WASHINGTON, Oct 1 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump travels to Texas and Oklahoma this Thursday to kick off an intense 32-day campaign aimed at strengthening Republican candidates, while his party fights to hold narrow majorities in Congress in the November midterm elections.
Trump wants to be the face of the party’s campaign for the midterm elections, at a time when some Republican candidates are unsure whether the president will help them or hurt them.
While several Republicans in tight races for the House and Senate welcomed Trump’s decision to enter the race, others have shown increasing willingness to break with him on issues that are angering voters, including the war with Iran and the expansion of data centers that consume a lot of electricity.
Trump told supporters at a White House event on Wednesday that, so far, he had not managed to adequately communicate his economic record since returning to the White House in January 2025. Voters’ discontent with his handling of the economy has shifted the electoral map, with some Republican-held seats previously considered safe now viewed by political analysts as competitive.
Texas is among eight competitive U.S. Senate races. It is expected that Republican Senate candidate Ken Paxton, the state’s attorney general, will appear alongside Trump at a rally north of Dallas, Paxton’s campaign said.
Political observers will be attentive to any awkward interactions between the two men after the leak of a recording in which Paxton tells a group of donors that Trump’s midterm convention, in September, hurt him and other Republican candidates.
Paxton’s campaign dismissed the recording as “manipulated absurdity.” Trump told reporters on Wednesday that he had not heard of the recording. “I can tell you the convention was incredible,” he said in the Oval Office.
Trump backed Paxton, embroiled in scandals, over the incumbent senator John Cornyn in the Republican primaries, forcing the party to spend heavily to defend a seat normally safe for Republicans against the Democratic candidate James Talarico.
It is expected that the president will unveil his tariff and trade agenda in Denton during a visit to Peterbilt Motors, where the White House says tariffs on trucks from the Trump era helped spur job growth.
The administration said Trump’s truck tariffs allowed companies like PACCAR, owner of Peterbilt, to create more than 2,000 jobs nationwide, including about 1,000 at the Texas plant.
However, costs to fuel these diesel and gasoline trucks recently reached record levels in Texas, stemming from the economic repercussions of the war with Iran. The price of diesel in Texas reached a record $5.97 per gallon two weeks ago, and the average cost of gasoline rose nearly 44%, to $3.92 per gallon, compared with the same period last year, according to AAA, a travel analysis company.
After his stop in Texas, the president will take part in a rally in Durant, in southern Oklahoma, a state where he won more than 66% of the votes in the 2024 presidential election.
The Republican National Committee, which is organizing the rally, said the venue near the Texas border was chosen, in part, to draw supporters from neighboring Texas, where Paxton and Talarico are contesting a U.S. Senate seat.
On Friday, Trump will continue his campaign rallies in Alabama, a reliably conservative Southern state, which also does not feature major electoral contests.
(Reporting by Bo Erickson)
