Midterm drubbing

GOP governors call out Trump after midterm drubbing

Republican governors say the president and the party has to find a way to appeal beyond a narrowing conservative base to avoid losing in 2020.

By ALEX ISENSTADT

Republican governors are warning President Donald Trump that he and the GOP need to make a sharp course correction after their midterm shellacking to avoid losing again in 2020.

While the president has hailed the election as a “tremendous success” and a “big victory,” Republican governors, who will play a central role in overseeing the GOP’s state-by-state 2020 machinery, are taking stock of the party’s poor performance in the November elections and drawing up plans for major fixes.

The discussions stretched out over several days this week during the Republican Governors Association’s annual winter meeting, the party’s first major political gathering since the midterms. In interviews, more than a dozen of the GOP’s most prominent governors and officials implored the party to address its plummeting support among women and upper-income suburban voters, pleaded with the president to ratchet down his rhetoric, and urged a rethinking of the party’s widespread use of slash-and-burn TV ads that fell flat in 2018.

Among those roaming the halls of the Fairmont Princess resort was Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican who coasted to reelection in liberal Maryland. He said the midterms exposed a party that appeals to a narrowing base of supporters as it alienates vast swaths of the electorate.

“The Republican Party started to have problems before Trump ever arrived on the scene two years ago. Trump has exacerbated some of those issues and put a focus on” the shortcomings, he said. “But the party’s got to take a hard look at itself. If you’re going to be a majority party you’ve got to appeal to a majority of people.”

“I’m hopeful that it can get better, but I’m concerned that it could get worse," he added. "And that’s really a debate within the party to say, ‘What are we about? What are we going to focus on?'"

It wasn’t just the moderate Hogan expressing unease. Over the course of the week, eight Republican governors from across the country held a series of closed-door “murder board” sessions with senior party officials vying to become the RGA’s executive director for the next campaign. Governors pressed the applicants on how 2020 hopefuls should run with Trump at the top of the ticket. And they peppered them with questions on a burning topic: How to address the party’s plummeting support from highly educated and suburban female voters.

“Certainly as we’re talking to the candidates that’s one of things we’re talking to them about,” said Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts, the RGA’s incoming chairman.

On Wednesday, Paul Bennecke, a veteran GOP strategist and the organization’s outgoing executive director, delivered a presentation to top donors in which he outlined a series of steps the party needs to take to prepare for 2020. He argued that Republicans couldn’t cede the fight to register voters and warned that Democratic groups are spending big to increase their numbers.

Bennecke, an ally of top White House official Nick Ayers, said the party needs to catch up in the increasingly important hunt for early votes. He predicted that the liberal intensity that defined the 2018 election wouldn’t recede anytime soon, warning that Republicans would need to find a way to match their rivals — something that would require them to appeal beyond their conservative base.

The party is set to embark on a post-2018 autopsy. Ricketts said the RGA would soon be closely examining voter files from across the country for clues on how it can better target potential supporters. And in Texas, where the party beat back a fierce challenge to Sen. Ted Cruz, Gov. Greg Abbott’s political team will conduct a two-day postmortem scrutinizing the state’s turnout and how it compared with their pre-election targeting efforts.

Some, though, think the party’s problems extend far beyond tone or tactics and that its overall image needs to be addressed.

In a brief interview on Thursday morning, Utah Gov. Greg Herbert expressed frustration with Trump’s incendiary tone, which he said often offended people. Herbert said he was particularly irked by the president’s post-election attack on Rep. Mia Love, a Utah Republican who narrowly lost after refusing to embrace the president.

The congresswoman, Trump told reporters, fell short because she “gave me no love ... Too bad. Sorry about that, Mia.”

“I think it was just bad to throw her under the bus," Herbert said. "She’s the first African-American woman Republican elected to Congress in American history, and we’re proud of that. And she was doing some good things.”

He added: “There’s no need to be petty about it, and that’s part of the challenge we have with this administration. Sometimes they seem to have a tit-for-tat and are petty.”

Herbert said he hadn’t raised his concerns directly with the White House, but he hinted that he might during an expected upcoming meeting with Vice President Mike Pence.

“I think he recognizes the strengths and the weaknesses we have as a party, and what can we do to minimize the weakness and amplify the positives,” Herbert said of Pence, a former fellow governor.

Other governors also zeroed in on Trump’s tone. During a Wednesday presentation, Gov. Charlie Baker took what some in the audience perceived to be a veiled jab at the smash-mouth president when he said he relished being “called the most boring governor in the history of Massachusetts.”

Huddling with reporters after, Baker said national Republicans had erred during the final weeks of the election by focusing on polarizing issues and not the economy, which he said is what truly motivates the electorate.

“I’ve said many times that I think most voters are pretty pragmatic and what they want to see is results and performance,” said Baker, who boasts a 70 percent approval rating and won reelection by a landslide in his deep blue state. “I don’t know why some of the federal folks didn’t talk about the economy. We sure did because we have a good story to tell.”

Party officials said they're contemplating an array of new approaches. Some questioned whether they over-relied on opposition research-focused TV ads to try to discredit Democratic congressional candidates — an effort that in many instances failed. Staffers chattered about newly elected governor Bill Lee of Tennessee, who waged a largely positive advertising campaign free of personal attacks.

“The rhetoric in politics has become divisive in a lot of ways, and I’m hopeful that at least in Tennessee we can take that nondivisive campaign approach and move it into a governing approach," Lee said. "I’m hopeful that’s a model for others.”

Not everyone was convinced that Trump is at fault for the party’s losses. When asked about whether he saw the president as a plus or minus, Ricketts — who will play a key role in devising the party’s 2020 strategy — shrugged.

“What you saw here is just the natural ebb and flow of what goes on in our system: When the party takes the power in Washington, D.C., then the other party gets energized. That’s why Obama lost 60 House seats,” said Ricketts. “It’s a historical thing, so I don’t think that President Trump makes the difference so much as the party in power in Washington, D.C.”

Ricketts highlighted several successful governors races, including in Florida. The state’s Gov.-elect Ron DeSantis arrived at the conference to a hero’s welcome. On Wednesday, a long line of donors and lobbyists lined up to meet the Florida Republican, who was flanked by a large security entourage.

Within the White House, occasional criticism from Republican governors has led to suspicions that one of them could mount a surprise 2020 primary challenge to Trump. Some in the administration have trained their focus on Hogan and Baker, two overwhelmingly popular blue-state Republicans who haven’t been shy about tweaking the president.

When asked this week whether he was open to challenging Trump, Baker laughed and said he “won’t be running for president.”

Hogan, however, was less definitive.

“Well, you can never say never. I’ve no idea whether the president is even running for reelection or what’s going to happen two years from now,” he said. “I’ll say never say never but my focus right now is on Maryland.”