Rep. Leonard Lance wants us to know that Donald Trump and he have nothing in common and might even be bred from different species of animals.

"My personality is vastly different than Donald Trump's," Lance says. "I don't think I'm high on his list. And I hope that in America we are judged by our own actions."

What you are hearing is the sound of a blue-state Republican running for his life as a tidal wave bears down on him. Last week, the race was officially declared a toss-up by the Cook Political Report.

Lance has voted with Trump on 88 percent of the bills that have crossed his desk, but he's abandoned ship on the two biggest ones. He voted against the tax bill, and against the repeal of Obamacare. And he hopes those votes will save him.

"I have voted against his policies," he says.

Lance is part of a vanishing breed in American politics, a moderate Republican from a gentler era, a buffalo in the age of the railroad. During his decade in Congress, he has beaten back angry challenges from the Tea Party over and over, and now he faces fury from the opposite direction.

So, go ahead, feel sorry for the guy if you must. He's caught in a trap.

But know this: Trump wants Lance to win this race. And if your top priority is to stop Trump, then logic demands that you work to stop Lance.

Politics is a team sport, and Democrats need just 23 seats to take control of the House. That would bring Trump's legislative agenda to a screeching halt. And it would crack open the door to impeachment hearings, should Robert Mueller find damning evidence against Trump in the Russia investigation.

So, why would Trump care if Lance flakes off on a big vote now and then? Lance could be a frozen cadaver and Trump would still want him in that seat -- so long as he is a Republican cadaver.

The Democrat challenging Lance is Tom Malinowski, who has lived most of his adult life in Washington, D.C., working in the State Department under Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, and serving as Washington director for Human Rights Watch in between.

"Lance voted 90 percent of the time with Trump, and the other 10 percent, he's useless," Malinowski says. "He may get a free pass from his leadership to vote against something like the tax bill, but it passes anyway, and we are still hurt. His presence in the Congress enables the Republican majority to pass Trump's agenda."

Lance voted to install the current GOP leadership, including Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisc. He offered "enthusiastic" support for Trump in 2016 and says he will vote for Trump again if he is the nominee. He denies that leadership gave him a "pass" on those big votes, saying he fended off serious pressure from GOP leaders.

But Lance himself has grown more conservative as the party has moved to the right, most notably on climate change. In 2009, he was one of a handful of Republicans to vote in favor of a cap-and-trade system to contain carbon emissions, but he's flipped and now says he would oppose it. He supported Trump's worst climate sin to date, the abandonment of the Clean Power plan.

Lance worries that moderates, right and left, are facing extinction. The best way to fix American politics, he says, is not to elect Democrats who promise to fight Trump at every turn. The answer is to support moderates from both parties, people like him and Rep. Josh Gottheimer, a centrist Democrat who sits with Lance on the "Problem Solvers" caucus.

"The best way to achieve common ground is to have moderates in the center from both parties," he says. "My hand will be strengthened if people realize the best public policy comes from the center."

But I wonder: Does that really work? I see zero evidence that Republicans today are paying attention to moderates like Lance. The tax bill is an assault on blue states, and Lance's objections didn't stop it. The House passed the Obamacare repeal, again over his objections.

I asked Lance where he has had impact, and he noted that the Senate rejected the Obamacare repeal. "My views prevailed, so I don't know how you can say I was ineffective on that."

That is weak gruel. Does anyone believe that Lance's vote in the House had a scrap of influence in the Senate?

Lance's vision is based on the hope that the Republican majority will move his way. I don't see any sign of that, and I wonder why the party would change course if it wins the mid-terms. Wouldn't that strengthen the status quo?

"If Leonard Lance's party controls Congress in 2018, the moderates will have zero chance of wresting control back from the far right," Malinowski says. "The only way that will happen is if the party loses and reassesses what it's become. There is no chance to heal their party if it continues to win under Trump."

Lance is a moderate fellow by temperament, a gentleman without a corrupt bone in his body. He wants voters to judge him by his own actions, not by Trump's. And who can dispute his warning that extreme partisanship is poisoning our democracy?

But we face a political emergency today. Trump must be stopped, and my guess is that Lance will be a casualty in that fight.

More: Tom Moran columns

Tom Moran may be reached at tmoran@starledger.com or call (973) 836-4909. Follow him on Twitter @tomamoran. Find NJ.com Opinion on Facebook.