GOP campaign chief: Trump won’t cost us the House

CLEVELAND — Election observers have speculated for months that Donald Trump’s controversial rhetoric and positions could cost the GOP control of the Senate and even possibly the House.

But the campaign chief for House Republicans says those predictions aren’t grounded in reality.

{mosads}“Show me the data,” Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.) said.

Walden, the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), said extensive data and polling do not back up the doom-and-gloom headlines. He says Republicans will not only hold the House, but potentially preserve their historic 247-seat majority.

“I’d like to hold what we have, and I think there are targets of opportunity” on the Democratic side, Walden told reporters.

Democrats have “got some real issues in defending some seats of their own,” Walden added. “By the way, Hillary is probably not too popular in some of those areas.”

House Republicans now have a 30-seat advantage over Democrats, creating the largest House GOP majority since before the Great Depression.

While Walden acknowledged court redistricting decisions have cost his party a handful of GOP-controlled seats in Florida, Virginia and North Carolina, he rattled off several Democratic seats the NRCC has been targeting: the one held by vulnerable Rep. Ami Bera (Calif.), and those being vacated by Reps. Ann Kirkpatrick (Ariz.) and Patrick Murphy (Fla.), who are both running for the Senate.

“Starting in March, there was this Trump-wave narrative and ‘Is Trump going to cost us the House?’” said Rob Simms, executive director of the NRCC, who was sitting alongside Walden. “It was great for some publications, it was great for website traffic, clicks on the stories. But there was nothing that we were seeing underlying the data.

“And there is no bigger consumer of polling and data in Washington, D.C., and the country than we are.”