WASHINGTON (AP) — While Democratic Rep. As Mary Peltola prepares for a tough re-election contest in Alaska, she’s talking about fish. For Rep. Mike Levin, who is trying to keep his California district blue, sand is the big topic. And as Republican Rep. Mike Garcia campaigns in another competitive California district, he criticizes a state-imposed gas tax.
As these incumbents and others compete for reelection in the several dozen districts that will likely determine control of the House of Representatives this fall, they are focusing on local issues. It’s a time-honored political strategy, but it’s also an attempt to change the subject as the candidates grapple with how to talk about the two men at the top of the ticket this year — President Joe Biden and Donald Trump.
Both presumptive presidential candidates remain popular with their party’s core voters but have struggled to gain the broad approval that will help their party win elections, leaving many of their candidates essentially fending for themselves.
“I’m so angry and frustrated with Joe Biden right now,” Peltola said, citing disagreements with Biden’s policies on liquefied natural gas and the border.
In 2022, she handed Alaska’s only seat in the House of Representatives to Democrats for the first time in almost 50 years. But to stay blue this year, she will have to overcome headwinds at the top of the ticket. Trump carried Alaska by 10 percentage points over Biden in 2020, and he is almost certain to carry the state again.
For Peltola, the answer to Trump’s popularity in Alaska is an issue that was central to her 2022 campaign: reducing the number of fish accidentally caught by bottom trawls.
“Salmon, halibut, crab and herring really unite Alaskans,” she said. “That is our identity.”
Peltola is not alone in her approach. As attention in Congress has shifted to campaigns in recent weeks, at times dozens of Democrats have broken with Biden on policy issues, especially thorny issues like illegal immigration and the conditions for aid to Israel.
The dynamic was on full display earlier this month when Biden announced an order to curtail asylum applications at the border. While Biden’s ceremonial signing of the proclamation took place in the East Room of the White House during a busy day on Capitol Hill, only eight congressional lawmakers — Democrats, mostly from border states like Texas, Arizona and California — showed up.
With Biden and Trump locked in a fierce election battle and Democrats defending a difficult map to retain control of the Senate, many Democrats view the majority in the House of Representatives as a crucial stopgap in the event of a Trump presidency.
To win, Democrats are focusing on winning over independent and Republican voters, a tacit admission that winning control of Congress will likely require many of the party’s candidates to outperform Biden.
“We want them to stand up and talk about what positions they think, what policies we should pursue, and in some cases they may have disagreements with the administration, in some cases they may not,” said Rep. Suzan DelBene, Democratic Congressional Chair . campaign committee, said last month. “Whatever that is, they are standing up for their community.”
As the country grapples with a moment of discontent over presidential choices, political strategists also see increasing potential for split-ticket voting, especially among independent-minded voters.
“Voters may decide they’re going to vote for Trump, but they know how unstable he can be, so they’ll vote for a Democrat to control him,” said former Rep. Steve Israel, who chaired and now leads the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. to the elections. Cornell University Institute for Politics and Global Affairs.
Meanwhile, Republican leaders in the House of Representatives have aligned themselves closely with Trump. They enthusiastically welcomed him to Capitol Hill this month and both House Speaker Mike Johnson and Rep. Richard Hudson, the chairman of the Republican National Campaign Committee, traveled to Florida for rallies at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club.
“We are committed to working very closely with him,” Hudson said at a news conference.
During Trump’s visit to members of the House of Representatives, he offered to hold conference calls for lawmakers.
Several Republicans — certainly aware of Trump’s tendency to denounce those who express dissent — said they might welcome Trump’s help even in districts Biden won in 2020.
Garcia, the California Republican whose district Biden won by more than 12 percentage points, called Trump’s town hall proposal “a friendly offer.”
“We appreciate any help we can get,” he said.
As a former U.S. Navy officer, Garcia appears to appeal to a wide range of military personnel, veterans and what he calls “JFK Democrats,” who are socially liberal but conservative on economic and national security issues.
Some other Republicans, such as Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., were ambivalent about taking up the former president’s offer for a conference call. But he still said contrasting Trump’s performance in the White House with Biden’s performance would give him an advantage in a district that Biden won in 2020.
“The focus for me is on the direction of the country,” Lawler said. “I think what you’re seeing across the country is people are less focused on personality and more focused on the substance of the issues.”
The recent elections give Republican candidates some reason for caution. Trump has especially been a hindrance to his party when it comes to Congress. When Trump ran for re-election in 2020, Democrats captured the Senate and retained their majority in the House of Representatives. In 2022, as Trump’s presence loomed large, Republicans fell far short of expectations while winning the House of Representatives. Meanwhile, their campaign for the Senate majority crashed and burned, doomed in key states by candidates Trump had helped elevate.
Republicans hope that Biden’s record, and not Trump’s, will be decisive for voters.
“Four years have passed, it could be more of a referendum on Biden,” said Sarah Chamberlain, president of the Republican Main Street Partnership, which is strengthening Republican House members in battleground states.
But some swing state Democrats see Biden’s rematch against Trump as a potential political asset. In 2022, Biden made a late hour visit to help Levin in California and went on to win by five points. Levin thinks he still has an advantage at the top of the ticket.
“I think my voters have strong feelings about President Biden, but they also had strong feelings about former President Trump,” Levin said. “I will always choose a decent, talented President Biden who really cares about people over a narcissistic, chaotic Trump who only cares about himself.”
Levin also highlights one of Biden and Democrats’ key achievements by developing an interactive map showing the county projects funded by the 2021 infrastructure bill. He often talks about a local project that replenishes the sand on a beach to improve infrastructure to protect a coastal railway line.
“I hear more about that sand than you would know,” he said.
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This story has corrected the first name of Rep. Mike Levin.
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Associated Press writers Kevin Freking and Lisa Mascaro contributed.
