Trump team tosses GOP campaign plan, wants a ‘leaner’ 2024 operation

Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign called itself a “juggernaut” in May of that year, on par with a planet-destroying “Death Star” that was “firing on all cylinders.”

Trump’s 2024 campaign has traded Star Wars metaphors for talk of a “leaner” and “more efficient” operation, with less real estate, fewer employees and greater dependence on outside groups.

“We’re focused on quality over quantity. I mean, how novel a concept,” top strategist Chris LaCivita told the crowd of top donors May 4 at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., according to attendees.

The shift comes as President Biden’s campaign and its allies, buoyed by incumbency, have been moving in the opposite direction, building a more expansive operation sooner than in 2020. Strategists for both major parties expect Democrats to raise and spend more than Republicans over the coming months, a dynamic that has been magnified by the significant legal costs Trump’s fundraising apparatus has absorbed to defend him in state and federal courts.

The situation has alarmed GOP officials in key states like Arizona, Georgia and Michigan, who have yet to receive promised funding, staff or even briefings on the new plans since the Trump team took control of the Republican National Committee in March. An earlier party blueprint for a general election build-out has been discarded, party officials say. Plans to open new offices have been scuttled. Hiring has been slowed.

“In order to win close elections in Georgia, you have to have a ground game that emphasizes turning out early votes and absentee votes,” said Cody Hall, a senior adviser to Gov. Brian Kemp (R). “I have seen no evidence of them having any of that. The Trump campaign has a consultant in Georgia, but there is nothing else that I can see. … Everyone is generally concerned.”

The original RNC plan for the state of Georgia, reviewed by The Washington Post, called for hiring 12 regional field directors in April and 40 field organizers by the end of May, in addition to eventually opening 20 offices and a community center in the College Park, a mostly Black suburb of Atlanta. Arizona was slotted to receive six regional field directors, seven offices and 23 field organizers by the end of May. Party leaders had drafted similar road maps for other battleground states before Ronna McDaniel was replaced as chairwoman.

The RNC’s plan at the start of this year was also focused on early voting, the plans show, though the Bank Your Vote website - once the centerpiece of the effort - has been offline for weeks as the party retools the program. “It is full speed ahead,” said James Blair, the national political director for both the Trump campaign and the RNC. “Stay tuned for more on the program.”

Arizona GOP chairwoman Gina Swoboda called RNC Chairman Michael Whatley on Monday to raise concerns that Arizona was not getting enough resources, according to three people familiar with the call, who like others for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions.

Top party officials reassured her that resources would be coming to the state. “The AZGOP and the RNC are joined at the hip. Together, we are 110% focused on sending President Trump back to the White House and saving our country,” Swoboda said in a statement Tuesday.

Others in the state remain concerned.

“There is no sign of life,” said Kim Owens, a Republican operative and public relations professional in Arizona. “Especially in a state that Trump lost so closely last time, you’d expect to have more of a presence. I would think, ‘Let’s step it up.’ I think it’s a terrible mistake.”

In Michigan, some of the state’s operatives and Republican lawmakers have grown concerned about a lack of an operation there, according to four people familiar with the matter, even as they feel generally bullish about the state. Pete Hoekstra, the chairman of the state party, declined to discuss staffing and hiring but praised Trump’s team overall. “We are light-years ahead of where we were in 2016,” he said.

Trump’s top advisers say concerns over their plans are unfounded and uninformed.

“It’s a different operation that is built by people who win races and have won races,” LaCivita said in an interview. “As it relates to 2020, they did things their way. Some worked. A lot didn’t. But that was then, and this is now.”

Since taking over the party in March, Trump’s new team says it has reviewed the 2020 operation to identify waste and redundancies. It has decided not to hire separate political, communications and research operations at the campaign and the national party - complaining that in 2020, the RNC and campaign clashed - and said it has have improved the data operation at the RNC to better target voters.

Trump’s aides say they will build a more narrowly targeted volunteer field program - using their successful effort in the Iowa caucuses as a template - while taking advantage of a recent Federal Election Commission ruling that will allow them to directly coordinate message and script plans with outside groups who have paid canvassing such as door-knocking. The operation is being run by LaCivita, Blair and Alex Latcham, a former White House deputy political director for Trump.

LaCivita and other advisers have previously mocked groups like Never Back Down, a super PAC that supported the campaign of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) in the Republican primary, for doing so much paid door-knocking.

LaCivita has also told other Trump advisers that he sees less value in “brick and mortar” - or opening as many offices - and wants to have a largely volunteer-driven strategy similar to the precinct captain strategy they ran in the primaries.

Trump advisers have also warned others against attempting to brand GOP efforts with terms like “Death Star” or ORCA, the name of a glitchy turnout operation that advisers to Mitt Romney built for the 2012 campaign.

“The prism, if you will, of how we see this race is built on three things,” LaCivita said of how the Trump team was planning to build contrast with their Democratic opponent. “It’s built on strength versus weakness, success versus failure and the complete dishonesty of the Biden administration.”

Biden campaign spokesman Ammar Moussa responded in a statement. “Donald Trump’s campaign is, in fact, built on three things: an extreme and unpopular agenda that has proven to be a consistent loser at the ballot box; a battleground state infrastructure that is nonexistent; and a candidate who, when he is willing to campaign, is only shouting about his own personal grievances,” Moussa said.

Trump’s team has also argued that it doesn’t have the same need for a massive field operation as Biden, who is suffering from lower-than-expected support in early public polls among core Democratic groups such as Black and younger voters. Meanwhile, the Biden operation says it has already opened more than 150 offices across nine state and hired over 400 people, many of whom gathered last week in Wilmington, Del., for a strategy session.

“Joe Biden is a guy whose coalition is fractured and at war with itself on a good day,” Blair said. “Much of the rest of his base is unmotivated to turn out to vote.”

Trump himself has echoed that view in conversations with multiple top advisers, according to people familiar with the conversations. He has told people in charge of the RNC to focus on election security more than field programs, because he believes he will be able to personally motivate his voters to the polls in the fall, these people said.

In private conversations with both Whatley and McDaniel, Trump told them to not worry about getting out the vote since he could do it himself. He told them to “focus on the cheating.” Party leaders say they are planning a massive operation around “election integrity,” with tens of thousands of volunteers who will monitor precincts and vote-counting across the country.

Trump has also complained that the 2020 effort was too big and that “I don’t even know what some of these people do,” according to an adviser. “He liked the feel of 2016 better,” this person said.

Brian Seitchik, who was Arizona state director in 2016 and regional political director in 2020 for the Trump campaign, said the “footprint this cycle is certainly smaller than in the 2020 cycle. But I’m not sure how much it matters.”

“Donald Trump is the greatest vote motivator for the good and the bad in modern American political history,” he said.

Trump’s team, as in 2016, is running without the structural benefits of incumbency. Trump had controlled the RNC for three years before 2020, raising enormous sums of money that could be spent on his reelection effort. At the end of March 2020, the combined Trump operation boasted $244 million in cash on hand after raising $220 million in the first quarter of the year.

This year, the Trump team only started taking control of the RNC in March. His reelection machine had $102 million in cash at the end of that month and had raised just $147 million in the past three months, though advisers say fundraising has picked up since then.

His team expects to make up part of the difference by taking advantage of a recent change in FEC guidance, which now allows campaigns to coordinate canvassing programs with outside groups that can raise and spend money from wealthy donors without limit.

During a donor retreat last weekend in Palm Beach, Blair met with representatives from several influential outside groups - including America First Works and Turning Point USA, a right-wing nonprofit - to discuss potential collaboration on canvassing efforts. Blair praised Turning Point in particular as a group that is doing “great work.”

Turning Point’s founder, Charlie Kirk, has been similarly effusive, recently announcing on social media: “As someone who has been a skeptic of the RNC in the past, I am very encouraged by what is happening.”

“Instead of them being sort of outside allies now, they’re more like partners for us. And we are going to be the battlefield commander,” Blair said. “The new regime is top down. The new regime is, ‘You get in our rowboat and you row. You dance to the beat of our music, or we’ll just simply say who’s not playing ball.’”

Trump’s advisers emphasized that outside groups would not replace the campaign’s traditional canvassing efforts, but rather serve as “an extension” of the campaign. The March FEC ruling, which brought down the walls that once separated federal campaigns and outside groups, was sought by Democratic lawyer Marc E. Elias’s firm on behalf of its Democratic clients.

The Campaign Legal Center and Ryan G. Dollar, the general counsel of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, warned before FEC commissioners voted that their decision could lead to an unprecedented flood of corporate money into canvassing efforts for federal candidates, “all while avoiding the consequences of having that spending classified as impermissible contributions,” according to Dollar.

But FEC Chairman Sean Cooksey, a Republican, argued that the bipartisan advisory opinion to deregulate political canvassing “is right on the law and a win for voters.”

Since its 2012 presidential campaign loss, the RNC has retooled its focus, turning away from advertising to concentrate on building a data infrastructure and volunteer field operation, in the model of President Barack Obama’s winning campaigns. Trump’s advisers have not yet said whether they will shift back to spending more party money on advertising - by mail and through early television buys - than the last two presidential campaigns.

At the moment, much of the dissatisfaction in the states arises from a lack of communication, which could dissipate as the RNC begins making its intentions clear. Several Republican veterans of past presidential efforts said the Trump operation still has time to stand up a substantial get-out-the-vote operation for the fall.

“Every election cycle is different. And they should look at the field operations differently this cycle than last cycle’s, because now they have data that will help them figure out where to go and make up ground,” said Chris Carr, the RNC’s 2016 political director who helped oversee its 2020 field operation. “The need for the scale that we had last cycle doesn’t have to be as big this cycle.”

But in the meantime, the complaints have continued. One person who works on battleground issues for the Trump campaign said there has been a lack of strategy articulated to workers in the field.

“What they are totally missing is a rank-and-file army,” a Republican involved in Trump’s efforts said.

Another key Republican familiar with the national GOP’s operation in Arizona bemoaned the lack of money, staffing and direction from Trump’s team in the sprawling battleground state. In 2020, he lost the state by 10,457 votes and its 11 electoral votes went to Biden.

“They haven’t even sent a data person,” the Republican said. “I said to someone yesterday, ‘No one’s coming - it’s just us.’”

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Clara Ence Morse and Marianne Levine contributed to this report.