With a week to go before Election Day, indications seem to be piling up by the day that Steve King is in a lot of trouble in his own normally crimson-red northwest Iowa district, IA-04. He’s getting outspent—and badly—by his Democratic rival, J. D. Scholten. Cook Political Report recently moved the race from “likely Republican” to “lean Republican,” in part because he has virtually no campaign infrastructure worth mentioning—no ads and virtually no money left after paying a campaign staff laden with relatives.
But conventional wisdom held that King was going to get a lifeline. After all, he sits in an R+11 district that gave Trump 61 percent in 2016. Moreover, it’s a naturally Republican district. No way the GOP was going to even chance letting a district this red get flipped unchallenged, right? Wrong.
National Republican Congressional Campaign Committee chairman Steve Stivers turned a lot of heads on Tuesday when he publicly ripped King a new one on Twitter.
Well, it turns out that he’s backing up his words with action. The NRCC announced soon after Stivers’ tweet that it won’t lift a finger to help King.
Stivers’ comment shook party leaders in the final stretch of the campaign. Voters head to the polls on Tuesday, and House Republicans are likely to lose their majority. They need every seat they can get. But the NRCC won’t support King’s candidacy, according to Matt Gorman, the group’s communications director.
"The NRCC and Congressman Stivers haven't been afraid to show moral leadership when the time calls for it,” he said in an interview on Fox News on Tuesday. “We believe Congressman King's words and actions are completely inappropriate and we strongly condemn them. We will not play in his race.”
Ouch.
Conventional wisdom suggested that the NRCC was going to parachute in and essentially become the King campaign for the last week before Election Day. Sure, it would have meant triaging a few more vulnerable incumbents. But you would think that the Republican base would be up in arms if word got out that it was leaving a vulnerable incumbent in a seat this red to his own devices unless he was under indictment—even one as odious as King.
Sounds like Stivers actually has some scruples after all. And this announcement couldn’t come at a worse time for King. He only has $176,000 in the bank--nowhere near enough to mount a serious 11th-hour TV and radio blitz, even in a district where media is this cheap. Meanwhile, Scholten isn't even slowing down. He’s got scads of interviews lined up, and is once again criss-crossing this vast district in his trademark Winnebago.
Imagine if the D-Trip were to leave an incumbent in a D+11 district to his or her own devices unless he or she was under indictment.
There’s no denying it—IA-04 is the canary in the coal mine for this cycle. Anything less than a double-digit King win will likely mean a long night for the red team, both in Iowa and nationwide. And if Scholten pulls this off, we’ve flipped 40 seats, minimum.