Welcome to Thursday’s Washington Secrets, coming to you from Day 2 of the midterm convention in Dallas. If a friend sent you this and you’d like to sign up, CLICK HERE. First, we meet the head of the House Republican campaign arm, who is not as gloomy as you might think. Then we hear about a squabble over seats and a reminder that you never want to inconvenience an attorney general.
DALLAS — Rep. Richard Hudson (R-NC) is the man in charge of holding the House for Republicans.
And, despite poll after poll and pundit after pundit predicting that history dictates that Republicans will lose the lower chamber if not the Senate as well, he still believes they can win.
He sounds like he means it. In an interview with Secrets, the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee cuts an affable figure, joking about his “primetime” speaking slot at 4:30 p.m. Central, rather than an official staring down the barrel of a blue wave.
, right, in the VIP box during the first day of the Republican midterm convention on Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2026, in Dallas. (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)</p>
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EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, left, and Rep. Richard Hudson (R-NC), right, in the VIP box during the first day of the Republican midterm convention on Wednesday, Sept. 9, 2026, in Dallas. (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)This is how he sees the battleground and the three factors he believes will “100%” deliver a Republican win.
The districts: “We’ve never had a midterm with this small a map, and so that’s why when people talk about history, and you know … “we’re going to lose the majority,” like, that’s all fine and good, but let’s look at facts on the ground. Let’s look at the actual races that are up for grabs … and the majority of them are Republican seats held by Democrats, and we’re in the fight in every one of those.”
The opponents: “It comes down to a choice, one of two paths for this country, and that’s where I think our advantage is. We are trying to save the country from what Biden and the Democrats did last time they had power.”
The midterm convention: “For me, as the chairman of the campaign committee, I’ve got my prime candidates out there in primetime. I have lots of footage that I can clip and reuse. This is phenomenal. It’s one of the best ideas President Trump’s ever had.”
It will not be easy. The latest midterm polling average from RealClearPolitics shows Democrats with a 6-point lead.
But Hudson’s point, made a few minutes earlier by President Donald Trump onstage, is that boundary changes mean only a handful of districts are competitive. So forget the patterns of history, when parties that hold the White House, the Senate, and the House get punished by voters.
Trump talked about 35 districts being in play. Hudson says it may be even fewer, all decided by a few thousand votes.
“You know, I describe them as a knife fight in 30 different dark alleys,” he says. That means there is enough time until November to secure victory.
Secrets has been waiting all day for a chance to meet with Hudson. We talk on the concourse of the American Airlines Center while Trump is in full flow in the auditorium.
It is one of the few moments when Hudson is not being hustled to and from donor meetings, a greeting with the president, or time with advisers.
The midterm convention is not to everyone’s liking. Some candidates have stayed away to spend more time campaigning in their districts. Others worry that the “Trumpapalooza” is putting an unpopular president front and center.
Hudson has no doubt that Trump remains the party’s best electoral weapon.
“It’s President Trump’s vision for America versus Bernie Sanders and Mamdani’s vision for America,” he says. “And so the more the president talks about what he’s accomplished over the last year and a half and what his vision is for the future for this country, the better for us.”
READ MORE: FIVE TAKEAWAYS FROM NIGHT ONE OF THE CONVENTION
He sidesteps questions about how much leeway he is prepared to give candidates who want to put some distance between themselves and Trump.
“I just don’t agree with the premise,” he says. “It’s President Trump’s policies that are very popular … that are actually making Americans’ lives better, that we want to talk about, we want to compare them to what the Left is selling.”
The convention, he adds, has been a massive fundraising opportunity for the NRCC. Expect midterm conventions to become a regular thing.
“I think this will be the norm,” he says. “This has been fantastic. I mean, the enthusiasm here is incredible. It’s fun. Folks are glad to be here. I think the momentum we’re going to have coming out of this is going to be fantastic.”
You are reading Washington Secrets, a guide to power and politics in D.C. and beyond. It is written by Rob Crilly, who you can reach at [email protected] with your comments, story tips, and suggestions.
Overheard in the convention hall
It sounds like the last-minute release of free tickets caused tension with the people who paid for the privilege of being there.
“The people who paid for their tickets are really upset when they can’t find a seat down here because there are people with a free ticket,” a steward on the lower level said. “That’s above my pay grade.”
Secrets watched the speech from the top level, where there were plenty of spare seats. So if you need a metaphor for the midterm elections, and Trump’s energized base versus a less-energized soft Right, here is my piece on watching the convention from the empty nosebleeds.
Department of Do You Know Who I Am?
We’ve all been there. Enduring an agonizing flight delay, lost luggage, or poor food, we’ve all had that moment when we have been tempted to blow up customer service with a frustrated social media post or an implicit threat to use our personal positions to wield legal powers against an airline.
Wait, what?
Well, that’s what Adam Piper, executive director of the Republican Attorneys General Association, did during his much-delayed American Airlines flight to the convention in Dallas.
It starts off routinely enough, with posts describing how a maintenance problem became an eight-hour delay. “No word on a refund for this 8 hour delay that cost meetings etc,” he says at one point. Once they are in the air, he declines breakfast of biscuits and gravy that he says has been sitting waiting for as long as he has.
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Then he suddenly asks why the big airlines aren’t doing more with attorneys general.
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Is it a threat? Is it an appeal for donations? Anyway, it seems like those hours spent at the airport were put to good use by Piper, who had a chance to think through the aviation industry vis-à-vis its relations to prosecutors and consumer protection issues.
The best Secrets can do when inconvenienced by an airline is offer mild embarrassment in a newsletter.
Lunchtime reading
25 years after 9/11, Al Qaeda still has a home in Afghanistan: Your regular reminder that in foreign wars, the U.S. can control the battlefield for years at a time, but the enemy always controls the calendar. They can just wait.
Lee Greenwood is Trump’s court bard: “Henry VIII had the Venetian organist Dionysius Memo. The Sun King Louis XIV had Jean-Baptiste Lully. Trump’s chief court musician is Lee Greenwood, an 83-year-old country singer from California.” Paywalled but worth it.
