As the Virginia and New Jersey governors races draw to a close, one person is conspicuously absent from the trail: President Donald Trump.

The president hasn’t appeared in either campaign, an indication of his increasingly narrow political appeal and his growing inability to draw support in swing and liberal states. Trump’s absence in the competitive Virginia contest is especially striking: He is the first president since Richard Nixon, who at the time was in the throes of the Watergate scandal, not to campaign in its governor’s race.


Why Trump hasn’t appeared in Virginia is partly a function of his own wishes — Trump simply never expressed much interest in the race, several White House advisers said. But it also has to do with Republican candidate Ed Gillespie.

The administration made it clear to Gillespie that it wanted to be helpful however possible and was open to sending the president, three Trump aides said. Vice President Mike Pence appeared at a rally and fundraiser for Gillespie, but administration officials said the candidate never made a hard ask for Trump.

Gillespie’s team reviewed polling in the final weeks of the race showing that Trump was a drag — his approval ratings had been stuck in the low 40s in the commonwealth for some time. While the president is well-liked across much of the conservative southern part of the state, he is extremely unpopular in the more liberal northern suburbs. Top officials in Gillespie’s campaign worried that bringing in the president would mobilize Democratic turnout in Northern Virginia.

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Instead, Gillespie, an establishment-aligned former Beltway lobbyist and ex-George W. Bush aide, chose to use Trump in a far more limited way: in a targeted batch of mailers spotlighting the president’s support for him.

"The bottom line is that a Trump appearance for either Republican candidate [in Virginia or New Jersey] would be a death knell for their political fortunes," said John Weaver, a veteran GOP strategist who has been sharply critical of the president. "He has hard-core support from 25 percent of the electorate. That's not going to help you in blue states like New Jersey or swing states like Virginia."

Gillespie has confronted a vexing challenge: how to appeal to Trump supporters while not turning off the moderates whose support he needs. While he’s refused to appear with the president, the Republican candidate has adopted many of Trump’s positions.

He's aired TV ads in which he's vowed to preserve the state's Confederate monuments and to combat the MS-13 gang. In mailers, Gillespie has gone after NFL players for kneeling during the national anthem.

Some Trump supporters, however, contend that Gillespie hasn’t gone far enough. By refusing to campaign with the president, they say, the Republican blew an opportunity to motivate conservatives who may not turn out.

“I think it’s a mistake, because ultimately in an off-year election, turnout of your base is everything,” said Corey Stewart, chairman of the Prince William County board of supervisors and a onetime Trump campaign official. During the June GOP primary, Stewart ran as an unapologetic backer of the president and came within 5,000 votes, or just over 1 percent, of upsetting Gillespie.

“The base knows that Gillespie has been holding Trump at a distance, and they are bewildered by that, and they are offended by that, and I think that does hurt the Gillespie campaign,” Stewart added. “I think the Gillespie campaign feels they will lose a lot of independent voters if they get too close to President Trump; I believe that’s what they calculated. I don’t agree with that calculation, but that’s their decision to make.”

When Laura Ingraham interviewed Gillespie on her nationally syndicated program recently, the conservative radio show host and outspoken Trump backer pressed the former Bush aide on why he’d chosen to campaign with mainstream GOP figures like Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez, but not Trump.

“The future of the party is not with the Bushes, it's with the populists and economic nationalists,” Ingraham, who has been mentioned as a potential candidate for statewide office in Virginia, wrote in an email. “Gillespie might not be comfortable with that but it's a fact.”

Gillespie has long wrestled with how to mobilize Republicans. After a middling performance in the June primary, largely attributed to lack of excitement among the base, Gillespie reached out to up-and-coming party operative Corry Bliss for help. But Bliss, who oversees a House GOP-aligned super PAC, declined an offer to join the campaign as a consultant, according to three Republicans familiar with the talks.

Gillespie’s tortured balancing act isn’t sitting well in some corners of the White House. Some aides have questioned whether Trump should go to bat for a candidate who’s been lukewarm in his support for the president. Others are skeptical Gillespie can win.

There’s also wariness in the White House after the Alabama Senate runoff in September, when Trump campaigned for establishment-aligned Sen. Luther Strange only to see him lose.

The Virginia race has been a topic of politics-focused discussions in the White House the past six weeks — meetings that picked up in frequency after the Alabama contest. Those involved in the gatherings have included chief of staff John Kelly, political director Bill Stepien, legislative director Marc Short, counselor Kellyanne Conway, and Pence chief of staff Nick Ayers. The group has talked over a multitude of issues, including how Trump should invest his time on political matters.

White House officials said they never seriously considered getting involved in the New Jersey race, viewing it as a lost cause. Polls have consistently shown Democrat Phil Murphy with a commanding lead over Republican Kim Guadagno.

Gillespie, though, has managed to stay within striking distance. Voter modeling conducted by the Republican National Committee in the final week of the race showed Democratic candidate Ralph Northam with a narrow lead in the low single digits, according to two people familiar with the figures.

Northam has responded to his rival’s late surge by tying him to the unpopular president.

“Ed Gillespie won’t stand up to Donald Trump because Ed is standing right next to him,” said one Northam TV ad that began airing last week, likening Gillespie and the president’s positions on health care, environmental and education issues.

With Democrats going all out to yoke Gillespie to the president, some Trump backers are convinced the GOP nominee had little to lose by embracing Trump.

“I believe it’s a very big mistake and it potentially could lose the election for him,” Stewart said of Gillespie’s refusal to appear with the president. “But we’ll see.”

