PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP is expected to be a drag on Republican congressional candidates in Virginia this year. He lost the state in 2016 and has angered much of its increasingly Democratic electorate ever since. But Corey Stewart, the Republican nominee for the US Senate, could be a bigger liability in the mid-terms than the president.

Mr Stewart, who for years has played to the hard-right fringe, was always considered a long shot to defeat Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton’s vice-presidential running mate in 2016. The National Republican Senatorial Committee, the campaign arm of the Senate Republican caucus has said it will not support Mr Stewart, denying him cash and services. They will probably be better deployed in the 10 states carried by Mr Trump that have Democratic senators facing re-election this year.

The latest public poll, by Quinnipiac University, found that Mr Kaine leads Mr Stewart by nearly 20 percentage points. That suggests that the Democrat is pulling a hefty slice of Republican-leaning independents.

But Republican concerns about Mr Stewart go beyond a Senate seat. Because Mr Stewart will be top of the party’s ballot this year, at least three imperilled US House of Representatives incumbents in the suburbs of Washington, DC, the Richmond area and along Virginia’s Atlantic coast fear he will generate a potentially fatal down-draft.

Independents and centrist Republicans, bent on Mr Stewart’s defeat, would not only vote for Mr Kaine but support Democratic House candidates in these competitive districts, erasing the congressional delegation’s Republican majority at a chancy time: the run-up to redistricting in 2021 that could ensure Democratic dominance for a decade. That is why Barbara Comstock, who represents's Virginia's 10th Congressional District; Dave Brat, who represents the 7th; and Scott Taylor, of the 2nd congressional district, have avoided endorsing Mr Stewart.

Mr Stewart’s victory in a low-turnout primary on June 13th illustrates the challenge he faces and the accompanying risks for these three House Republicans. He won about 136,000 votes. But that was down about 20,000 from his performance in last year’s Republican primary for governor, when he nearly snatched the nomination from Ed Gillespie, an establishment candidate and former aide to George W. Bush.

The decline in Mr Stewart’s vote share could portend a drop-off in overall Republican participation. That could mean trouble for Ms Comstock, Mr Brat and Mr Taylor, all of whom represent heavily suburban, increasingly diverse districts where many of Mr Trump’s policies are unpopular.

This includes his administration’s former policy of separating immigrant families at the southern border, which was loudly supported by Mr Stewart, who has complained about illegal immigration since he was a local government official busy with trash removal and sewer systems.

Mr Stewart has other big drawbacks. He openly expresses a fondness for symbols of the Old South and the old argument that the Civil War was not fought to end slavery but to blunt big government. This may seem odd coming from a transplant from Minnesota, a Northern, anti-slave state. It is also inconsistent with modern Virginia’s image as a suburban dynamo.

Mr Stewart’s outspokenness over replacing Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court with a rigid conservative committed to banning abortion may further rile an already elusive vote for Republicans: suburban women.

The Quinnipiac poll found that by a margin of 53% to 39%, Virginians want Democrats controlling the House. And half of all voters say they are less likely to support a candidate who strongly backs Mr Trump.

How are those three Republican candidates handling the threat posed by Mr Trump and Mr Stewart? Ms Comstock openly opposed Mr Trump in 2016, demanding he relinquish the nomination after the publication of a video in which he boasted of grabbing women by the genitals. That allowed Ms Comstock to win a second term even though her district fell to Mrs Clinton by 10 percentage points.

Since then, Ms Comstock has selectively aligned herself with the president; for example, voting for his tax reform. But this could mean higher tax bills for residents of her affluent Northern Virginia district—now considered a must-win for Democrats to take back the House—because it eliminates a popular, long-standing deduction for local property taxes, which are steep in the suburbs of Washington, DC.

Ms Comstock now seems to be regarded as a Trump acolyte. Polling by Monmouth University put her 10 percentage points behind her Democratic challenger.

Mr Taylor has also sought to put some distance between himself and the president by declaring he will oppose the president’s plan to open nearly all of the nation’s coastal waters to oil and gas exploration. This stance is a no-brainer in a district where seaside tourism is an important part of the economy.

Mr Brat, meanwhile, a member of the conservative Freedom Caucus, is a generally reliable ally of Mr Trump. But even he has tried to avoid talking too much about the president and Mr Stewart, lest he make it easier for Democrats to cast him as their buddy. That hasn’t stopped Democrats from flooding social media with pictures of Mr Brat with Mr Stewart.