Super Tuesday win

Trump's Super Tuesday win sets off GOP alarm bells 

Republicans in close races fear their party's new standard-bearer will wipe them out in November.

By Ben Schreckinger

Donald Trump greeted his dominant Super Tuesday wins with triumphant confidence, promising to unify the Republican Party and handily beat Hillary Clinton in November.

“I think that’s frankly going to be an easy race,” declared Trump from the stage of a banquet hall at Mar-a-Lago, his palatial residence and private club here, where the New York billionaire also congratulated Ted Cruz on winning Texas and dismissed Marco Rubio’s viability.

Trump’s optimism came on a night in which he once again demonstrated his strength across broad swathes of the Republican Party, winning seven of 11 Super Tuesday contests — including blowouts in Alabama and Massachusetts — and in the running to win two more by the time he left the stage on Tuesday night.

The opulent space and soaring tone gave the event the air of a coronation, with friends and family gathered in the first two-rows of gold-hued chairs, followed by six rows of reporters and a wall of cameras, underneath three enormous chandeliers and surrounded by intricate gold-painted plaster-work — including winged cherubs.

Donald Trump speaks at the White and Gold Ballroom at The Mar-A-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., on Super Tuesday as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie listens.

“I feel awfully good,” said Trump, flanked by 10 American flags and facing two large, artificially aged Versailles-style mirrors built into the wall at the back of the room.

But many leaders of the party Trump seeks to unify did not feel so good about the day's results — or about their prospects of winning races under his leadership in November.

Trump's romp was dominant enough to alarm and depress many in the mainstream wing of the party, which was hoping that Marco Rubio would do well enough to blunt his momentum heading into the heart of the GOP primary calendar.

And though Trump appeared to be "sanding off the rough edges," as former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau put it, of his usual sharp-edged vows to keep out Mexicans and torture America's enemies, Republicans in key states saw their party's new standard-bearer as a threat to their survival.

In the nation’s Southwest, where Trump's impact could be felt the most keenly in November, Republicans greeted his strong day by girding for a likely nominee who could motivate Hispanic Democrats, depress suburban turnout and undermine fellow party members with whom he’ll share a ballot.

“That could have a very devastating down-ticket effect in terms of our U.S. Senate seat here,” said Bob List, former Republican governor of Nevada, where Harry Reid’s retirement gives the party an opportunity to pick up a Senate seat, but where supporters of Rep. Joe Heck worry Trump could undermine his chances of capturing that seat and others.

“The U.S. Senate could be lost if there were to be such a phenomenon,” said List. “Who knows, we could lose 30, 40 seats in the House and here in Nevada our legislature is in play.”

“Joe Heck has done an excellent job throughout his congressional career of reaching out to minority voters,” said Brian Seitchek, an Arizona-based Republican consultant who has run races across the Southwest. “If they go into the booth angry, it’s hard not to think how Joe Heck and other folks could end up paying for the sins of Donald Trump.”

As Trump boasted about how he had "expanded the party" and would "win big with Hispanics," party leaders and operatives pointed to other races out West where he could shift the playing field against them.

In Arizona, consultant Brian Murray, a former executive director of the state Republican Party, pointed out that Democratic Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, who is within striking distance of unseating John McCain in recent polls, has just begun airing ads attacking the senator for saying he will support Trump should the businessman become the nominee. “If it becomes a referendum on Trump and the things he says, it could become disastrous for the Republican Party,” Murray said.

In California, Seitcheck, who served as chief staff to former California Rep. Dan Lungren, compared the potential effect of a Trump nomination to Prop 187, a 1994 ballot initiative aimed at cracking down on illegal immigration that he blamed for his party’s poor showing across the state in recent decades. “I saw how galvanized anti-Republican sentiment was among Latino voters,” Seitcheck said. “Trump’s impact on congressional races and other down ticket races could be disastrous.”

Jamie Fisfis, a San Francisco-based Republican strategist, said that House members that have made inroads with Hispanic voters, like David Valadao, whose district is in California’s San Joaquin Valley, may have to disavow Trump. “He has the potential to be forced to make a choice or some sort of comment on the presidential race to maintain those relationships or bonds of trust that he’s created,” Fisfis said of Valadao.

Representatives of Trump’s campaign did not comment on such concerns, but during introductory remarks, New Jersey governor and Trump endorser Chris Christie assured the assembled reporters that the businessman was not a divider. “The American people are listening to him and he is bringing the country together,” Christie said.

The candidate himself also dismissed widespread angst among party leaders about his likely nomination. “I’m a unifier,” Trump said. “I know people are going to find that a little bit hard to believe.”

Western Republicans who find that hard to believe worried not just that Hispanics would vote against Trump but that many Republican voters, especially suburban women, would stay home and that other might drift to a third-party candidate.

On Tuesday night, Trump said he was not especially concerned about party loyalists abandoning him. “They could always do that and then they would just lose everything and that would be the work of a loser,” he said.

But Gary Johnson, a former Republican governor of New Mexico who is running for president as a Libertarian, said he believed Hispanic voters in his home state would be motivated to vote against Trump and that many Republicans would seek an alternative.

“I’m not Hispanic and I would be doing those thing based on what he has to say,” Johnson said. “If I were Hispanic it would likely be even closer to the heart.”