VIDEO: RGA Chair Haslam Worries About “Huge Intensity Gap” and “Difficult Map” Heading into 2018 Elections

Haslam: “This is Different Circumstances Than We Had in the Last Eight Years”

RGA Chair and Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam went on Fox News yesterday to sound the alarm for his fellow GOP governors heading into a tough election year. Haslam admitted that the RGA has a “difficult map” defending 26 seats in a year with a “huge intensity gap in the favor of the other side.” He also cited Ed Gillespie’s loss in Virginia as evidence that Democrats are turning out in record numbers, while Republicans are losing traditionally reliable voters in the suburbs.
Watch the video here:

HASLAM: A midterm election when your party is in the White House, as you know, is difficult. And I think Republicans need to be aware there’s a huge intensity gap in the favor of the other side. We saw in the Virginia governor’s race a year ago with Ed Gillespie, it wasn’t just this big turnout in northern Virginia, but the Richmond suburbs, traditional Republican strongholds went Democrat. So, my message in chairing RGA is we need to go into this with our eyes wide open and be alert. This will be, these are, this is different circumstances than we had in the last eight years.
FOX’S DANA PERINO: How many seats do you have up? 36?
HASLAM: There is 36 governors races. 26 of those, we hold the seat now. 14, the incumbents are running again. 12 folks like me term limited out. It’s a difficult map.