For decades Republican leaders vowed to recruit more minority candidates and tried to project a “big tent” image for the party, and in recent years they saw some payoff with governors: Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Nikki Haley of South Carolina, both Indian-Americans who have since moved on, and Brian Sandoval of Nevada and Susana Martinez of New Mexico, both Hispanic-American.
But in the first midterm elections under Donald J. Trump, whose campaign and presidency included strong appeals to white voters, Republicans have no black or Hispanic nominees for governor in 2018, and few from other racial minorities, in the 36 states holding elections for the position. The overwhelming majority are white men.
And with Mr. Sandoval and Ms. Martinez leaving by early January, Republicans are at risk of having an all-white bench of governors in 2019.
Democrats this year, by contrast, have nominated black, Hispanic and Native American candidates for governor in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Maryland and elsewhere. This lineup comes after years when Democrats were weak on diversity in governors’ races.
The Republican falloff is striking after past election seasons when party leaders attempted to identify and then rally behind minority candidates for governor in major states, like Ohio and Pennsylvania.
But several Republican leaders, pollsters and former candidates said they see the lack of diversity as a consequence of President Trump’s offensive language on race, from Mexicans and immigrants to black football players and the protest in Charlottesville, Va., arguing that some prospective minority candidates don’t want to defend Mr. Trump or be aligned with his party. Other Republicans say that an embrace of white identity has become integral to the party’s culture and voter base under Mr. Trump, so it is no surprise that white candidates ran and won in primaries dominated by white conservative voters.
“It’s misleading and unfair to report on candidates based on just one particular year when gubernatorial elections occur every year,” he said.
Abel Maldonado, the former Republican lieutenant governor of California under Arnold Schwarzenegger, said that Mr. Trump’s leadership of the party, and his highly successful record of endorsing candidates who went on to win primaries this year, created severe complications for minority Republicans.
Mr. Maldonado argued that the problems stemmed from Mr. Trump’s divisive language; his policies, even the proposed border wall with Mexico, are defensible, Mr. Maldonado said. Still, the president’s propensity to speak in language that plays on racial stereotypes creates a difficult conundrum that few minority candidates would want to endure.
“I really like the things that he says on trade and the protection of our country. But how he says them? I’ll be honest with you, deep down it bothers me,” Mr. Maldonado said.
Republicans are conscious of the juxtaposition between their party’s candidates and the recent surge of nonwhite Democrats nominated in governors races nationwide. Democrats have had a historic nomination cycle in which several progressive candidates running grass-roots, upstart campaigns have secured the party’s nomination, including Andrew Gillum in Florida, David Garcia in Arizona, Paulette Jordan in Idaho, and Stacey Abrams in Georgia — who could be the first black woman to become a state governor.
Critics of the Democratic Party are quick to argue that this diversification happened in spite of many party leaders — who backed white candidates in some of those states in 2018 and in past years — and not because diversity was a priority for Democratic leaders. Nevertheless, the nominations of minority candidates have created contrasting trendlines between the two parties. Mr. Trump enjoys anemic approval ratings among minority voters, and Republican operatives fear that this, in combination with a disproportionately white slate of candidates, could pose electoral problems for Republicans in the midterms and beyond.
Mr. Steinhauser said the party has gone backward since 2014, when it had more prominent minority governors nationwide — including Mr. Jindal and Ms. Haley — and more white politicians appeared comfortable campaigning in minority communities.
“Focusing on the base and Anglo voters more than ever is just not going to work,” Mr. Steinhauser said.
The party has nominated a handful of candidates for governor who are not white men, including an Asian-American nominee in Rhode Island, Allan Fung, and a Samoan-Hawaiian woman in Hawaii, Andria Tupola. There are also nonwhite Republicans elsewhere on the party ticket this year. John James, a black Republican, is the party’s choice for Senate in Michigan; he received Mr. Trump’s endorsement. And Republican gubernatorial nominees have chosen six candidates for lieutenant governor who are racial minorities, including a Cuban-American woman in Florida and a Native American woman in Minnesota.
Republicans with closer ties to Mr. Trump’s administration brushed aside the idea that the president has made it more difficult for minority candidates to succeed within the party.
“If you’re an establishment, traditional Republican, this is a tough environment no matter what,” said Ari Fleischer, a former White House press secretary who has oscillated between supporting and criticizing Mr. Trump.
Some political observers on the right and the left contended that this turnout effort would be much easier to accomplish with a more diverse slate of candidates. Derrick Johnson, the president of NAACP, said he believed the party’s slate of candidates was indicative of a larger trend, fueled by Mr. Trump: the coalescing around white identity and interests.
Frank Keating, the former Republican governor of Oklahoma and one-time chairman of the Republican Governors Association, said that Republicans need to be careful in order to ensure they’re projecting that their party is welcoming to all.
Mr. Keating said, in Oklahoma, he and fellow Republicans faced a similar diversity problem in the 1990s, and they made a concerted effort to find minority Republican voices — which culminated in the election of J.C. Watts, the first black Republican House member elected to Congress from a state south of the Mason-Dixon line since Reconstruction.