Between ‘brutal’ and ‘Armageddon,’ House GOP braces for Election Day losses | McClatchy Washington Bureau

Rep. Bob Dold is doing almost everything he can to inoculate himself against Donald Trump – and it still might not be enough.

He was one of the first Republicans in the House of Representatives to declare that he wouldn’t support or vote for Trump because of the presidential candidate’s nationalistic rhetoric and insulting comments about women, Muslims and Mexican immigrants. Dold has even run a campaign ad that features him clicking off a television as Trump and Hillary Clinton speak.

Yet Dold finds himself in a tough race against Brad Schneider, the Democrat who defeated Dold in 2012 only to lose a rematch in 2014.

With Trump at the top of the ticket, several voters in Illinois’ 10th Congressional District, an area with a tradition of ticket-splitting, say they’re just leery about voting Republican in 2016 – even for a moderate who doesn’t like his party’s presidential nominee.

“I just think Mr. Dold is a Republican first,” said Jane Partridge, an 85-year-old Lake Forest resident who attended a debate between Dold and Schneider. “I want someone who will work for the country, not the party first.”

If Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., or Ohio Gov. John Kasich were leading the ticket instead of Trump, Dold would win re-election, “no problem,” said John Dyslin, a conservative Republican who lived in the 10th until its lines were redrawn by the Illinois Legislature in 2012.

“The Trump factor will negatively impact things more than anything else,” said Dyslin, who voted for Rubio in the Illinois presidential primary and unenthusiastically voted for Trump by mail recently. “Will enough Democrats jump over and vote (for Dold)? Who knows?”

Assessments like those spell trouble for not only for Dold but also for other House Republicans, especially for freshmen who were elected in 2014 in districts that President Barack Obama carried in 2012.

They’re scrambling to contain potential down-ballot fallout from Trump’s collapsing campaign, which threatens to cut into their sizable majority in the lower chamber and give Democrats an outside shot of taking it over.

Democrats need a net gain of 30 seats to regain control of the House. That’s a tough task, even if Clinton wins in a landslide, because most districts are carefully drawn to protect incumbents. Analysts project that Democrats will likely gain between 10 and 20 seats.

“I just don’t see a path to 30,” said Nathan Gonzales, the editor and publisher of the nonpartisan Rothenberg & Gonzales Report, who projects House Democrats picking up eight to 15 seats. “But there are two weeks and 24 hours in a day for Trump to sink Republicans.”

Republicans elected two years ago in Obama districts have particular reason to be concerned, said David Wasserman, the House editor for the Cook Political Report. That group includes Dold and Reps. Carlos Curbelo and David Jolly of Florida, Ron Blum of Iowa and Mike Coffman of Colorado.

“Regardless of whether Trump was the nominee, these members were vulnerable,” Wasserman said. “Trump just made it more difficult.”

Republican losses could go farther than just those in Democrat-friendly districts.

Many Republicans are bracing for an election night that’s “going to be between brutal and electoral Armageddon,” said Douglas Heye, a Trump opponent who served as deputy chief of staff for communications for former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va.

“What we’re seeing in early voting in some places in Virginia and Florida, we’re getting our clocks cleaned,” Heye said. “How much of an albatross is Donald Trump and how much will down-ballot Republicans have to outperform him? What scares me is that there might be close races out there that we don’t know about.”

Longtime Republican incumbents who’ve traditionally breezed through re-elections, such as Reps. Darrell Issa of California and John Mica of Florida, are also running for their political lives in unexpectedly tight contests.

And Democratic leaders are trying to make it harder. Buoyed by her expanding lead over Trump, Clinton said Saturday night that she’d spend the closing days of her campaign “emphasizing the importance of electing Democrats down the ballot.”

President Barack Obama, too, has cut ads in for several Democrats in House and Senate races. One of the first spots was for Schneider against Dold.

Dold figured he’d be in a tight race, even before Trump.

“We’ve been able to draw a contrast (with Trump), but it does complicate things as well,” Dold said. “But we were one of the first people out, back as late as December 2015, to say Trump is not our guy, that we would not support or vote for him.”

He’s banking on that mattering in the 10th District, which had been a model of moderation over the years, with ticket-splitters sending Republicans and Democrats to Washington.

Located along Lake Michigan, the district is a mix of well-educated, white-collar workers in Chicago’s tony North Shore suburbs and blue-collar areas such as Waugekan, which has a growing Latino population.

“He’s pro-choice, he’s anti-Iran and pro-gun control; those are the keys you have to be to win in the 10th,” said Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois, an endangered Republican who represented the 10th in the House from 2001 to 2010. “The 10th is a very intellectual district. They don’t feel they’ve done right in the booth unless they’ve voted for somebody in both parties.”

Schneider and Democratic Party officials say Dold has only the veneer of being moderate and he reliably toes the party line.

“As long as he’s denying the fact that Hillary is the only thing standing between Trump and the Oval Office, he’s campaigning against her,” Schneider said. “He’s enabling Donald Trump.”

Some conservatives and Republicans in the district are upset with Dold’s rejection of Trump and with his voting record in the House. He sided with Republicans on votes 74 percent of the time in 2015, the third-lowest percentage among GOP House member, according to CQ’s Vote Watch.

Dyslin penned a piece in the Illinois Review, urging reluctant conservatives to scrap the purity tests and vote for Dold.

“Even though you’re not going to get everything that you want from him, you’re going to get more than you would from a Democrat,” Dyslin said. “To me, getting 50 percent or 60 percent is better than nothing.”