House Republicans in Close Races Worry Trump’s Problems May Hurt Them

Representative Barbara Comstock, Republican of Virginia, greeted the audience after a debate last week against LuAnn Bennett, her opponent

House Republicans in Close Races Worry Trump’s Problems May Hurt Them

  Like many Republican candidates, Representative Barbara Comstock is trying to prevent Donald J. Trump’s problems from becoming hers.

Early on, she supported Senator Marco Rubio’s presidential bid. In ensuing months, she remained resolutely reticent on Mr. Trump, simply never uttering his name in trying to avoid any political undertow that he might create. But after the release last week of a recording in which Mr. Trump boasted in vulgar terms about assaulting women, Ms. Comstock was among the first Republicans to call on him to step down.

“This is disgusting, vile and disqualifying,” she said in a statement. “No woman should ever be subjected to this type of obscene behavior, and it is unbecoming of anybody seeking high office.”

Ms. Comstock is hoping her disavowal will be enough. The outcome here in Loudoun County, which in recent years has been seen as a bellwether in presidential politics, will provide a measure of any down-ballot damage that Mr. Trump’s contentious candidacy may have caused.

Ms. Comstock’s wealthy, highly educated district in the suburbs of Washington is a diversity-rich hub of government largess, where federal contractors commute past Buddhist temples, mosques and churches that offer services in Korean.

“If the Democrats have any prayer of taking the House, and I think it’s just a long shot, they’ve got to win this seat,” said Thomas M. Davis III, a former Republican congressman who represented portions of Ms. Comstock’s district.

So far, many analysts say, there is scant evidence that voters will penalize candidates because of Mr. Trump.

“Believe it or not, it hasn’t changed matters all that much,” said David Wasserman, the House of Representatives editor for The Cook Political Report. He has forecast that Democrats could pick up as many as 20 seats, 10 short of the number needed to regain control of the House.

Polls have shown that voters are willing to separate their support for certain House and Senate candidates from their feelings about the top of the ticket. In an effort to bolster Ms. Comstock and other vulnerable Republicans, the Congressional Leadership Fund, a “super PAC” aligned with Republicans, announced Friday that it would invest an additional $10 million into 15 targeted races, including hers.

Speaker Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin also has tried to ensure his party holds its House majority, offering a policy agenda and promising appearances in dozens of cities to lend his fund-raising power.

His campaign said on Thursday that Mr. Ryan had raised $15.4 million in the third quarter, collecting more than $48.2 million in 2016. He has transferred more than $31 million of that to the National Republican Congressional Campaign Committee.

Mr. Ryan — having disinvited Mr. Trump from their first planned joint appearance in Wisconsin last weekend after news of the recording broke — effectively cut his members free on Monday, saying he would not defend nor campaign with Mr. Trump. He has instead shifted his focus to the argument that Republicans need to be re-elected to serve as a bulwark against a potential President Hillary Clinton.

Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader, has proved once more to be a fund-raising powerhouse, raising $34.6 million for House Democrats in the third quarter and $127.7 million this election cycle, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee said on Wednesday.

Graphic: The Senate Is in Play. Is There a Trump Effect?

Initial reactions to the 2005 recording of Mr. Trump have also given Democrats cause for optimism. A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, conducted shortly after the recording was released by The Washington Post, showed 49 percent of voters preferred Democrats take control of Congress, compared with 42 percent who preferred Republicans — the largest advantage for Democrats since the government shutdown in 2013.

But Democrats have a steep climb. With 247 seats, House Republicans hold their largest majority since 1931.

Nathan L. Gonzales, the editor of the Rothenberg & Gonzales Political Report, estimates that Republicans have already locked up 217 seats — and they only need 218 to keep their majority.

But Republican strategists are haunted by the prospect that voters who would typically support Republicans might become so disillusioned that they choose to stay home.

“This is a highly polarized environment,” Mr. Wasserman said. “And I think the only reason for Democrats to overperform on Election Day is that Republicans are so depressed that they don’t show up.”

At this point, that does not look very likely, he said. While more educated, conservative voters who may have been more likely to split their ticket are looking less enthusiastic, Mr. Trump’s base remains energized, he said.

In the suburbs of Minneapolis, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has run ads trying to tie Representative Erik Paulsen, a Republican, to Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump is unpopular there, but the contest had been trending in favor of Mr. Paulsen — who last week joined Ms. Comstock in announcing he would not vote for him.

Similarly, in northeastern Iowa, Democrats have been struggling to oust Representative Rod Blum, a Republican who is a member of the hard-right House Freedom Caucus. Mr. Blum’s district voted for Mr. Obama twice, but the pickup, originally thought to be likely, has been bedeviling Democrats. Mr. Blum has denounced Mr. Trump’s remarks but did not comment on whether he would continue to support him, according to The Des Moines Register.

Districts that had been seeing a so-called Trump effect appear to be the ones with higher concentrations of Latinos and Asians, Mr. Wasserman said. Also, college-educated, white women — a group that may be especially motivated by animus toward Mr. Trump — are also showing strikingly strong support for Mrs. Clinton this year, said William H. Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution.

Though Ms. Comstock’s district trends slightly Republican, voters twice supported Mr. Obama. Mr. Trump is not popular here.

Mr. Davis, who represented the area for seven terms, said most voter aversion to Mr. Trump stemmed from his propensity for insults.

“This is a pretty dignified, educated group, and they’re just not into insulting people and all that,” he said. “Not particularly liberal, but dignified.”

Just one day before disavowing Mr. Trump, during a debate hosted by the local chamber of commerce here, Ms. Comstock cited a collaboration with Senator Tim Kaine, a fellow Virginian and the Democratic vice-presidential nominee. She twice invoked Bill Clinton, the president whose administration she built a reputation investigating in the 1990s as a House chief counsel. She steered clear of saying Mr. Trump’s name, saying she was “still watching” the race to decide who would get her vote.

LuAnn Bennett, a real estate developer who is challenging Ms. Comstock, on Wednesday slammed her for waiting so long to reject Mr. Trump.

“I’m afraid that what my opponent was clearly ‘watching’ for was how best to preserve her own political career,” she said.