MOON TOWNSHIP, Pa. — President Donald Trump told Pennsylvania voters Saturday night that that his new tariffs are saving the steel industry and urged them to send a Republican to the House so he can keep delivering those kinds of results.
The president was lending his weight to Republican Rick Saccone in the final days of a surprisingly competitive special congressional election campaign outside Pittsburgh.
“Do me a favour: Get out on Tuesday and vote for Rick Saccone, and we can leave right now,” Trump said to open the rally before shifting quickly to touting his own accomplishments.
“Steel is back. And aluminum is back,” he roared, later adding that “your coal is coming back.”
Saccone, a state representative, is in a tight race against Democrat Conor Lamb, a former Marine and federal prosecutor who’s never run for office before.
The special election Tuesday is to replace Republican Rep. Tim Murphy, who resigned last year amid revelations of an extramarital affair in which the anti-abortion lawmaker urged his mistress to get an abortion when he thought she was pregnant.
Trump easily won the district in the 2016 presidential race. Murphy, an eight-term congressman, never had a close election and didn’t even have a Democratic challenger in his last two elections.
Saccone, who has struggled with his own fundraising, embraced Trump’s politics.
“The president’s support is key to attaining victory,” he told rally attendees about 45 minutes before Trump took the stage. “There’s no one that I would rather have in my corner that President Trump. Are you with me on that?”
Trump’s tariffs on imported steel and aluminum, which he signed this week, have gotten considerable attention in a district with an estimated 17,000 steelworkers and almost 90,000 voters from union households.
“Not all of our friends on Wall Street love it, but we love it,” Trump said of the tariffs.
Both Saccone and Lamb have offered qualified endorsements of the tariffs.
The contest is being closely watched as a harbinger of Republicans’ prospects in the November elections when the GOP tries to retain its congressional majority.
Trump is taking a risk aligning so closely with Trump, given the possibility of Lamb pulling an upset. The president was embarrassed in December when he publicly backed Republican Roy Moore only to see the Alabama Senate candidate lose to Democrat Doug Jones.
Trump tweeted on Saturday that he was heading to Pennsylvania “to be with a really good person” in Saccone and he expected a “Big & happy crowd (why not, some of the best economic numbers ever). Rick will help me a lot. Also, tough on crime & border. Loves 2nd A & VETS.”