2/4
Few places swung harder away from the former president than the Grand Rapids metro area.
Across a revitalizing downtown and in the surrounding neighborhoods nestled against apple orchards and farm fields, swing voters are plentiful. So are moderate Republicans – a vestige of the region’s early Dutch settlers and the lasting influence of its most famous son, former President Gerald Ford, who once represented this western expanse Michigan in Congress. They showed up in force in the GOP presidential primary – one-third of Republicans in surrounding Kent County cast ballots for former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley over Trump.
But rather than courting those voters, Trump’s campaign is in search of new ones.
Hudson, who is challenging freshman Rep. Hillary Scholten, the first Democrat to represent Grand Rapids in three decades, acknowledged Trump’s singularity could provide him a different path to winning his district. Still, he made clear his focus is on winning the middle.
“That strategy would be crazy for anyone else,” Hudson said. “They’re low propensity votes for a reason. But I get the sense they’re committed to it.”
‘How do we make sure this all works together’
For much of the year, the Trump campaign has relied on untested outside groups to carry out more traditional groundwork, like registering voters and teaching people how to vote.
Assisting the campaign are Turning Point Action, a conservative group focused on younger voters led by Trump’s close ally Charlie Kirk, and America PAC, an organization affiliated with Musk, which has plowed nearly $46 million into canvassing work alone to benefit Trump, according to filings with the Federal Election Commission.
The unproven approach, made possible by a decision this year by the FEC granting campaigns the ability to coordinate with outside political action committees on paid canvassing effort, has freed up the campaign’s money to underwrite advertising and the political rallies that Trump headlines.
Musk has provided a critical lift to the Trump campaign, which has struggled to keep pace with the Harris campaign’s fundraising and its spending on staff and field operations. His America PAC has also spent nearly $12 million on printing and postage for the presidential race, running direct mail campaigns aimed at voters outside of traditional media channels, and more than $9 million on digital advertising, as well as $1.4 million on texting campaigns and phone banking.
But Musk has little experience running a political operation and it’s unclear what his eight-figure investment has yielded in new support for Trump. Musk, who said on X that he will attend Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, did not respond to inquiries from CNN.
Meanwhile, Turning Point Action has yet to demonstrate it knows how to turn Kirk’s large online following into a successful political operation. Its previous efforts mostly came during the 2022 midterms in Arizona, where the group worked aggressively – and unsuccessfully – to elect Republicans Kari Lake as governor and Blake Masters to the US Senate.
For this election, the group has hired full-time staff trained to form relationships in the communities where they are being deployed. Each has a list of 400 to 600 names they’re responsible for getting to cast ballots. Like the Trump campaign, they are targeting right-leaning low-propensity voters, a term for people who are the least likely to show up in November.
After announcing ambitious goals to grow Trump’s base of support in Arizona, Wisconsin and Michigan, the group scaled back its efforts to one district in the Wolverine State while maintaining its presence in the other two battleground states.
Turning Point is now merging efforts with Musk’s group in Wisconsin as Republicans became increasingly concerned about Trump’s chances there against Harris. The joint operation is expected to be spearheaded by America PAC, who will pay for the staff and use its resources to continue hiring through Turning Point.
Meanwhile, Trump continues to push supporters at rallies to sign up for Trump Force 47, an “army” of volunteers committed to turning out the vote on Election Day. It’s the general election version of a strategy first deployed during the former president’s successful performance in the Iowa caucuses earlier this year. There, the campaign recruited and trained around 2,000 volunteer caucus captains across the state and each agreed to get commitments from 10 first-time voters in the Iowa caucuses from a list of 25 prospective supporters the campaign had identified in their neighborhoods.
https://lite.cnn.com/2024/10/04/politics/trump-campaign-ground-game/index.html