As Donald Trump uses his position as Supreme Glorious Leader of the Republican Party to weigh in on individual state governor races, two questions remain. The first is whether he's even making a difference; that's not clear. Trump has tended to back one Republican primary candidate over another late in each race, when the outcome has largely been baked in, and some observers have dismissed his endorsements as being more focused on riding the likely winner's coattails than on anything else.
The second question is whether Trump's predictable advocacy for whichever Republican has humped his leg the most recently is going to further exacerbate his party's bleak election chances in November. That one is easier to answer: Yes. Yes, it will.
With Trump’s approval ratings in the low 40s and a high-energy Democratic base, Republicans were already expected to lose governorships in the fall, especially in blue-tinted states like Maine and New Mexico. Trump’s meddling in GOP primaries, along with Republican voters’ desire for candidates who ape Trump’s style, could expand those losses to swing states ― Florida and Minnesota ― and even into the red territory of Georgia and Kansas.
Kansas is a redder-than-red state, but the nomination of the ridiculous Kobach in Kansas is certain to sway moderate state voters who have witnessed the racist conspiracy peddler's most recent courtroom humiliations and who are not eager to elevate the farce into the governor’s office. Whether it is enough to swing the state isn't clear, but we can likely knock off a few percentage points of support from each downballot Republican forced to compete for attention against a man now known nationwide for his day-job incompetence. Things might go differently in the swing state of Florida, where Republican nominee Ron DeSantis will now have to shift from his campaign vow to be a reliable Trump toady to pretending at something more moderate; this will be a tough sell. There is now a great deal of footage his opponents can use to remind voters of just how dedicated his groveling has become.
The problem for Trump and those that tie themselves to his brand is that he is popular only among Republican extremists, and most Americans are not Republican extremists. He may be able to squeeze his necessary daily allotment of groveling praise from Republican candidates seeking to eek out primary wins by rallying the worst elements of the party base, but polls consistently show that avid support for Trump is not what the wider electorate wants to see from their state and national leaders.
What Republican primary-winners are now expected to do, or would have been before the party went batshit insane with a side of fries, is moderate their public personas to convince moderate American voters that they will not gleefully screw up the country in order to appease an infantile, pouting twit with a chip on his shoulder. It is doubtful that Trump will allow them to do that, and so now it's not just the House in danger of flipping; individual Republican governorships are now in peril as well.