Kevin Cramer

BISMARCK, North Dakota — In North Dakota, where Donald Trump won in a landslide last year, Republicans’ lone Senate candidate is a little-known state lawmaker and potato farmer from a remote town closer to the Canadian border than the state capital.

While established Republicans and business leaders in other states Trump carried are running to topple Democratic senators, the GOP is struggling to land a big name in North Dakota to run against Democratic Sen. Heidi Heitkamp in 2018.

The slow start has raised some worries that the GOP is ceding the early advantage to the well-funded Heitkamp in a place seemingly ripe for Republicans’ quest to expand their majority yet surprisingly central to Democrats’ effort to hold them off. She is one of 10 Democrats seeking re-election next year in a state the president carried.

“I’m not sure that our party fully grasps or understands the magnitude of a campaign against Heidi Heitkamp,” said former Gov. Ed Schafer, a Republican. “We’re acting like we’re overly confident of a win.”

In West Virginia, where Trump won by more than 40 percentage points over Democrat Hillary Clinton, Rep. Evan Jenkins and state Attorney General Patrick Morrissey, both Republicans, are vying to challenge Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin. In Missouri, Republican Attorney General Josh Hawley has gathered steam, and Trump’s public support, in a crowded GOP field for the chance to face Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill.

Similar primaries are taking shape in Indiana and Montana, where Trump rolled, as well as in states he won more narrowly, such as Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

And yet, in North Dakota, where Trump won by 36 percentage points, the only declared GOP candidate for U.S. Senate is state Sen. Tom Campbell, unknown to many despite spending nearly $500,000, most of it his own money, on television ads to introduce himself.

The best-known prospect, at-large U.S. Rep. Kevin Cramer, has been reticent about the Senate, and would-be female challengers to Heitkamp have displayed no interest.

Rich Wardner, the Republican majority leader in the North Dakota Senate, described Campbell as overmatched in a primary with Cramer.

Cramer recently formed a new House campaign fundraising committee. Although there’s plenty of time for him to pivot to a Senate race, some home-state Republicans prefer that he remain in the House.

“He’s building leadership there,” said Dave Blair, a 61-year-old Republican-leaning business consultant from Bismarck. “I will definitely support him if he stays there.”

An early Trump supporter and energy policy adviser to his campaign, Cramer said the president “strongly encouraged” him in an October telephone conversation to run for Senate.