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Democrats Step Up Pursuit of House Republicans Left Limping by Donald Trump

Representative Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader, highlighted in an email to fellow lawmakers an academic study suggesting that a Democratic House majority might be within reach.Credit...Al Drago/The New York Times

LEESBURG, Va. — Emboldened by Donald J. Trump’s struggles in the presidential race, Democrats in Congress are laying the groundwork to expand the list of House Republicans they will target for defeat as part of an effort to slash the Republicans’ 30-seat majority and even reclaim control if Mr. Trump falls further.

Mr. Trump’s unpopularity, which has already undermined the party’s grip on the Senate, now threatens to imperil Republican lawmakers even in traditionally conservative districts, according to strategists and officials in both parties involved in the fight for control of the House.

Democrats are particularly enticed by Mr. Trump’s dwindling support in affluent suburban areas — including those near Kansas City, Kan.; San Diego; Orlando, Fla.; and Minneapolis — where Republicans ordinarily win with ease. Mr. Trump is so disliked among college-educated voters, especially white women, that he is at risk of losing by double digits in several districts that the 2012 Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, carried comfortably.

“It’s a remarkable situation. We, the Republicans, ought to be in a much stronger position in many suburban areas,” said Representative Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania, whose district includes both suburbs and small cities. “Because of the nature of the nominee, it’s going to be a lot more competitive than it ought to be.”

Few Democrats say they believe their party is positioned, at this point, to take control of the House, where Republicans hold their largest majority in 87 years. Because of the way congressional districts are drawn, Republicans have a powerful structural advantage even in a punishing political environment.

But Republicans are also bracing to take more forceful steps if Mr. Trump continues to drag down their candidates. Multiple strategists involved in the campaign for control of Congress said Republican outside groups were prepared to run ads treating Mr. Trump as a certain-to-lose candidate and urging voters to elect Republicans as a check on Hillary Clinton.

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Representative Darrell E. Issa, Republican of California. His House race could become competitive.Credit...Zach Gibson/The New York Times

Republican candidates and groups are also weighing a renewed television barrage against Representative Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California and the House minority leader, who is unpopular in many swing districts in her state.

The stakes are high: Should Mr. Trump lose the presidential race and take the Republicans’ Senate majority with him, handing Democrats the power to break the deadlock over appointees to the Supreme Court, the House could become the party’s last line of defense in Washington.

While Democrats have sought publicly to temper expectations that they could win the House, in private meetings they are laying out ways to expand their battle plan to fight for more seats.

And their donors appear increasingly motivated: Last month, the House Democratic campaign raised $12 million while House Republicans raised just $4.6 million, a remarkable disparity given that the party in control usually dominates fund-raising.

Ms. Pelosi emailed fellow lawmakers on Thursday and highlighted an academic study that suggested the majority might be within reach, according to someone who received the message, who requested anonymity because the message was supposed to be private.

And at a retreat this month in California that Ms. Pelosi convened in Napa Valley, Representative Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico gave a presentation to donors outlining plans to put new seats in play.

Some of the party’s most promising candidates from those districts attended the gathering, which featured California chardonnays and “red to blue” cards distributed to donors identifying which candidates had the most potential to flip Republican seats.

Mr. Luján, who heads the House Democratic campaign committee, said Mr. Trump’s toxic standing with women had put a range of additional Republican incumbents in jeopardy, according to several people who attended the presentation.

Alixandria Lapp, a Democratic strategist who leads a “super PAC” focused on House races, told the group that the Bergen County, N.J., seat held by Representative Scott Garrett was the kind of Republican district where Democrats could make gains.

Democratic strategists say they believe as many as a dozen districts could become competitive late in the race, depending on Mr. Trump’s fortunes. Among the Republican districts that Democrats see as newly threatened are those held by Representatives John L. Mica of Florida, who represents the Orlando area; Kevin Yoder of Kansas, from the suburbs of Kansas City; and Michael G. Fitzpatrick, a lawmaker from outside Philadelphia who is retiring. Several others represent diverse, economically comfortable areas of California, including Representatives Darrell E. Issa and Ed Royce, from the San Diego and Los Angeles suburbs.

Both parties are also eyeing a set of moderate- to conservative-leaning open seats in states like Indiana and Minnesota, where incumbents are retiring or running for other offices. Republicans fear that Mr. Trump has tainted the party’s brand for any prospective successor in areas without a well-known lawmaker already in place.

Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, who attended the Democratic retreat, said winning the majority was “feasible” because of Mr. Trump.

“We’d need to win tossups or even safer Republican seats, but that’s what happens in a wave: People get sucked in the undertow,” Mr. Schiff said. “And there’s a real chance of that happening thanks to the Donald.”

What may ultimately block Democrats from winning the 30 seats they need to take the House majority are their continued struggles in rural, working-class districts. And many of the suburban districts Democrats hope to contest are expensive to advertise in.

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Representative Barbara Comstock, Republican of Virginia, right, with Paul Ryan, the House speaker, and Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Republican of Washington State, in April in Washington. Ms. Comstock has declined to say if she will vote for Mr. Trump.Credit...Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

But Republicans acknowledge Mr. Trump has taken a toll.

“I don’t think we’re to the point of losing the majority, but we’d be foolish to be complacent,” said Representative Tom Cole of Oklahoma. “We don’t know from one day to next how the top of the ticket will perform.”

At their own donor retreat last week in Jackson Hole, Wyo., House Republicans were frank about the difficulties Mr. Trump had created for their candidates.

Still, strategists for the National Republican Congressional Committee told donors that private polling showed voters were not yet equating vulnerable Republican lawmakers with Mr. Trump directly, and stressed that Mrs. Clinton and Ms. Pelosi’s unpopularity could be a check on Democratic gains, according to people who attended the retreat.

But at the Four Seasons resort where they assembled, there was open talk — and worry — about why House Democrats were outraising their Republican counterparts.

“This pattern is unsustainable,” wrote Megan Cummings, the finance director of the House Republican campaign committee, in a pleading email to Washington lobbyists last week. “We can’t go another month with the Democrats outraising us by such significant amounts.” (House Republicans still have slightly more cash on hand than the Democrats.)

So far, only a small number of Republicans, mainly in moderate suburbs, have taken the unusual step of disavowing their party’s presidential nominee.

Some, including Mr. Dent of Pennsylvania and Representatives Adam Kinzinger of Illinois and Dave Reichert of Washington State, have renounced Mr. Trump in pointed terms. Others, like Representatives Erik Paulsen of Minnesota and Barbara Comstock of Virginia, have simply declined to say clearly if they will vote for Mr. Trump in November.

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LuAnn Bennett, a Democrat and Ms. Comstock’s challenger, at a meet-and-greet on Saturday at a private home in McLean, Va. Ms. Bennett has said she intended to link her opponent closely to Donald J. Trump.Credit...Al Drago/The New York Times

What worries Republican strategists is not that suburban voters turned off by Mr. Trump would migrate en masse to Democrats, but that many might not show up on Election Day at all.

“Our biggest concern would be that they would choose to stay home because they are so disgusted with both people at the top of the ticket,” said Mike Shields, the president of the Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC that backs Republicans. “If they show up, then I think we’re in very good shape.”

Mr. Shields’s group last week announced the first wave of a $10 million spending plan, emphasizing more diverse and affluent districts.

Mr. Trump has long faced resistance in suburban areas; during the Republican primaries, he often lost upscale suburbs even in states he carried, like Virginia and Georgia.

In Ms. Comstock’s northern Virginia district, swing voters expressed deep dismay last week about Mr. Trump in interviews.

Jean Dura, a retired middle school administrator here in Leesburg, said the 2016 election was “terribly confusing.” She said she was undecided about how she would vote for president and Congress, but would definitely not vote for Mr. Trump.

“The things he says are atrocious,” said Ms. Dura, a political independent. “Everybody I’ve talked to has said the same thing — they say they don’t know who to vote for.”

LuAnn Bennett, a Democratic real estate developer challenging Ms. Comstock, said she intended to link her opponent closely to Mr. Trump. She predicted that Ms. Comstock, who represents a district where most voters have college degrees, would suffer for failing to reject Mr. Trump. (A spokesman for Ms. Comstock did not respond to an interview request.)

“She’s trying to kind of dance on the head of a pin on the Donald Trump issue,” Ms. Bennett said, adding, “I don’t think she has the political courage that our leaders need.”

Find out what you need to know about the 2016 presidential race today, and get politics news updates via Facebook, Twitter and the First Draft newsletter.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Democrats Focus on Wealthy Suburbs. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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