A strong economy will help Danny Tarkanian and Cresent Hardy to victory and the fight over approving Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court is not expected to spur women to vote against Republicans, National Republican Congressional Committee chairman Steve Stivers said Tuesday.

“I feel really good about our chances to win both of them,” Rep. Stivers, R-Ohio, said of the races for Nevada’s 3rd and 4th Congressional District seats. Tarkanian is the Republican running to represent the former and Hardy is the GOP candidate in the latter.

“We’ve got the right candidates in the right place at the right time,” Stivers told a group of reporters at Republican National Committee headquarters in Washington, D.C.

His forecast is more optimistic than that of non-partisan election watchers. Democratic candidates Susie Lee, who is facing Tarkanian, and Steven Horsford, who is taking on Hardy, are favored, according to The Cook Political Report. Cook rates the 3rd district seat as “lean Democrat” -- potentially putting it in play -- and the 4th district seat as “likely Democrat.”

When asked if the battle to approve Kavanaugh, who has been accused of sexual aggression or worse against female classmates while in high school and college, would energize women to vote for Democrats over Republicans, Stivers said that he believes the booming economy will be what resonates with voters.

“I don’t think anything [Democrats] do is going to change the fact that we have the better candidates; we have the better message for Nevada,” he said.

It marked a different approach from the one being pursued by Senate Republican leaders, who see confirming Kavanaugh to the high court as key to turning out the Republican base. However, the pathway to victory through the Senate is seen as running through states that President Donald Trump won handily, while victory in the House runs through suburban districts with white, college-educated voters.

Progressive groups, including pro-abortion rights group NARAL, have sought to use Kavanaugh to target Nevada Republican Sen. Dean Heller in his race against Democratic Rep. Jacky Rosen. Raising the profile of the issue in Nevada -- the only state Senate Republicans are defending that voted for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016 -- could help motivate women. Stivers agreed that the Senate race could affect turnout, but he believes the economy will be the galvanizing issue.

“Look at the economy,” he continued. Nevada was “decimated during the recession and it’s come back and the economy is booming. The only thing you see when you go down the Strip in Las Vegas is ‘help wanted’ signs because the economy is that good. That is why I think Danny Tarkanian and Cresent Hardy are going to win.”

Consumer confidence, a closely-followed economic indicator, was approaching the all-time high, according to a monthly survey, released Tuesday by the Conference Board that quantifies how Americans currently feel about the economy and the outlook for the next six months. A September reading of 138.4 compared with an all-time high of 144.7 reached in 2000. “Consumers’ assessment of current conditions remains extremely favorable, bolstered by a strong economy and robust job growth,” the board said.

Andrew Godinich, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said that Nevada’s GOP candidates will be hampered at the polls by their opposition to the Affordable Care Act. He also said the Republican tax cut, which became law late last year with the help of House Speaker Paul Ryan, favored the wealthy over the middle class.

Godinich called Hardy and Tarkanian “toxic candidates” and said Democrats would tie them to their support for the Ryan-backed tax plan, which Democrats also see as paving the way for the erosion of protections in the Affordable Care Act and social-safety-net programs like Social Security and Medicare.  

But Stivers believes that the upturn in the economy will help carry the day for Republicans across the country and that the House will stay under GOP control, though he acknowledged that Republicans could lose some of the 236 seats they have. Democrats need to win a net 23 Republican-held seats flip the chamber. But Stivers said the GOP is hell bent on holding the 218 seats needed to keep House Republicans in the majority.

“We could lose seats,” he said. “My job is to hold the majority. That number is 218 and that’s the number we are going to exceed and I am going to exceed it as much as I can, but we are going to hold 218.”

While the political climate can be uncertain, he doesn’t expect any seismic event to change the landscape, especially since there is only about a month and a half left to election day.

“If something big happens and the world shifts, then that could change,” Stivers said. “But we now only have 40-some days and it’s hard to believe the world is going to shift and that the wave that nobody sees is coming.”

Stivers’ views of the GOP majority’s survival are not felt as strongly among political prognosticators. Fivethirtyeight gives the Democrats a five in six chance to win control of the House and Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball projects Democrats winning between about 30 and 35 seats, which would give the Democrats a total of 239 House seats and control of the speakership and all House committees.

He appeared to acknowledge that Republicans are not as interested in campaigning directly on the tax law, an observation made by the DCCC chairman Ben Ray Lujan and others earlier this month. But Stivers said the criticism that the GOP lost the messaging war on the law misses the mark because Republicans are running on how the GOP tax law and cutting regulations have brought about the booming economy.

“The war for me isn’t about what people think about the tax plan,” Stivers said. “It’s what they think about the economy and whether they connect the tax plan as part of the economy. The regulatory reform and the tax cuts together have given us the economy we have and that’s what I care about.”

“The real question is why anybody would want to change horses now when the economy is so good,” Stivers added.

He expects Republicans to campaign on the growing economy as their “closing argument” before Election Day.

“The economy is robust and growing because of the tax and regulatory changes we’ve made and I think that is a really good closing argument,” Stiver said.

Updated 9-26-18 at 10:00 a.m. to include the latest ratings from Sabato's Crystal Ball.