An article in today’s Washington Post details a super-risky strategy that the Trump campaign is employing this year to get out the vote. Instead of trying to match the Democrats’ massive field operation and infrastructure, the RNC has ditched its previous plans for an extensive field operation and instead will be relying on outside far-right groups to fill in the many, many gaps.
With fewer than 100 days left before the election, local GOP officials in battleground states have raised alarms about the scant presence of Trump campaign field staff. For the large armies of paid and volunteer door-knockers and canvassers that typically drive turnout in presidential elections, the campaign is largely relying on outside groups such as America First Works, America PAC and Turning Point Action.
The Trump campaign’s shrunken in-house operation resulted from its takeover of the Republican National Committee in March, when Trump secured the nomination. The RNC had been planning an extensive field program, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post. Those now-discarded plans included 88 staff members and 12 offices, and goals to knock on 3 million doors and make 2.4 million phone calls, in Pennsylvania. In Arizona, the RNC’s plan called for 62 staffers and seven offices, aiming for 558,000 voter contacts.
WaPo notes that the RNC’s new scaled-down plan that relies mainly on outside conservative groups was made possible due to new guidance that the FEC issues in March 2024 to allow outside groups to coordinate with campaigns and official party committees in ways that were previously prohibited by the law.
In the past, campaigns and official party committees, which are subject to contribution limits, generally observed a firewall that blocked information-sharing with super PACs and nonprofits that accept unlimited contributions.
Now, campaigns and outside groups are free to share messaging and exchange data. That new opportunity has allowed the Trump campaign to supplement a bare-bones in-house field program with allied programs fueled by megadonors.
WaPo notes that its a new strategy that “comes with the risk of untested outfits duplicating efforts or working at cross purposes.” A recent example: Ron DeSantis’s failed presidential run. DeSantis’s heavy reliance on a super PAC in the Republican presidential primary race wound up as an expensive and ineffective boondoggle.
The strategy was a disaster for DeSantis, so what could go wrong with the Trump campaign trying it out? Especially when one of the most active outside groups gearing up on the fly to do voter outreach is wingnut Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point Action.
At a Turning Point Action office in Waukesha, Wis., in June, about three dozen newly hired full-time community organizers got together with poster boards and scented markers to brainstorm techniques to meet their targeted neighbors. They were each assigned a few hundred registered Republicans who didn’t vote in recent presidential elections, aiming to turn them out for Trump.
Bowyer instructed the organizers not to come on too strong by showing up with MAGA hats and fliers. Instead, they should research their marks and start reaching out through Facebook groups, community events, or neighborly gestures such as recommending plumbers or harp teachers. They could even arrange seemingly chance encounters on coffee runs or dog walks.
“Some of these things sound like stalking,” one staffer whispered.
“Professional stalkers,” his colleague joked back.
As one slide from the training implored: “BE NORMAL. BE NORMAL. BE NORMAL.”
In other words, please don’t be WEIRD!!! So you run into your neighbor in the grocery store, they start up a convo and suddenly say, “Hey Bob, I see that you requested a mail-in ballot for the 2020 election and never sent it back. What’s up with that?’” Nothing creepy or abnormal about THAT.
Another outside group expected to help make up for the RNC’s non-existent outreach efforts is America PAC, which is funded by Elon Musk. However, a person familiar with the effort told WaPo that the program is “in flux” after it cut ties with a firm that had been hired to handle much of the operation. The newspaper adds that “It is unclear what the group will do next.” That’s OK, take your time. It’s not like we only have 95 days until the election. Oh, wait.
Meanwhile, Kamala Harris is running, well, a NORMAL presidential campaign.
By contrast, the Harris campaign and allied outside groups said they are not changing their approach in response to the FEC decision. The campaign said it has 1,300 staff members (including party payrolls) and 250 offices in battleground states organizing events, trainings, door-knocking, phone calls and online peer messaging. It recruited 170,000 new volunteers who signed up since President Biden withdrew in late July and held 2,300 events in swing states last weekend to mark 100 days to the election.
“Our campaign will make millions of voter contacts after having millions of conversations with voters in battleground states with thousands of staff, tens of thousands of volunteers and hundreds of thousands of events,” said the Harris campaign’s battleground state director, Dan Kanninen. “The Trump campaign is talking about a handful of organizers and volunteers doing events ad hoc, in a way that makes it look like there’s organizing going on when there isn’t any.”
We can’t take anything for granted and have to work like all get out to win this election. But we can take some solace, I think, in that the other side doesn’t seem to know what it’s doing.
Let’s get this done people!