Republican campaign money stretched thin as the party battles on unexpected fronts

KINGSTON, N.Y. - Reactionary culture warrior is not an image that has typically been associated with Rep. John Faso, an understated Chamber of Commerce favorite who represents an expansive district in an economically struggling part of upstate New York.

He's the kind of Republican who met President Donald Trump's recent enthusiastic endorsement tweet with ambivalence. "I didn't know it was coming," he said. "You know, it is what it is."

In politics, though, desperate times call for desperate marketing. National Republican groups not only have gotten Faso a Trump endorsement, they've also surrounded him with a Trump-style campaign. They've poured millions of dollars into re-branding the endangered incumbent as part of a thin red line separating this mostly white, working-class region from the urban chaos they warn would be unleashed by