President Donald Trump will focus on affordability and lowering the cost of living next year following a series of poor results for Republicans in elections on Tuesday, according to White House Deputy Chief of Staff James Blair.
"The president is very keyed into what's going on, and he recognizes, like anybody, that it takes time to do an economic turnaround, but all the fundamentals are there, and I think you'll see him be very, very focused on prices and cost of living," Blair told Dasha Burns in an interview on Politico's "The Conversation" to be released Friday.
Blair, who previously served as political director for the Republican National Committee and Trump's 2024 presidential campaign, noted that Democrat socialist Zohran Mamdani handily defeated former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who ran as an independent, and Republican Curtis Sliwa after running a campaign that "relentlessly focused on affordability."
"People talk about communists, they can say all these things, but the fact is he was talking about the cost of living," Blair said.
He also noted that Jack Ciattarelli, the Republican candidate for New Jersey governor, "didn't talk about" lowering power costs like his Democrat opponent, Mikie Sherrill, who won in a landslide.
"He talked about taxes, and he won the tax vote, but he didn't address those key issues of affordability very effectively," Blair said. "He was mostly talking generically about change to Jersey.
"And I'm not denigrating Jack, but it was not in line necessarily with what voters were saying."
Blair also criticized Virginia GOP gubernatorial candidate Winsome Earle-Sears, saying more than half of her advertisements "talked about transgender [people]. And it's not even the top five issues, according to voters."
She lost decisively to Abigail Spanberger.
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.