi governor’s race as a sign his political coattails remain long. Trump campaigned for Reeves last week in Tupelo, Mississippi, before rallying supporters for Bevin on Monday in Lexington, Kentucky.
The president tweeted late Tuesday that there was a “lot of winning in Kentucky,” and predicted that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell would win re-election next year.
McConnell, whose support is crucial for Trump to survive an impeachment trial, voiced confidence in his own ability to win in 2020.
“I don’t think Kentucky is turning blue as a result of that,“ he told reporters at the Capitol, referring to Bevin’s apparent loss. “We’re looking forward to doing well in Kentucky in 2020 and I don’t think anything that happened Tuesday changes that.”
But Trump on Monday framed Bevin’s re-election effort as a referendum on his popularity in a state he won by nearly 30 percentage points in 2016.
‘Greatest Defeat’
“If they lose they’re going to say Trump suffered the greatest defeat in the history of the world. You can’t let that happen to me,” Trump told his audience at the Kentucky rally.
Kentucky will not be a battleground state in 2020, and many observers blamed Bevin for his poor showing against Beshear, the attorney general and son of the previous governor. But in other competitive states, such as Pennsylvania and Virginia, the results in the suburbs alarmed Republican strategists.
Democrats pulled off upsets in municipal races in parts of the Philadelphia suburbs that have long been GOP strongholds. Democrats will control all five seats on the Delaware County Council for the first time since the Civil War, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. They also won a majority in the Chester Count, Delaware legislature. The Bucks County Board of Commissioners also went Democratic for the first time since 1983.
In Mississippi, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jim Hood, the state’s attorney general, won Madison County outside of Jackson. Trump won the county in 2016 by more than 16 percentage points.
--With assistance from Erik Wasson.
To contact the reporters on this story: Jordan Fabian in Washington at jfabian6@bloomberg.net;Mario Parker in Washington at mparker22@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alex Wayne at awayne3@bloomberg.net, Joshua Gallu, John Harney
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