Reports from the field
“The Trump campaign is tasking the far-right Turning Point network with spearheading its ground game despite having no track record of success,” Bill Scher noticed back in June:
CNN reported that “Donald Trump’s campaign is taking a vastly different approach to 2024 compared with 2020, with plans for fewer staff and expenses [and instead] relying on wealthy conservative groups for data, infrastructure, and significant bank accounts.” It further noted that one of the most important of these groups is Turning Point Action, part of the Turning Point network that began with Turning Point USA.
Turning Point USA is a right-wing student group founded in 2012 by Charlie Kirk, an 18-year-old soon-to-be college dropout, and Bill Montgomery, an elderly Tea Party activist.
None of Turning Point’s 2022 efforts in Arizona “had any discernible impact” on Republicans’ fortunes there, Scher wrote.
The Washington Post reported more on Trump’s reliance on PACs for his field operations in early August before Democrats’ celebratory national convention in Chicago:
With fewer than 100 days 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 who 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.
A month later we are seeing the results here in my swing state. Apparently fully assimilated by the Trump campaign, the North Carolina Republican Party is bombarding registered Democrats with anti-Harris flyers like these photographed by a friend. Even the flip sides of the bottom two promoting Trump attack Harris. My spouse received three of these in a single day.
Thomas Mills reported last week from a rural Brunswick County, North Carolina adjacent coastal Wilmington that in 2020 went for Trump by 62 percent and that Democrats lost by about the same amount in 2022: “Four years ago, virtually every yard sported a Trump sign and Trump flags proudly waved above dozens of motor homes in a muscular show of support. This year, I saw very few Trump yard signs and even fewer Trump flags. The difference is stark.”
Caleb Rudow, Democrats’ candidate for Congress from NC-11 in the western mountains, told me Saturday that he’s noticed a similar lack of Trump signs and flags in his heavily rural district. Puzzled Democrats are asking him why they too are receiving a flurry of anti-Harris mailings. I can only speculate that the Turning Point Action, etc. brain trust is behind them. They’ll make money off the Trump campaign no matter how wasted their expensive mailings are. I have no reports on what Republican voters are seeing.
While a few statewide GOP candidates have appeared at regional fairs and parades he’s attended, Rudow has seen little evidence of any coordinated Republican efforts. Not even at the annual Mountain State Fair where WNC Republicans typically have a booth within view of the Democrats’ installation. A couple of GOP candidates have thinly staffed booths, Rudow said, but that’s it. He speculates that Republicans are keeping their distance from Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson who is running for governor against Democrat Josh Stein.
The Harris-Walz campaign, meantime, is fully engaged and accelerating. Here are a couple of anecdotal reports, one with more tears.
People are stressed, tired of the hostility, the darkness, and chaos of Trumpism. Trump has jumped the shark. His whiny, poor-me story has become tiresome. Democrats’ joyful warriors are not just offering something to vote against but something to vote for. Something more human.
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