Trump’s chosen GOP Senate candidates faring poorly in SC, NC and Texas - USA Today

When it comes to the U.S. Senate, Republicans have not had to worry about South Carolina in decades, which last elected a Democrat to the chamber in 1998.

Recent races haven't been close. The late Sen. Lindsey Graham won reelection by 10 percentage points in 2020, followed by Sen. Tim Scott, who more than doubled that outcome two years later, trouncing his Democratic foe by 25 percentage points.

Much to the shock of political observers, however, the current polls have the race for Graham's former seat neck-and-neck between his sister Darline Graham and Democrat Annie Andrews. The nonpartisan Cook Political Report changed its rating on Oct. 20 from "likely" to "lean" Republican.

Some might blame President Donald Trump − and not just because his low approval ratings have made Democrats more competitive nationwide.

Trump foisted Darline Graham on South Carolina Republicans when he urged Gov. Henry McMaster to appoint her to fill out her late brother's term in July. Then Trump endorsed the political novice over a crowded field of more experience contenders, including U.S. Rep. Ralph Norman.

Republicans in the state were still struggling to unify the party after a hard-fought primary, the USA TODAY Network reported Oct. 29.

South Carolina is just one example where Trump took sides among Republicans and his preferred candidate has struggled in the general election.

Trump ignored pleas from Senate Republican Leader John Thune and campaign advisers to go with incumbent Sen. John Cornyn over state Attorney General Ken Paxton as the safer choice in Texas, for instance. And he alienated Sen. Thom Tillis, R-North Carolina, who retired out of frustration with the White House, leaving an open seat that Democrats appear poised to fill.

Those intraparty scuffles gave the president a near-perfect primary scorecard, but political observers warn that has unnecessarily jeopardized safe GOP seats by turning contests that would normally be a slam dunk for conservatives into more competitive toss-ups.

In North Carolina, for example, Democrat Roy Cooper, a popular moderate former governor, has led Republican Michael Whatley, who served as RNC chair and received Trump's endorsement ahead of the GOP primary, in every public survey since last year. At the beginning of October, the Senate GOP's top group began pulling money out of the Tar Heel State, signaling it was a lost cause.

Matthew Dallek, a presidential historian at George Washington University, said these choices are a major gamble for the White House as Republicans face a pessimistic nation at midterm ballot boxes. He said Trump's decisions may puzzle traditional strategists, but are rooted in a conclusion he made at the end of his first term.

"The lesson he learned is the establishment prevented from 'Trump being Trump.' So he's going to operate on instinct, which has turned him into this remarkable political figure," Dallek said. "Trump is not going to make the mistake of moderating or letting anyone stop him from doing what he really wants to do."

To some Republicans, Trump doing what he wants to do may have turned out to be a different mistake.

"I've had a lot of people that have attacked her, saying she's not conservative enough," state Attorney General Alan Wilson said during an Oct. 29 rally in Rock Hill, South Carolina, in which he appealed for GOP unity. "Not voting for Darline Graham isn't just not voting for Darline Graham. You are saying indirectly that you're OK with Chuck Schumer being the majority leader of the United States Senate."

But ideology is just one reservation voters may have about Darline Graham, who was skewered for fumbling a fairly simple question about whether the United States has national security interests in protecting Taiwan and the South China Sea.

"I'm not a polished politician up here," she said during an Aug. 18 Republican rally. "National security is not my thing, not my area of expertise. But I do support the military."

South Carolina voted for Trump three times, including by 18 percentage points in 2024, but it may not send his chosen candidate to the Senate on Nov. 3.

Allies defending the president's primary picks argue many of those primary choices are running well in more challenging states for Republicans.

In New Hampshire, the president backed former Republican Sen. John Sununu, a well-known moderate who handily defeated fellow former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown in September's primary. He is trailing Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas in most surveys, but Sununu has been running closer than previous GOP Senate candidates.

Same goes for Michigan, where Trump endorsed Republican Mike Rogers, a former congressman who is trading sharp blows with Democrat Abdul El-Sayed to flip the seat in the GOP's favor. Polls consistently show El-Sayed in the lead, but the president's allies point out he was leading Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens in the primary by as much as 15 percentage points to only win by about 1% of the vote. 

"He's choosing winners," Republican National Committee Chairman Joe Gruters said in an interview. "And I think that overall his record over the years, I bet on the president's elections every single time."

As far as backing more polarizing figures such as Paxton, whose approval rating is net negative 11 points, according to the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin, conservative leaders point to the GOP nominee winning statewide three times. The scandal-plagued contender is trailing Democrat James Talarico by as much as six percentage points in a CNN poll released Oct. 29, but the president's allies argue being a fiercer ally on Capitol Hill than Cornyn will be an asset to the party.

"They're going to vote for Paxton, and the difference is we're getting a MAGA warrior who will put the Save America Act first and on top of the agenda," Gruters said.

"This election is all about turnout," he added. "If we turn out our voters, we win. If we don't, we lose."

During the 2018 midterms, in which Democrats made a net gain of 40 seats in the House, Trump endorsed 75 congressional candidates in total.

More than half won their respective contests, including Republicans Josh Hawley, of Missouri, and Mike Braun, of Indiana, in the two Senate pickups that year. But those were "mostly in fairly Republican districts," according to a Brookings Institution study.

Republican strategist Jesse Hunt said the 2026 midterms are an even more difficult environment, but pushed back on the notion that Trump's decision-making in the primaries is the problem. He said some races could have been a "little less costly," but that most GOP leaders were clear-eyed about the hurdles coming into the fall.

"I think a lot of the candidates that are running now could be performing better, but I think that's a larger discussion, unrelated to Trump, and more about the direction of the Republican Party and what it takes to be a good candidate in this new era that we're in," Hunt said.

Many of the president's choices to be on the fall ballot this year are facing troubling scandals that have endangered potential flips or typical safer seats.

Chief among them is Rep. Mike Collins, R-Georgia, who Trump chose over former University of Tennessee football coach Derek Dooley, who was supported by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a conservative who is popular in the state.

Before the June 16 runoff, Trump called Collins a "true friend, fighter and warrior" on social media and slammed Dooley for admitting Trump lost the 2020 election. Since then, Collins' campaign has been dogged by scandals, including an ethics investigation and reports that his son-in-law promoted white supremacist groups.

Polls show Collins behind incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff by as much as 15 percentage points in what was once thought to be a coin-flip election.

Similarly, the president backed first-time candidate Anthony Constantino, an upstate New York sticker company CEO and former boxer, over the state GOP's preferred candidate Assembly member Robert Smullen.

Constantino released a rap album praising Trump and won that primary by about 20 percentage points, vying for a seat previously held by GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik. But a Times Union/Siena poll shows the race against Democrat Blake Gendebien is a virtual tie in a congressional district Trump won by 21 percentage points two years ago.

The president also refused to step away from Rep. Max Miller, a former White House aide he originally supported over a Republican incumbent who criticized Trump for failing to stop the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot.

Miller has been accused of abusing his 2-year-old daughter and ex-wife, the daughter of Sen. Bernie Moreno, a fellow Republican. He has denied the accusations, but that controversy has turned Ohio's 7th Congressional District, which Trump won by 11 percentage points in 2024, into another close race.

Democrats had viewed that race as a longshot until August, when they began putting more resources behind Brian Poindexter, a union ironworker.

Whoever Trump endorsed to be the GOP's nominee in certain races, the administration believes he should be the center of voter's decision-making this fall.

"President Trump is the unequivocal leader, best messenger and unmatched motivator for the Republican Party, and he is committed to maintaining Republican majorities in Congress," White House spokesman Davis Ingle told USA TODAY in a statement.

"The choice has never been more clear: doubling down on President Trump' winning, common sense agenda or the Democrat's extreme liberal policies and obstruction."

Part of the GOP's closing argument, Ingle said, is reminding voters about policy achievements such as tax cuts and sealing the U.S.-Mexico border.

But as much as Trump is touted as an asset by the administration, the president is often found veering off message.

Rather than focusing on issues voters care most about, such as the economy and energy costs, former aides like Marc Short, who served as the White House's director of legislative affairs during Trump's first term, have told USA TODAY he's not focused on affordability.

In recent rallies, the president has talked about his personal makeover of Washington while musing about men’s and women's bodies during multiple rallies.

Whether Trump's further involvement on the campaign trail helps or harms Republicans is also being debated given that 44% of voters say they plan to vote against him versus 21% who say they're showing up to support him, according to a new Marist/NPR/PBS News poll.

Democrat strategist Tom Bonier said the most polarizing figure in the 2026 midterms cycle that the president has put forward has been himself.

"We've seen him going around the country to these rallies and saying, 'I'm on the ballot', which demonstrates the difficult position Republicans find themselves in," he said.

The MAGA base doesn't love the rest of the party as much as Trump, he added, but being in the forefront reminds swing voters about the many election promises the president didn't keep.

"So it's sort of a no-win scenario that Republicans find themselves," Bonier said. "I'd rather be us than them."