A growing number of Republican candidates are distancing themselves from President Donald Trump ahead of November’s midterm elections, as they navigate politically tumultuous waters.
Many of those pivoting away from their typically strong alliance with the president, particularly on the Iran war, hail from battleground states or are engaged in competitive battles. Their positioning comes as Republicans fight to avoid losing seats nationwide, which typically occurs in the first midterm after a new party wins the presidency.
Democrats are making their job harder, needling candidates on affordability issues in a year when Trump’s war in Iran has caused a jump in gas and oil prices.
Allies omit mention of Trump endorsements as popularity wobbles
Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL), who is running for Florida governor in what appears to be an unexpectedly tight race against Democrat David Jolly, is one of the most notable Republicans distancing himself from Trump.
Donalds is known as a vocal proponent of Trump’s. But his campaign website this week scrubbed mentions of the president’s endorsement. The original website referenced the endorsement at least a dozen times. On his current website, the only reference to it is on a scrolling list of endorsements Donalds has received from the president and others. Aside from stripping eight mentions of the endorsement from his homepage this week, Donalds also removed a “Enact the Trump Agenda” priority and transferred his photo with Trump to a less conspicuous corner of his website, according to an analysis by the Miami Herald.
Donalds isn’t the only Republican scrubbing ties to Trump. Rep. Andy Barr (R-KY), who is running in the Kentucky Senate race, also removed references to Trump from his website, according to Louisville Public Media. Rep. Young Kim (R-CA), who is running for reelection in California, also removed references to Trump from her website, according to The Sacramento Bee. Kim had her seat redrawn in the redistricting battle that saw her district merge with another GOP seat.
Opposing the Iran war over economic concerns
In the past seven days, a stream of GOP candidates campaigning in battleground areas have distanced themselves from Trump’s war in Iran and focused their rhetoric on tackling economic issues.
In Ohio, Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH) on Tuesday called for the conflict to “come to an end as quickly as possible so that we can lower gas prices.” Husted is engaged in one of the tightest races in the country against former Sen. Sherrod Brown.
In Michigan, GOP candidate Mike Rogers, who is fighting to flip the battleground state’s Senate seat red, on Monday publicly distanced himself from the Iran war. As polls indicate he is in a razor-thin race with socialist Abdul el Sayed, Rogers proclaimed the war must end “quickly” because Michigan residents “are struggling with the price of everyday life.” Rogers’s positioning comes after he had previously been fairly supportive of the war, a stance that el Sayed vigorously opposed.
“We have to bring prices down,” Rogers said in a video posted to X. “The war with Iran needs to end and end quickly. When it does, energy costs will plummet.”
The same day, GOP Iowa Senate nominee Ashley Hinson aired grievances against the Iran war, arguing the state “shouldn’t have to foot the bill at the pump or the checkout line for the war in Iran.” Her positioning on Monday comes after she repeatedly voted against multiple House resolutions targeting Trump’s war powers in Iran, including last week.
“We need to use every option at our disposal to provide some relief from high prices,” Hinson wrote in a post to X. “That includes suspending the gas tax, pausing diesel exports, unleashing E-15 everywhere we can, reinstating the $1/gallon biodiesel tax credit, and creating a diesel relief program to help our farmers and truckers being crushed by the high costs.”
Two other Iowa lawmakers in competitive reelection campaigns, Reps. Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Zach Nunn, also questioned Trump last Tuesday on the Iran war. The pair were among a handful of Republicans who broke party lines to vote in favor of the “war powers” resolution to curb Trump’s military powers in Iran, after previously voting to block it.
“I will not vote to keep our soldiers in an open-ended war, with Iowans paying too much at the pump,” Miller-Meeks said, triggering pushback from critics who said she was flip-flopping. “The President needs to present a plan to Congress and the American people for how this ends so we can focus on bringing our soldiers home and lowering prices.”
Stonewalling mass deportations
Trump’s deportation agenda is another policy that has recently earned him some distance from certain members of the Republican caucus.
Reps. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL) and Monica De La Cruz (R-TX), who are both running for reelection, released advertisements distancing themselves from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and its mass deportation operation last week.
While Salazar said, “The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today,” Trump later stood by her, saying he still supported her bid for reelection, and the Florida congresswoman noted that she had a “very good conversation” with the “very receptive” Trump on the topic.
Honorable mention: Trump Jr. and Russia
While he isn’t up for reelection, another notable intraparty break with Trump came this week when Sen. John Curtis (R-UT) called on the Senate Judiciary Committee to investigate the president’s oldest son over wedding gifts he received from a Russian businessman. Curtis criticized Donald Trump Jr.’s “lavish wedding afterparty” on “a private island” that Russian oligarch Umar Kremlev paid for, citing a report published by ProPublica.
Trump has said his son reimbursed Kremlev for the hundreds of thousands of dollars he reportedly paid for the wedding after-party on a Bahamas island in May. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has declined to rule out whether his panel may launch an investigation into the matter.
“A toaster is a wedding gift,” Curtis wrote in a post on X. “A private-island party paid for by a Putin-connected oligarch is something else. Republicans nearly wore out the subpoena machine investigating Hunter Biden’s foreign relationships. We should not unplug it now. ‘Trust us’ was not enough then, and it is not enough now.”
What’s the context?
The political positioning comes as Republicans wrestle with anti-incumbent sentiment.
The RealClearPolitics average has Democrats up 8.3 points in the generic congressional ballot, which measures which party voters prefer to run Capitol Hill. With about a month and a half to go before the 2026 midterm elections, Democrats hold an overall 5-percentage-point lead over Republicans, according to an NBC News poll released on Sunday, after an August survey indicated Democrats held a 6-point lead among likely voters. National pollsters this week have moved their ratings in favor of Democrats, including in deeply red races.
The Cook Political Report shifted the Senate races in Kansas, Georgia, and South Carolina toward Democrats. Sabato’s Crystal Ball shifted House and Senate races in Iowa, Michigan, Texas, and others to the left as well.
In addition to higher gas prices triggered by the Iran war, Trump’s tariffs have also posed a problem for the GOP, with around 75% of voters saying they are important to their midterm voting decisions. Democrats continue to gain an edge on hot issues, winning on healthcare and most issues related to affordability, including housing, inflation, and the cost of living, and jobs and the economy, according to a Financial Times/Focaldata survey released last month. In the survey, 63% of respondents said they believe the economy is going in the wrong direction, including 37% of those who voted for Trump in 2024.
COOK POLITICAL REPORT SHIFTS KEY SENATE RACES TOWARD DEMOCRATS
“2018, the last most comparable election, was a bad year for Republicans,” the Center for Politics warned in its Sabato’s Crystal Ball ratings published Tuesday. “That happened despite there being no real economic or inflationary headwinds for Republicans, and the president’s net approval (though still poor) was only about half as far underwater as it is now.
“This year, the president’s credibility on the economy is shot, and has been shot for the bulk of his term; the decision to strike Iran has become so unpopular that top GOP Senate candidates … are calling on the president to end the war,” the center’s ratings reads. “Based on these big-picture factors, why shouldn’t 2026 be as bad or even worse for Republicans than 2018 was?”
Republican leadership acknowledged the disconnect with Trump’s messaging and some voters. Speaker John Thune (R-SD) told candidates to prioritize messaging that resonates with voters in their states.
“The president is going to be a factor in every election,” Thune told the Washington Examiner. “It’s a midterm election. He’s not on the ballot — but I mean, obviously there are going to be probably policies of his they agree with, and some that they don’t. But I think they need to be their own person, and I think that’s the best way.”
David Sivak contributed to this article.