With a approval rating of negative 35-57 percent, Trump’s presidency could spell disaster for Republicans in 2017’s special elections and in the 2018 midterms. “Our country needs help”.
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Thompson has tapped into voter frustration with Brownback throughout the campaign, tying the state treasurer to the unpopular Republican governor. Estes had double his campaign cash.
Estes did, in fact, win the election for the House seat vacated by Mike Pompeo, who left to become Trump’s Central Intelligence Agency director. Last November, Trump carried the district by 30 points.
There is a fifth special election to fill the solidly Democratic Los Angeles-area seat vacated when Xavier Becerra became state attorney general.
Trump on Wednesday submitted a Tweet celebrating Estes’ victory.
“Republican Ron Estes needs your vote and needs it badly”, Trump said in the minute-long call. The state’s jungle primary happened April 4 and two Democrats, Robert Lee Ahn and Jimmy Gomez, were the top vote getters.
Kansas 4th District congressional candidate Ron Estes, right, and Sen. Special elections favor organized activists more than regular elections do because of the significantly lower turnout they produce, and progressive activists had targeted this seat for quite a while. He defeated James Thompson, the Democratic candidate, in the first national test of his party’s electoral strength, in a contest that saw a late infusion of national support from Republicans nervous about the tumultuous political environment during President Trump’s first months in office. Meanwhile, all of the reported independent expenditures in the Kansas race-more than $180,000-have been on the Republican side.
Fearing potential fallout, Republicans injected last-minute money to help Estes while Trump and Vice President Mike Pence recorded get-out-the-vote phone calls on the candidate’s behalf. Apparently, many of those who bothered to vote were Democrats mad at Donald Trump. This should worry Republicans. When Perez ran for party chairman earlier this year, he pledged to implement a 50-state strategy to build up the party. If Democrats can seriously compete in this Kansas district, they can seriously compete nearly anywhere. Estes’s percentage of victory exceeded that of Governor Brownback’s margin in 2016 but fell far short of the majority racked up by President Trump.
“There are thousands of elections every year”, Perez told the Washington Post last week.
“When they think about choices, they tend to think big choices: change versus status quo”, Rothenberg said. “That would require a major increase in funds”.
Meanwhile, the National Republican Congressional Committee poured 0,000 into the race, and other GOP leaders made a strong push for Estes.
That said, the results in Kansas serve as a reminder to the political world that, as things stand, the GOP is facing serious headwinds – and they have no idea how to improve their standing.
Estes handily won the district’s rural counties.
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The PAC, which channels online contributions to Democratic candidates and has raised over $1.5 billion since its inception more than a decade ago, has had some of its greatest success since Trump’s election. It’s important to note that local politics mattered in this race. “People are prepared, they’re fired up they’re ready to go they’re ready to organize and to turn out and vote like we’ve never voted before”.
