Donald Trump’s ground game strategy: Rely on help from outside organizations like Turning Point

[essentialsaltes]

“(The) ability to work with outside groups on field work alleviates the need to have the same size staff footprint as in previous cycles, allowing us to retain a greater share of resources for advertising and paid voter contact programs than in past cycles,” a senior Trump adviser told CNN.

Of those groups, perhaps one of the most important is Turning Point Action, which is hosting Trump in Michigan on Saturday. It will be his second engagement with the organization in as many weeks. Turning Point was one of several groups that sat down with campaign advisers Chris LaCivita and James Blair during a donor retreat earlier in the year that focused on how outside groups could best assist Trump’s reelection effort.

TPA — an affiliate of Turning Point USA, the youth organization started by Trump ally Charlie Kirk — is aiming to ultimately spend $108 million on a get-out-the-vote effort in key battleground states [AZ MI WI], according to two sources familiar with the plans.

Kirk and Tyler Bowyer, TPA’s chief operating officer, created the program after Republicans faced major losses in the 2022 election.

Republican operatives described the effort as valiant but risky.

“You are placing a lot of a trust in these (outside groups), who might be hard to manage,” said one operative, who spoke on condition of anonymity to offer a candid assessment.

A former RNC official who also requested anonymity to speak candidly said, “There’s not a presence being built up, they don’t have a footprint. They have a handful of staffers in the states. … It seems that they are miscalculating how this election is going to be won.”

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Does Charlie Kirk/TPA have much experience at getting out the vote? Not really. He has a track record of one election and zero wins.

Donald Trump’s Get-Out-The-Vote Plan is Bonkers​

In 2022, the Turning Point network entered the ground game business, mainly in Arizona, where it is headquartered. As the Arizona Republic reported, “Turning Point PAC, the political action committee started by Turning Point USA, spent $494,105 during the 2022 election cycle, including the primary elections. The bulk of that, $377,201, went towards the general election races for U.S. Senate, governor, and Secretary of State in Arizona.” Turning Point’s candidates lost all of those races.

[Well, if you only spend half a million of course you're going to lose. Now Kirk will get $100 million dollars to run through his fingers. And what a plan!]

Then-Chair of the Republican National Committee, Ronna McDaniel, gave [Kirk's get out the vote] plan the cold shoulder. Kirk launched blistering attacks on McDaniel, claiming she was a Democratic plant and urging Trump to dump her. According to Real Clear Politics, McDaniel told Trump that Kirk’s penchant for insulting African Americans, such as saying Martin Luther King, Jr. did not deserve a holiday, would hurt efforts with Black voters.

Kirk won the fight. McDaniel quit under pressure. Then Trump took Kirk’s suggestion to install his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, as RNC co-chair.

“This is why he was trying to get rid of Ronna,” [a] Trump ally said. “He shouldn’t make it sound like, ‘Oh, we’re tired of losing. We don’t have an early vote program.’ He should have just said, ‘Listen, he who controls the RNC controls millions of dollars and I want to get my hands on them.’ I mean, that would have been a more honest grift.”

 

[HTacianas]

“(The) ability to work with outside groups on field work alleviates the need to have the same size staff footprint as in previous cycles, allowing us to retain a greater share of resources for advertising and paid voter contact programs than in past cycles,” a senior Trump adviser told CNN.

Of those groups, perhaps one of the most important is Turning Point Action, which is hosting Trump in Michigan on Saturday. It will be his second engagement with the organization in as many weeks. Turning Point was one of several groups that sat down with campaign advisers Chris LaCivita and James Blair during a donor retreat earlier in the year that focused on how outside groups could best assist Trump’s reelection effort.

TPA — an affiliate of Turning Point USA, the youth organization started by Trump ally Charlie Kirk — is aiming to ultimately spend $108 million on a get-out-the-vote effort in key battleground states [AZ MI WI], according to two sources familiar with the plans.

Kirk and Tyler Bowyer, TPA’s chief operating officer, created the program after Republicans faced major losses in the 2022 election.

Republican operatives described the effort as valiant but risky.

“You are placing a lot of a trust in these (outside groups), who might be hard to manage,” said one operative, who spoke on condition of anonymity to offer a candid assessment.

A former RNC official who also requested anonymity to speak candidly said, “There’s not a presence being built up, they don’t have a footprint. They have a handful of staffers in the states. … It seems that they are miscalculating how this election is going to be won.”

--

Does Charlie Kirk/TPA have much experience at getting out the vote? Not really. He has a track record of one election and zero wins.

Donald Trump’s Get-Out-The-Vote Plan is Bonkers​

In 2022, the Turning Point network entered the ground game business, mainly in Arizona, where it is headquartered. As the Arizona Republic reported, “Turning Point PAC, the political action committee started by Turning Point USA, spent $494,105 during the 2022 election cycle, including the primary elections. The bulk of that, $377,201, went towards the general election races for U.S. Senate, governor, and Secretary of State in Arizona.” Turning Point’s candidates lost all of those races.

[Well, if you only spend half a million of course you're going to lose. Now Kirk will get $100 million dollars to run through his fingers. And what a plan!]

Then-Chair of the Republican National Committee, Ronna McDaniel, gave [Kirk's get out the vote] plan the cold shoulder. Kirk launched blistering attacks on McDaniel, claiming she was a Democratic plant and urging Trump to dump her. According to Real Clear Politics, McDaniel told Trump that Kirk’s penchant for insulting African Americans, such as saying Martin Luther King, Jr. did not deserve a holiday, would hurt efforts with Black voters.

Kirk won the fight. McDaniel quit under pressure. Then Trump took Kirk’s suggestion to install his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, as RNC co-chair.

“This is why he was trying to get rid of Ronna,” [a] Trump ally said. “He shouldn’t make it sound like, ‘Oh, we’re tired of losing. We don’t have an early vote program.’ He should have just said, ‘Listen, he who controls the RNC controls millions of dollars and I want to get my hands on them.’ I mean, that would have been a more honest grift.”

Does that differ from anyone else's use of outside organizations?

 

[essentialsaltes]

Does that differ from anyone else's use of outside organizations?

In fact, yes.

The approach of relying on outside groups is untested. Advisers said this would be unlike any other traditional campaign strategy in modern history — only made possible by a recent Federal Election Commission ruling that allows campaigns to directly work and coordinate with outside groups.

But I was more interested in the reliance on an organization with a winless rookie track record

 

[Reasonably Sane]

In fact, yes.

The approach of relying on outside groups is untested. Advisers said this would be unlike any other traditional campaign strategy in modern history — only made possible by a recent Federal Election Commission ruling that allows campaigns to directly work and coordinate with outside groups.

But I was more interested in the reliance on an organization with a winless rookie track record

That's just a quote from a CNN satire article. At least, that is my take. I will say this: this election is like none in US history, so technically they got that part right. A different game DOES call for a different strategy.

 

[HTacianas]

In fact, yes.

The approach of relying on outside groups is untested. Advisers said this would be unlike any other traditional campaign strategy in modern history — only made possible by a recent Federal Election Commission ruling that allows campaigns to directly work and coordinate with outside groups.

But I was more interested in the reliance on an organization with a winless rookie track record

You're missing a key point and that is that the FEC ruled that a campaign can work directly with an outside group. Campaigns have relied on outside groups forever there just was no direct coordination with them.

 

[essentialsaltes]

That's just a quote from a CNN satire article. At least, that is my take.

Not surprising.

“Trump camp plans sit-down with outside groups after FEC relaxes coordination rules”​

 

[essentialsaltes]

You're missing a key point and that is that the FEC ruled that a campaign can work directly with an outside group. Campaigns have relied on outside groups forever there just was no direct coordination with them.

Right, thus it is now different, making the current situation different "from anyone else's use of outside organizations".

 

[Pommer]

But I was more interested in the reliance on an organization with a winless rookie track record

But a sizable group of people who could “help” if there’s “discrepancies“, at election time?

 

[essentialsaltes]

But a sizable group of people who could “help” if there’s “discrepancies“, at election time?

Lara Trump has a whole separate army of lawyers and 'election monitors' for that.

 

[SimplyMe]

Not surprising.

“Trump camp plans sit-down with outside groups after FEC relaxes coordination rules”​

The ruling makes me wonder why we even have campaign donation limits anymore? You can only give a couple of thousand to the candidate, but you can give millions to one of the PACs that is working for the candidate. It just shows, again, that the rich rule the nation.

 

[essentialsaltes]

[Kirk's] toughest inquisitors are not the mainstream media which Kirk routinely disparages, but people from within his own ranks. Take Tudor Dixon, a Republican politician from Michigan who ran with Turning Point’s backing for governor of the state in 2022, and lost.

Dixon recently let rip on her podcast. “As a candidate who didn’t win, and who was promised that Turning Point would have a big influence in Michigan, it makes you crazy,” she vented.

“I gave up a salary for 18 months, sold my car, did everything I could to run for office. And people like [Kirk] are the reason we are not winning.”

“Turning Point has become toxic in Arizona,” said Tyler Montague, an Arizona-based Republican strategist. “They’ve helped to cement an extreme worldview, creating anger that in turn generates political energy that they harness. That’s their game.”

Turning Point now exerts an iron grip on the Arizona legislature through the all-powerful Freedom caucus, which is led by Jake Hoffman, former communications chief of TP USA. Hoffman is closely connected to Tyler Bowyer, Turning Point’s chief operating officer who represents Arizona on the Republican National Committee.

Both Hoffman and Bowyer are being prosecuted for their role as so-called “fake electors” in which they allegedly plotted to prevent Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election by sending an alternative slate of electors to Congress. They deny the charges.

[ex AZ Speaker of the House Rusty Bowers:] “They wrap themselves in a Christian flag and get all these young kids to think they’re doing the Lord’s work, and they use that evangelistic fervor very cynically to raise money and increase their power.”

Darrell Scott, a Black pastor from Cleveland who has been close to Trump for more than a decade, has accused Kirk of breeding a new generation of Hitler Youth. Scott told the Guardian that Kirk was damaging Trump’s chances of winning in November by alienating Black voters.

“Kirk talked all this negative [poop] about Black people, and his proximity to President Trump caused people to wonder: Is that what Trump is thinking too? I have publicly refuted Kirk because every vote counts,” Scott said.

 

[essentialsaltes]

AP

[Turning Point's get out the vote] strategy appears to mostly ignore independents — or less hardened Republicans — because Turning Point’s brand of hard-right politics is less likely to appeal to them.

 

[essentialsaltes]

TPA — an affiliate of Turning Point USA, the youth organization started by Trump ally Charlie Kirk — is aiming to ultimately spend $108 million on a get-out-the-vote effort in key battleground states [AZ MI WI], according to two sources familiar with the plans.

LINK

But as Election Day draws near, Turning Point Action told NPR it has raised only "tens of millions," not $108 million. The group had originally told news outlets it was hiring "hundreds of ballot chasers" in swing states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Arizona, though it appears to have turned over much of those operations to a separate super PAC launched by Elon Musk.

 

[essentialsaltes]

though it appears to have turned over much of those operations to a separate super PAC launched by Elon Musk.

Raw Story reports that Trump campaign insiders characterize Musk's doorknocking operations as a 'bunch of grifters'.​

 

[essentialsaltes]

Raw Story reports that Trump campaign insiders characterize Musk's doorknocking operations as a 'bunch of grifters'.​

Musk’s Get-Out-the-Vote Workers Were Driven Around in Back of U-Haul Van and Tricked Into Helping Trump: Report

According to a Wednesday report from Wired magazine, door-knockers contracted by a company associated with Musk’s America PAC were “subjected to poor working conditions,” including being “driven around in the back of a seatless U-Haul van,” and were “threatened that their lodging at a local motel wouldn’t be paid for if they didn’t meet canvassing quotas.”

Blitz Canvassing, a subcontractor, reportedly received more than $9 million from Musk’s PAC to operate the door-knocking campaign.

 

[essentialsaltes]

Churches hosting Turning Point get-out-the-vote events likely violate tax law, experts say​

The activist group led by Charlie Kirk has held pro-Trump canvassing drives with at least 22 evangelical churches, new research shows.