DEMS/GOP/POLITICS/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Donald Trump, cabinet officials and other Washington Republicans are scrambling to fend off a Democratic upset in a congressional special election, this one in a southwestern Pennsylvania district that Mr. Trump carried by 20 percentage points in 2016.
The Democrats, in contrast, have yet to invest significant resources in the race, which was never on their target list.
Mr. Trump plans to travel to the district Thursday to buoy the campaign of Rick Saccone, the party’s nominee to succeed Rep. Tim Murphy, a married, conservative Republican who resigned in October after it was revealed he had encouraged a woman with whom he’d had an affair to have an abortion.
The trip comes two days after a Democrat won a special election for a largely rural Wisconsin state Senate district that Mr. Trump also carried by 20 points—a result Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker called “a wake up call for Republicans.”
The Wisconsin election follows a pattern of Democratic pickups—and other near misses—during the Trump era. Alabama last month sent Democrat Doug Jones to the Senate despite Mr. Trump’s winning the state by 28 percentage points. Since Mr. Trump’s inauguration, Democrats have flipped 34 state legislative seats that had been controlled by Republicans.
House Republicans won four special elections in 2017 to fill seats held by lawmakers appointed to Mr. Trump’s cabinet. But each of them saw victory margins far smaller than their GOP predecessors, a sign of high Democratic enthusiasm even in Republican districts.”
-Reid J. Epstein and Michael C. Bender, “Trump Visit to Pennsylvania Aims to Boost GOP House Candidate,” The Wall Street Journal online, Jan 18, 2018 07:41am