Representative Mike Flood, Republican of Nebraska, stood outside the theater at a local high school in Norfolk on Tuesday evening, cheerfully mingling with the protesters gathering outside his town hall.
He greeted a line of seven silent provocateurs dressed in crimson hooded cloaks like the ones in the dystopian TV series “The Handmaid’s Tale.” He grinned for a selfie with a woman wearing a T-shirt that said “Dear America, Sorry About Mike Flood, Sincerely, Nebraska.”
He made small talk with his Democratic opponent, Chris Backemeyer, who had set up his own booth outside.
This is the current strategy for Mr. Flood, a second-term congressman who won his district last year by more than 20 points, as he tries to outrun his party’s embattled brand at a moment when President Trump appears to be making it as hard as possible for lawmakers like him to do so.
More than running on his party’s agenda, Mr. Flood was attempting on Tuesday to run just slightly to the side of it, positioning himself as a bipartisan operator willing to talk to anyone, while offering qualified support for the president’s policies and sympathy for constituents feeling its negative effects.
His pitch to voters during a sparsely attended town hall meeting contained little mention of what Mr. Trump labeled his “One Big Beautiful Bill,” the tax cut and domestic policy package that at one point in the not-so-distant past was supposed to be the centerpiece of the Republican pitch for the midterm campaign. He referred to it only in passing a few times over the course of a 90-minute session.
Instead, Mr. Flood repeatedly touted the bipartisan bills he had supported and told the crowd he hoped he had convinced them that “I’m getting results, and that I am working to be bipartisan” while taking advantage of opportunities to carefully distance himself from Mr. Trump.
Mr. Flood is not among the small group of Republicans in Congress who have routinely broken with Mr. Trump. He has backed the president on the war in Iran, his tariffs and his tax cuts and deep reductions to social safety net programs, among many other things. He is also not one of Mr. Trump’s fervent MAGA defenders.
His performance on Tuesday night offered a glimpse of how one G.O.P. lawmaker who falls somewhere in between the defectors and the acolytes — where many House Republicans dwell on a daily basis — is running for re-election and trying to sell his party’s agenda at a tricky political moment.
Mr. Flood’s solidly red district would seem to put him in a safer position than some of his colleagues who are bracing to lose their seats in Congress in November. It would take high turnout in the urban center of Lincoln, coupled with low turnout in the rural counties surrounding it, for Mr. Flood to have a competitive race, according to a summary from last year conducted by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.
But a recent poll showed Mr. Flood leading Mr. Backemeyer, the former State Department official who is the Democratic nominee, by just two percentage points. And Republicans are bracing for a potential wave election, worried that Mr. Trump’s unpopular policies, the high cost of living and the president’s refusal to talk coherently and consistently about affordability could swamp their majorities in Congress.
So there was Mr. Flood, presenting himself as a Republican who can see that life is too expensive, is willing to work with Democrats, and is even up for chatting with his detractors.
“We are moving the country forward, we are unleashing energy independence, we are working to bring down taxes,” Mr. Flood told the room of about 150 mostly frustrated voters, trying to explain that “there so many good things that have happened in the last two years.”
The crowd booed and groaned throughout much of the session, although Mr. Flood at times also received applause at an event that was held on somewhat friendly turf, in his hometown.
Instead of talking at length about tax cuts, Mr. Flood tried to highlight his support for the sprawling housing bill the House had passed earlier this month, noting with pride that “every single Democrat in the House of Representatives voted yes.” It is still not clear whether it will even pass the Senate or be signed into law, in part because Mr. Trump has expressed only lukewarm support.
When asked about the ongoing war in Iran, Mr. Flood conceded that “prices are too high right now. It costs too much when you go to the grocery store — everything costs too much.”
But, he added: “I also don’t want Iran with a nuclear weapon. I don’t want to cut and run, I want the strait open, I want our NATO allies to help us and I want prices to come down.”
The turnout on Tuesday night, the day after Memorial Day, was small and subdued compared to the greeting Mr. Flood received last August, when he was booed and jeered by a crowd of 700 people at a town hall he held in more liberal-leaning Lincoln. Back then, Mr. Flood was called a liar for trying to defend Mr. Trump’s sweeping domestic policy law, which significantly cut Medicaid, food benefits and other programs.
But unlike the vast majority of his Republican colleagues who avoid meeting the wrath of the public in open venues like this altogether, Mr. Flood has committed to continuing to hold regular town halls. And this time, he mostly steered clear of the topic of Medicaid. The news cycle has moved on — though not necessarily to safer political terrain.
The congressman was asked repeatedly about the $1.8 billion fund created by the Justice Department to compensate those who claim to have been targeted by the federal government, which has generated a backlash even among Republicans on Capitol Hill.
“I do not think one penny of any fund should ever go to any Jan. 6 insurrectionist,” Mr. Flood said, echoing concerns from Republican senators who last week delayed a budget vote because of their opposition to the fund. “I clearly think Congress needs to have an oversight role on this before I can sign off or support this.”
When pressed on why the entirety of the Epstein files had yet to be made public, Mr. Flood tried to take extra credit for supporting their release, noting that he had presided over the House on the day that it voted on the legislation requiring that they be disclosed. That duty rotates among lawmakers in the majority party and carries little significance. But he cast his role as historic.
“I declared that the bill had passed,” he said.
Mr. Flood also sought to distance himself from the unsavory details of Mr. Trump’s immigration crackdown, saying that the killings of civilians in the streets of Minneapolis at the hands of ICE agents had led to “the worst weekend I’ve had in public service.”
Still, he defended the president, even as his constituents signaled their displeasure. Mr. Trump “puts the working class before almost everything else he does,” Mr. Flood said. “He’s focused on that.”
The crowd booed.
Annie Karni is a congressional correspondent for The Times.
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