President Donald Trump travels to Syracuse on Friday to campaign alongside New York's Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman, but the appearance is already producing a fresh embarrassment for the president: only four of 16 local Republican candidates and party leaders plan to attend his rally, according to a survey by Syracuse.com | The Post-Standard.

The event marks Trump's first public speech in Syracuse in 10 years, and it lands in the final stretch of the 2026 midterm campaign, when candidates are making their closing pitches to voters. Writing on Friday, Syracuse.com reporter Mark Weiner reported that the absences include some of the region's most prominent Republicans.

"Only four out of 16 local Republican candidates and party leaders plan to be on hand to hear Trump make his first public speech in Syracuse in 10 years," Weiner reported. "Among those giving Trump the snub are the top two elected Republicans in the Syracuse area – Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon and District Attorney Bill Fitzpatrick."

Neither of the GOP candidates seeking New York State Senate seats in Central New York, Rich McCarron and James Corl III, will be at the rally. Not a single elected Republican serving in the Onondaga County Legislature said they would attend the event, and Joe Bick, chair of the Onondaga County Republican Committee and the region's leading GOP official, will also be absent. Taken together, the survey shows the county executive, the district attorney, the party chairman, every Republican member of the county legislature and both of the area's State Senate candidates plan to be elsewhere when Trump takes the stage Friday.

McMahon, Fitzpatrick, Bick and other Republican officials offered similar explanations for their absences, citing other commitments involving work, family, campaigns or the local apple festival. McMahon said he was "tired" and has "a baby," and indicated that he would meet with Trump only if they could hold a face-to-face discussion of federal policies that affect the community. He does not plan to attend the rally.

"Certainly, if there was an opportunity to talk to the president about things that matter to this community I would find a way to make that happen. But I don't have a lot of leisure activity time," McMahon told Weiner.

Other candidates were more blunt. James Corl III, running in the 50th State Senate District, said, "I can't make it. Even if I was free, I probably wouldn't go." Onondaga County Legislator David Knapp, R-LaFayette, cited the LaFayette Apple Festival.

The distance from Trump is not limited to New York. The president has struggled to keep Republicans in purple and blue in his corner as the 2026 midterm elections approach Election Day. Last month, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the state's GOP Senate nominee, privately told a group of supporters that Trump's midterms convention had hurt their numbers.

"So to be honest with you, the numbers — when we did that convention — it dropped our numbers," Paxton said. "Everybody's numbers dropped. Right now, yeah, not good."

In a September interview with AlterNet, Trump's former communications director Anthony Scaramucci argued that Republicans have taken this long to distance themselves from the president because they are "cowards."

"I would say to you that they've become cowards," Scaramucci told AlterNet. "They've become self-aggrandizing. We started this interview by me saying that they only care about themselves and their own personal power, and they've become cowards."