Politics
Mike Johnson Asks Trump for More Midterm Money as Republicans Seek to Avert Disaster in House Races
US House Speaker Mike Johnson has approached President Donald Trump for additional campaign funding to help Republican candidates facing increasingly difficult contests ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
According to a person familiar with the discussion, Johnson asked Trump to provide more financial support to House Republicans amid an increasingly challenging political climate.
Donors and lawmakers have also been appealing to Trump’s inner circle for additional resources to support candidates in key races. Within days of Johnson’s request, first reported by Punchbowl News, Trump’s political war chest released nearly $30 million for dozens of House races in a last-minute effort to help Republicans avoid major losses next month.
As political conditions have worsened for House Republicans in recent weeks, GOP campaign operatives have been forced to abandon some traditional offensive targets and concentrate instead on protecting dozens of vulnerable incumbents in traditionally Republican strongholds, including Arizona, Ohio, Florida and Wisconsin.
For weeks, senior Republicans dismissed Democratic attempts to unseat lawmakers in reliably Republican districts, including Representatives Brad Finstad of Minnesota, Mike Turner of Ohio and Jeff Crank of Colorado. Other Republicans, such as Mike Carey of Ohio and Eli Crane of Arizona, had attracted little attention from Democrats.
However, with just over a week remaining before the election, several Republican operatives told CNN that uncertainty was growing over the prospects of incumbents in unexpectedly competitive districts, particularly if the party’s supporters fail to turn out. Republican leaders recognise that voter turnout could determine whether Democrats achieve a significant electoral breakthrough.
“This is just a ‘batten down the hatches’ situation,” one Republican operative involved in House races told CNN, noting that recent internal polling had not shown any incumbent in a competitive district reaching the 50 per cent threshold.
Republicans are also redirecting resources away from several districts redrawn to favour their party during the nationwide mid-decade redistricting effort. In the final stretch, House Republican groups and their allies are investing millions of dollars to defend core incumbents and retain traditionally Republican seats.
Surging Anxiety Among Incumbents
Republican insiders have long worried about open seats, where no incumbent is running, in states such as Kentucky, Montana, Iowa and Arizona. According to operatives from both parties, these contests have shifted towards Democrats over the past two weeks.
However, some Republicans are now seeing signs of weakness among their incumbents in polling, particularly because of the large number of undecided voters who could ultimately choose not to participate in the election.
Johnson and his Republican campaign team maintain that the party still has a path to retaining its House majority. They also insist they are not overly concerned about incumbents in districts Trump won by double-digit margins in the previous election.
Privately, however, party leaders have been hearing complaints from anxious Republican lawmakers across the country who want more assistance from the national party during the final campaign stretch, according to several people familiar with the discussions.
In North Carolina, several incumbents, including the House Republicans’ campaign chief, are making last-minute efforts to mobilise voters. National Republicans have already appeared to lose confidence in former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Whatley’s Senate race in the state.
In Texas, Republicans are concerned about the potential impact of Senate GOP nominee Ken Paxton on other races, as well as indications that Latino voters may be shifting towards Democrats.
Florida appears to be generating the greatest anxiety among Republican incumbents, according to multiple GOP operatives. Republican groups are spending millions of dollars to protect lawmakers in traditionally safe districts and defend other seats that their party redrew specifically to weaken Democrats.
Privately, some Republicans are blaming Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for the redistricting exercise, arguing that it could prove a costly waste of resources or even become a political disaster.
“There needs to be backlash against DeSantis over his dummy-mander,” one Florida Republican operative told CNN this week.
CNN has contacted DeSantis’ team for comment.
Meanwhile, Democrats have become more confident following their polling results over the past two weeks. Some party members are now privately discussing the possibility of winning a House majority of 230 seats or more, representing a gain of at least 16 seats, according to several operatives.
Democrats are also targeting districts that appeared out of reach only weeks ago, including the Pennsylvania seat held by Republican Representative Brian Fitzpatrick, a moderate who survived the Democratic wave in 2018.
Fitzpatrick has become one of the Republican Party’s biggest funding priorities in the final days of the campaign. The Congressional Leadership Fund, the GOP’s leading super PAC, has reserved more than $3.5 million in advertising for his race during the final two weeks before Election Day, according to AdImpact data.
Abandoning Most Traditional GOP Offensive Targets
Despite the difficult political environment, Johnson and his campaign team privately believe Republicans can still flip about six Democratic-held seats.
Most of those targets are in traditionally Democratic states, where Republicans believe voters are more likely to direct their frustration towards local Democratic leaders and their representatives in Congress than towards Trump and the Republican Party.
Trump’s campaign funds, which totalled more than $400 million at the beginning of September, have also become a crucial source of support for Republicans.
Two super PACs funded by Trump’s political operation have spent more than $150 million on House races since the beginning of September, according to AdImpact. Meanwhile, the Congressional Leadership Fund is projected to spend more than $200 million on advertising during the election cycle.
The Republican Party continues to have substantial financial reserves and donor support.
Republicans are most confident about two Democratic-held districts in areas that favour Trump: the southern Washington state district represented by Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez and an open seat in northern Maine.
A New Mexico district that has changed party control four times this decade also remains competitive.
Republicans are additionally targeting roughly a dozen seats in North Carolina, Texas, Florida and Ohio where district boundaries were redrawn to make it easier to defeat Democratic candidates.
Several Republicans told CNN that even in a difficult election, they expect to gain at least five seats: one each in North Carolina and Ohio, and two in Texas and Florida, in addition to gains in redrawn districts in Tennessee, Alabama and Louisiana.
“The fact is, as evidenced by crisscrossing the country on behalf of candidates and raising over a half billion dollars, the Speaker fervently believes Republicans can and will hold the House majority,” a senior member of Johnson’s team told CNN.
Nevertheless, Republicans widely acknowledge that most of their traditional battleground targets are now beyond reach in such a challenging election cycle.
Hundreds of millions of dollars in super PAC support are being spread across an expanding electoral map as the party struggles to defend vulnerable seats.
“The money needed to go somewhere else,”
one Republican operative working on House races said, explaining the party’s retreat from traditional offensive targets. “A mix of the environment and candidate quality moved them away.”
The Congressional Leadership Fund has withdrawn from several races, including New York’s 3rd Congressional District, represented by Democratic Representative Tom Suozzi. It has also reduced much of its planned advertising against first-term Democratic Representative Adam Gray in California’s 13th District.
Gray won his seat by just 187 votes in the previous election, but his district was subsequently redrawn as part of California Democrats’ effort to counter Republican redistricting in Texas.
Republicans have also withdrawn funding from a South Texas district they have sought to flip for decades and redrew during last year’s partisan redistricting exercise.
Democratic Representative Henry Cuellar is facing his most serious general election challenge from Republican candidate Tano Tijerina, the Webb County judge.
However, after cancelling $2 million in remaining advertising, the Congressional Leadership Fund has less than $100,000 in advertising booked for the district during the final two weeks.
Earlier, the group had also abandoned two Republican incumbents in competitive districts that had previously featured prominently on both parties’ target lists.
They include Representative Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa, whose district had received more than $6 million in spending, and Representative Tom Kean of New Jersey, whose race had already attracted $2 million.
At the same time, funding is being redirected towards defending Republican incumbents in strongly conservative districts.
One of Trump’s super PACs is expected to spend more than $2 million through Election Day to defend Representative Eli Crane in Arizona’s 2nd Congressional District, which Trump won by 15 percentage points in 2024.
Panic in the Open Seats
In the final weeks of the campaign, senior Republicans are particularly concerned about the large number of open seats resulting from more than 40 Republican lawmakers leaving the House during the current election cycle.
Advertising commitments for the final weeks reflect those concerns.
The Congressional Leadership Fund is spending $9 million on advertisements in Michigan’s 10th Congressional District, which Trump won by 6.5 percentage points.
Several Republican groups are also directing millions of dollars towards South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District, which Trump won by 13 percentage points.
Additionally, one of Trump’s super PACs is spending more than $3 million in Montana’s 1st Congressional District, which the president won by 10 percentage points.
The same Trump-aligned group has redirected additional funding towards open seats in Texas’ 23rd Congressional District and Kentucky’s 6th District, both of which Trump won by approximately 15 percentage points.
Republicans are likely to lose some open seats in previously competitive districts, including Arizona’s 1st and Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional Districts, as well as North Carolina’s 11th District.
In North Carolina, party leaders had pressured their incumbent to resign following an ethics scandal, according to several Republican operatives.
No Going Back PAC, one of the Trump-aligned groups, withdrew from the North Carolina race this week, cutting more than $1 million in planned advertising after already spending over $4 million on the contest.
In Florida, senior Republicans believe their vulnerable incumbents will ultimately survive, although some remain concerned about a particular open seat in the Orlando area.
The seat became vacant after Representative Cory Mills, who had been embroiled in scandals, was defeated in a late-summer primary.
“They should be nervous about this race,” Bale Dalton, the Democratic candidate for the seat, told CNN this week.
Dalton, a former NASA chief of staff and Navy captain, is facing former television anchor Ryan Elijah, who officially entered the race in August following the late primary.
Democrats are also expressing frustration over how their party’s campaign funds are being distributed.
Phil Gardner, a Democratic operative involved with the moderate Blue Dog Coalition’s political arm, said he was angry that national Democrats had refused to spend money supporting their endorsed candidate, Dalton, in Florida’s 7th Congressional District.
He criticised the party for allocating funds to support an incumbent in a redrawn Florida district that Democrats face significant difficulties winning.
Other Democrats privately believe the 7th District is too difficult to flip now that Mills is no longer the Republican candidate.
“They are unwilling to make the tough but strategic decision to spend for Bale and admit that Darren Soto is not going to win… They are making a decision driven by caucus politics and not by the strategy of flipping the House,” Gardner said.
Florida’s 25th Congressional District provides another example of the last-minute struggle to redirect campaign funds.
The district was also redrawn earlier this year to favour Republicans, but Democratic Representative Jared Moskowitz remains competitive despite facing millions of dollars in attack advertisements.
On Monday, the Trump-aligned No Going Back PAC initially cut more than $2 million from its remaining advertising commitments, temporarily leaving it without any future advertising bookings in the race after spending more than $7 million on the contest.
However, on Thursday, the group dramatically returned to the race, adding more than $6 million to its advertising commitments for the final days before the midterm elections.