As President Trump warned in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly in recent days that he might “annihilate” Iran, a growing number of Republicans were scrambling to find distance from a costly war that has swelled into a midterm crisis for the party.
The split screen showed how Mr. Trump and his party’s battleground candidates are increasingly at odds as the November elections approach. With no clear resolution in sight, the war has sent the prices of gasoline, diesel and heating oil upward, and cost increases have spilled across the economy. Mortgage rates have also climbed to seven percent, squeezing prospective homeowners already struggling with inflation.
While Mr. Trump is talking about escalating the war if he cannot strike a deal with Iran, Republicans in competitive races are losing patience with the fighting.
Representative Ashley Hinson, the party’s Senate nominee in Iowa, called at a news conference Friday for an “immediate” end to the war, saying she was “incredibly frustrated” by rising costs. Former Representative Mike Rogers, the Republican nominee in the Senate race in Michigan and an early cheerleader for the war, released an advertisement on Monday in which he declared that it “needs to end.”
Brinker Harding, a Republican trying to win a swing Nebraska congressional district that has been in his party’s hands for nearly a decade, said in an interview Friday that “we need to bring the war in Iran to a close as quickly as possible.” And Senator Jon Husted, who is working to fend off the Democratic former senator Sherrod Brown, told reporters on Friday that “we got to bring the war to a close” — even as he added that any resolution should be on “acceptable” terms.
Still, many Republicans have been cautious about crossing Mr. Trump, fearing a backlash that could alienate Republican voters they need in November. Despite Ms. Hinson’s and Mr. Husted’s calls for an end to the war, they recently voted against resolutions to rein in Mr. Trump’s ability to carry on the conflict.
On Saturday, Mr. Trump said he rejected Iran’s latest cease-fire proposal, another signal that Republicans’ calls for an end to the war would not be swiftly answered. The proposal would have reopened the Strait of Hormuz — a vital oil-shipping corridor before the war — and restarted negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program.
Much of the conflict has played out as Mr. Trump conducted a primary season retribution campaign against Republicans he deemed disloyal.
“A lot of Republicans didn’t want to have a fight with him during the primaries,” said Carter Wrenn, a Republican strategist in North Carolina, referring to Mr. Trump. “But now that they’re over, it looks to me like some of them are now starting to separate.”
For Republicans in key races, Mr. Wrenn added, the war is a “big problem.”
Nationwide, the cost of a gallon of gasoline has climbed by 40 cents this month to roughly $4.50, according to the AAA motor club, with the Strait of Hormuz now stuck in a lethal monthslong stalemate. Mortgage rates are high and rising, and the cost of a gallon of diesel has climbed to about $6.50, threatening to further lift grocery prices by increasing transportation costs. The Trump administration is rushing to tamp down surging yields on some government bonds.
Republicans have worried about the conflict for months, as the president’s early promise of a military campaign lasting “four to five weeks” faded to months of on-and-off fighting and deepening public frustration.
Mr. Trump says his chief objective is to block Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. “I believe we’ll make a deal right after the election because it doesn’t make sense for them not to,” Mr. Trump said Tuesday in his speech to the U.N. “They’re waiting to see how I do in the midterm election.”
And he has maintained that the coming election is not a factor in his decision-making on the war, going so far as to claim at times that he does not care about the midterms and does not think about Americans’ financial situations. “I gave absolutely no credence and will not give credence to the election when it comes to Iran,” Mr. Trump told the U.N. “It doesn’t even enter my mind.”
Not every battleground Republican has called for the war’s end, or offered even glancing criticism. In North Carolina, for example, the Republican nominee for Senate, Michael Whatley, has stood by the war. In Texas, the Republican Senate nominee, Ken Paxton, has avoided any daylight with Mr. Trump.
But Republicans have grown anxious that Mr. Whatley, a Trump ally, may face a narrowing path to victory. The party is also worried about Texas, a state where a Democrat has not won a Senate seat in decades.
“This war in Iran is a disaster,” James Talarico, the Democratic Senate nominee in Texas, said at a news conference at a Dallas-area gas station on Saturday, warning that rising diesel costs would affect the price of a wide range of goods. “It must end.” (Mr. Paxton issued a statement saying, “Standing next to a gas pump doesn’t make Talarico the authority of affordability.”)
Some of the Republicans seen as having the best chances to defy a difficult political environment have been most vocally critical of the war.
Mr. Rogers’s reversal in Michigan was among the most striking. A longtime foreign-policy hawk and once a chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Mr. Rogers was an early supporter of the war. In May, Mr. Rogers told WDIV-TV that he viewed the war as a “win-win-win” for Americans.
But in his new ad, set at a supermarket, he acknowledged groceries cost “too much.” He also said that ending the war would swiftly bring down energy costs — a view that is generally not shared by economists.
In Iowa, a conservative-leaning state whose agricultural economy has been hit hard by rising fertilizer and diesel prices, Ms. Hinson was not alone in splitting with the president over the war. Two House Republicans in tough races, Zach Nunn and Mariannette Miller-Meeks, voted this month to end the war or require explicit congressional authorization for it to move forward.
They were joined by five other Republicans, including two in competitive races: Representatives Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Tom Barrett of Michigan. Republicans still overwhelmingly voted to support the conflict, despite polling that suggests less than a third of likely voters in the midterms think Mr. Trump made the right decision in going to war. Ms. Hinson, a congresswoman, did not back the measure, but spoke out against the war in the days that followed.
A similar measure failed in the Senate last week, though Senator Susan Collins of Maine supported it. Ms. Collins, a centrist, has long opposed the war. She is seeking a sixth term in a Democratic-leaning state, and some polls show her in the lead or running roughly even with Troy Jackson, the Democratic nominee.
Many Republicans are simply trying to avoid the issue, hoping to navigate past the economic headwinds by looking for other “positive things” they have done for constituents, said Matt Rexroad, a Republican strategist. But Mr. Rexroad expressed skepticism that either tiptoeing around the war or criticizing it forcefully would work.
“Republicans have a huge storm coming,” he said, “and it’s going to be pretty brutal for them all the way around.”
Emily Davies and Jesus Jiménez contributed reporting.
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