David Axelrod, Reince Priebus and Tom Perez on the Path to the Presidency in 2024 #cjc2024

thank you thank you Heidi who by the way I think we're we almost share a birthday so I just want to make that point but I look so much younger that's for sure that's for sure um we're so grateful for your presence here as our director and Anne-Marie Lipinski uh I remember when she walked in the door at the Chicago Tribune as an intern from the University of Michigan I had been an intern a few years earlier and um I ended up leaving and becoming a hack and she ended up being editor of the newspaper so um but it's so great to see you and we're grateful for your partnership uh and to all great to see all of you all of you have come to present and all of you who have come to participate um when I was at the Tribune I covered National politics and it was um so different and so much easier in many ways than the task that you all face and our job in this conference is to make you smarter those of you who are covering your first campaigns and uh and to bring you up to date and perhaps bring ourselves up to date as to what is new what is different and what is it that you're not seeing that you should be seeing as you cover these campaigns so the first question I have for you guys and I'm so grateful to you both for uh for being here your both no strangers to The Institute of politics and we're so grateful for that is what it you must sit there as party chairs and as practicing politicians during a presidential campaign and read stuff and watch stuff and say man they're just not getting it they don't there's stuff going on they're not getting what is the most important thing that these folks need to know uh and perhaps that that that that that doesn't get enough enough Focus about this process uh well I don't know if it's the most important thing but if you were to ask me which one thing when I'm reading columns or watching a clip on cable um the most irritating thing I'd believe is when reporters and journalists will say you know when the voters decide the primary and as a party chairman I instantly think wait a minute the delegates decide the primary the voters don't decide the primary I think for a lot of the newer people that are here I think it's really important it's as important as understanding campaign Finance laws and the difference between what a party can do and what a Super PAC can do so for the newer people here it's important to know that delegates decide who the nominee of a party is going to be if you were all members of paying members of the Democrat Party or the Republican Party 120 years ago you all would disperse in your States you'd elect delegates they'd come to a National Convention let's say now you're all delegates to the National Convention and you would pick who the nominee is but about 120 years ago people decided that you know what we're going to get more people involved in this process so what we're going to do is we're going to write a bunch of party rules and the rules are going to say that if David from Illinois comes to the convention this time instead of David deciding who he's going to support at the convention we're going to have a Statewide election and we're going to get all these people involved in the in the party but we're going to bind David's vote on the floor of the convention based on the overall outcome of the popular vote that's how it is in some states in other states conventions will decide who the delegates are and then after the deciding how you're going to pick delegates you can pick them based on a direct election under the ballot you can pick them by having a popular vote in your state and binding your delegate to that vote you can also have a convention and choose delegates there or if you're Pennsylvania or North Dakota you don't bind any delegates you just say we're going to have an election and all these congressional districts and the delegates are going to go to the convention they're going to do what they want to do it's not a vote in the state of Pennsylvania or in North Dakota that tells a delegate who to vote for the reason I bring this up is that Heidi would say it's because North dakotans are very wise and able to exercise independently they just hate the national parties so they don't want us telling them anything what to do so they're going to do what they want I'm here for you brother right so I bring this up because I happen to believe like campaign Finance laws if you learn the the difference between what you can do with hard money and soft money you'll be so much smarter than most people involved in politics and that are writing columns you're shaping people's opinions and if you understood that states decide how they're going to pick their delegates how they're going to bind their delegates and all the rest of the things that they do if you've got that your Leaps and Bounds ahead of most people in your business I want to come back to that but uh Tom yeah great to be here by the way thanks for all you've done uh you know I often um I I spent a lot of time in Grassroots organizing and I'm always struck by the failure to account for the importance of Grassroots organizing uh I there's just so many examples like let me give you one in 2020. um after the New Hampshire primary uh there was a lot you know people figured that Senator Sanders was going to win that and you know he sort of won it but it was you know it was a lot closer than people expected and so if you read all the um the talk after that election uh well you know maybe he doesn't have momentum and uh well we'll see in Nevada well Nevada was a shellaccan to quote someone yeah you might know and uh why did that happen they had an organizing presence there for 16 months they were and and John Ralston who is the dean of the Nevada media Empire and whenever I want to know by the way here's a tip for you if you want to know what's going on in Nevada just read his website and then just emulate it okay because he knows it but Bernie had built a remarkable organizing operation and it was remarkable and so here and here's what's remarkable about it the The Culinary Institute The Culinary Union is the Union in Nevada and they were telling their membership in the run-up to the caucus actually they were telling them don't vote for Bernie they were telling him they'll vote for someone else and they defied that and they voted for Bernie so you know organization does matter yeah and uh I mean the best example of that quite frankly is 2007 and 2008 where you built that operation and that's a big part of what parties do so you know part of what we were doing in the run-up to 2020 was recognizing that we hadn't done enough of that as a party so and again right Rice's point about understanding how you can use money and understanding ecosystems you're going to hear the word ecosystem from me a lot um effective campaigns build effective ecosystems there's the hard side you know we are at the party we build the voter file basically every voter every Republican or Democratic candidate running for dog catcher to president is using the voter file the Republican voter file the Democratic voter file really important stuff that if you don't have a good one you're you're not going to succeed at the same time you know we built an organization called organizing core because we knew that in these swing States especially and elections are margins plays now that you know that's a point you're going to hear from me time and time again uh you know if one candidate wins by four and a half percent that will be a landslide notwithstanding what just happened in Wisconsin in the Supreme Court race that's that's a different conversation that we ought to have by the way but it's really important to understand that and and you should be looking at as you're looking at campaigns you know who's building that organization because you might be inclined after one event somewhere to draw conclusions that are incorrect and so you really want to look at what sort of organization and apparatus our candidates building how durable does it appear to be you should be having conversations with voters in these states to get a sense of what's the level of enthusiasm because those things are are remarkable and you know Joe Biden came in second in Nevada but that was kind of like I don't know who came in second to Secretariat when uh Secretariat was running because it was you know it was like 40 furlongs behind and so when you do that and when you and and I again I often see the lack of attention to these details um but those sorts of details especially in elections that are margins plays and that is basically every important election we're involved in are the difference between uh winning and losing let me follow up on uh with both of you uh reince um with your admonition that the nominating process is all about delegates and that process varies from uh from state to state um how important is it for campaigns to um have Mastery of each state and contacts with each state and organizing you know a political organizing within those State parties and what does it say about this election uh uh and what the likely I mean how it how might it skew the Republican contest this year I think that the Trump campaign is far more sophisticated today when it comes to the knowledge of how State parties decide how they're going to allocate delegates uh how they're going to run their uh how they're going to run their conventions they have smart people Chris aceveda Susie Wiles they know I mean to give you any Chris La Savita when you know I in 2016 I obviously I had a fiasco on my hands when it came to a primary some of you were there on a weekly or daily basis with me in this room and we had a 15 person Fiasco traveling the country I feel like given the circumstances I held it together pretty well um and Donald Trump kept winning and ultimately he was winning the delegates under the rules that I described to you earlier that were bound to them under the rule on the first ballot so some States they're Unbound on the second bound the third battle I'm getting into that again but just suffice it to say he had the buying delegates to be the nominee there was no unbind the delegate rule as you saw when when folks on the floor of our convention were saying we gotta unbind the delegates free to Delhi wasn't going to happen um so I had to put in place full-time operations at the RNC to manage and understand what was going to be happening at the convention the person in charge of that operation for the for me to understand what was going on was Chris aceveda no this is a person now that is helping run the Trump operation so the unders this process you know is it could potentially it could be nothing because if you have a runaway front runner who cares but it could be and if it is I would tell you that the the Trump operation is out there today while Rhonda santis and his operation and others are thinking about getting in they're already they're in the states and they're talking to the state chairman State chairman are filing a document in each of these states they have to file a document with the RNC that outlines exactly how their process is going to work well my guess is if you're a good presidential campaign you're sitting there you're meeting with people in the state party and you're trying to figure out how they're going to draft that filing that's going to outline how they're going to run their operation so I think over time people are realizing more and more that this phenomenon of what I'm referring to is really what drives the nomination process if we were the Kiwanis Club today you wouldn't allow just Aaron the entire voting Universe to decide who the president of the Kiwanis Club was so private political organization there are lots of political parties for you to choose from to go and run but if my attitude is if you're going to run in our party then you're going to follow our rules and you're going to file and and you're going to operate under the theory that you work for us not the other way but the uh but the point the the important point I think for people who are covering this is you better know what's going on in those State parties you better understand who has the relationships with those parties uh and uh and how that might affect uh how delegates are apportioned and so on you should also point out just one other thing Tom because I know you want to get in um the you know one difference between the Republican Party process and the Democratic party process is proportionality versus well go ahead yeah and let me say one more thing about Michigan just it's an example that illustrates your point right now there's as you know uh Michigan now has a Democratic governor and a Democratic Senate in a democratic house and they moved into the early window the coveted early window for the primary and there's a conversation right now going on within the Republican party and it's a totally you know that as is their right to do where a number of folks I am told in the Trump campaign are encouraging them don't do a primary in the early window do a convention guess what happens in conventions you have a lot more control over that process and I've been told and I haven't been able to confirm this so I'm not here to confirm this but that's why we have enterprising reporters that the Trump operation has offered to pay for the convention and as you know the head of the party in Michigan is one of the election deniers who is a big Trump person so you know the difference between a con and by the way if you do a convention that's perfectly legal so I'm not suggesting something untoward here but what I am saying is that they are smartly you know figuring out what's the process that will work best for us and meanwhile you know Governor DeSantis is on a book tour and um and he although he did hire Ken cuccinelli who led Ted Cruz's right four or five it is a mystery in 2016 but we we won't go down that rabbit hole but the the point that I was going to make uh David about that's really important to understand is our parties Republican and Democrat choose their nominees quite differently um there is proportional allocation of delegates early in the Republican cycle but after the first uh March 15th uh so that's you know a handful of primary yeah the rule is before March 15th you can go proportional you can go proportional after March 15th but you can only go winner take all after March 15th and most end up going or many I will say end up going winner take all after March 15th and on the demo and by the way winner take all means you know like if you have a huge primary and someone gets 35 percent of the vote on April 1st they get 100 of the delegates um you know look at where polling is right now Donald Trump has a very strong base of support um in a proportional allocation model if it were proportional from Soup To Nuts um might be a different outcome maybe not but uh you know when the most frequently Asked question I had that pissed me off because it was a stupid question it was a it wasn't out here everybody um it was a question that you always get asked when you're running a primary and you got 25 candidates oh it's going to be a brokered convention because it's proportional and you know as like folks like look at history I I think it was 1950 something the last time we went to a second ballot and and the reason why I said and look at the answers I gave throughout the other issue that happens both in Republican and Democratic primaries is the issue of momentum um a candidate gets momentum and a lot of delegates want to be on the side of the winner and voters want to be on the side of the winner and especially in a moment like this where our democracy is on fire and it's a five alarm Blaze that's a big factor for folks and so that's why in 2020 I mean South Carolina I I I I I there was a 72 hour period unlike anything I had seen people wrote Joe Biden's obituary um after New Hampshire and after Nevada and you know in a 72-hour period it was basically over and uh that's what momentum is about and and the organ I'll bring it back to organizing when you organize early and you're you're getting all like look you know DeSantis went and met with the Florida delegation to you know the Congressional Delegation and after that meeting those who endorsed endorse Trump that is not a good day yeah um but it's just just on your point about organizing and yeah we did in 2007 uh we invested probably more than ever has been invested organizing one State Iowa and as a result we spent a lot of time that we were plummeting in National polls and there was a lot of conventional wisdom out of Washington that Obama was and and our strategy was we had to win that state if we were going to win the nomination and if we didn't win that state nothing else mattered so that's what we did and we we organized the hell out of that state but it's important I'm just trying to keep this on stuff that is important to follow it's important to unders you know that that was an important thing to follow what we were up to and the amount of organizing we were doing in that state and how it was reflected there so I digging deep into these states understanding both the rules and understanding the investment and the activity that our people are generating campaigns are generating are really important reince you mentioned um money and we were going to have a white board up here but we couldn't need one bigger yeah this this is so complex we couldn't find a big enough whiteboard but talk about uh talk about money which has become more common Flex certainly over the last 12 years yeah absolutely um so first of all I just want to mention one quick thing on this delegate piece though but this is a good example of why it's really important for you all to dig a little bit deeper than just assuming that everything in our party after March 15th is winner take all it might not be it can be proportional uh so when you report and say hey after March 15th it's all just winner take all that might not be true and as Ben is going to explain how because you can it the rule just allows for win or take all after March 15th you can choose to go proportional if you want but the other piece is by looking at each of the states and what they're doing you can actually see in the filing and you'll see wait a minute yeah it is winner take all by congressional district but in each congressional district its only winner take all if the not if the person actually gets at least 25 percent you know so it's all different every State's going to be different so it's generally true that Most states after March 15th or winner take all but what that looks like in each one of the states could be very very different so just like you know it's just it's something that I think is very it's complicated but but to the extent that a candidate has influenced over the first state they can they can influence that if someone for example taking up Tom's point if if you were representing a someone other than Trump you might be more inclined to try and use whatever influence you have with a state party to make it proportional in that state and to to get the state to change yeah I mean or candidates that generally will appeal to the conservative base want a more closed process a candidate that wants to appeal to the middle and is usually in a Battleground State going to be someone at once hey I want a big popular vote to decide who the nominee is going to be so it all depends on on what the candidate wants but the overall General point that sophisticated candidates that are in on in this part parties in the weeds today using the rules to their advantage is is absolutely the name of the game I wanna I wanna get onto this money point because we we we're going to quickly run out of time and I want to leave some time for questions from the group but no you were gonna you you were about to take flight on the question that I asked you and then you I did so ask it again just explain uh how money Works how many Works uh for the party and candidates hard money soft money there'll be a more emphasis on this yeah basic way for you to think about this okay there's hard money and soft money okay you're all with me okay uh hard money is generally candidates and parties so the RNC the DNC the D Triple C the senate committee the Congressional committee State parties David Axelrod for whatever you know whatever the name whatever your campaign is that's hard cash give generously but it's limited but it's limited so if you were going to give me all a donation for my campaign you're all limited based on a federal limit and it goes up a little bit once in a while but here's the thing it is like the old tight blood of money it's limited in Supply but unlimited in use and the beauty is on the hard money side if I go buy a television ad I get the lowest unit rate which is another important thing for you to learn because if I'm buying television ads through the Democrat Party of Wisconsin you want to talk about the Supreme Court race in Wisconsin the DPW raised and spent at least I don't even know how much yet but at least eight million bucks just on television now keep that in your mind now let's go to the soft money side Unlimited in your power to give but very limited in use so you have a Super PAC and you're going to help the other candidate out you buy eight million dollars with your Super PAC because you don't trust the state party you're not giving your money to the party you want to do it your way or maybe a consultant talked you into doing it his or her way while they take some points on the Buy yeah you're making me a Nostalgia yeah right yeah and so now your eight million dollars is buying TV for your candidate the 8 million on the hard money side this is true was paying about 100 to 200 dollars per ad a 30-second ad in Milwaukee the Super PAC money was spinning about twelve hundred to fifteen hundred dollars per 30 second ad and so that eight million turned into 80 million on the soft side and you can't even coordinate with the candidate on the soft money side let me give you another example let's say you say to me I don't think you know what you're doing when it comes to data I know you're at this data program at the party I know you think what you know what you're doing but I've got 10 billionaire friends over here and we have a conference in Palm Springs and we're gonna get we're going to build the data for you you can go spend 10 billion dollars but you can never give me the data file that you build if I'm running for federal office I can't take it because you took it you built it with unregulated unlimited campaign corporate all kinds of violations on the campaign federal election laws and so when and let me just kind of explain one other little thing do I have time for one more little thing I'd be the last to stop okay here one more thing because he by the way they copied what we did so it's all good so when I walked into the RNC and we were completely 26 some million dollars in debt I wanted to copy as much of the Obama campaign that I could I mean it was truly it was the pioneer of the modern political operations you see why I give them the extra time yeah I've made more appearances at the IOP here than all the DNC shares combined so that's How brave I am to come in here but anyway so okay well how does how does it how can you work it together well imagine this line of hard and soft money I don't have an extra 30 million dollars to build out a data file to compete with what Obama built so we thought wait a minute if we had a business or we had an LLC that we could give something to a value in exchange a fair market exchange and value that is sort of crossing the line between hard and soft money than if I could give my data file which is worth let's just say let's just say it's worth 20 million dollars and I exclusively gave away my most valuable resource to this LLC over here and this LLC has hopefully people on their board that aren't going to give away the data file of the party and I then trusted this company over here to handle the data and then would exchange the data file with me as I gave them something of value over the line that's one way that you can you can handle this but it is so regulated and you have to be so careful but just keep in mind hard money oh type blood Limited in limited to what I can take unlimited in use soft money no coordination unlimited and giving you talked about you guys both talked about this Tom talk a little bit about data which is ex I mean data is changing our lives right and it's certainly changed politics when we uh in 2012 we hired I think 54 57 data analysts in the Obama campaign has never been done before certainly not on that scale and it ends up making a huge difference for us in a lot of different ways and that was like I said pre prehistoric talk about how how the parties use data and uh is there are there things that reporters should know and track about that yeah no I mean one uh wow those lights are I did it okay whoa uh you know one thing about politics that I learned early on we were talking about this in the green room is that politics is a game of LeapFrog you know President Obama you know David at all they run a great campaign uh they win again in 2012. uh you study what they did and uh you try to take it to scale uh we lose in 2016. I came in in 2017. we studied how they were able to LeapFrog in 2016 and now we're doing this which had a lot of to do with data and that's why that's the segue to this it's all about data let me give you an example I'm going to stand up for a moment David because that I I literally can't see yes um that's North Korean media yeah okay um if you wanna if you wanna um meet a voter in Florida named Perez the mo one of the most important things you want to know about Bettis is not just it sounds like a Latino name but you want to know is it Perez de Cuba Perez de Puerto Rico Perez Dr Peres De Colombia peresuela when I got to the DNC all we knew is it was Bitters and we knew where he or she lived and you can make some extrapolation you know if you're in the I-4 Corridor probably Puerto Rican you know Dade County probably this but that's woefully inadequate and so a big part of what we did with data is we made major Investments you know the person I hired to be our chief technology officer was the 30th employee at Twitter he didn't know politics but he knew big data and he knew how to build systems and he knew how to build cloud-based systems and he knew how to uh partner and you know we did the same thing you know we replicated the we call it the Democratic data exchange I forgot Data Trust yours is the day of trust same thing if you're raising all this money on the hard side and the soft side and then you figure out a way to exchange that information a lot of the money and this is really important because elections are won and lost at the margins I'll give you a really concrete example in Arizona there's a organization called Chicanos por la causa in 2022 they're C4 that's a soft side operation invested 10 million dollars in registering Latino voters they registered and got out to the polls 37 000 Latino voters again margins the AG race I think was under a thousand you know the rest of the data there elections are margins plays and I said the word ecosystem before data is all about building ecosystems and it's not just data on voters but it's also opposition research you know all that stuff on mastriano and all like boy I mean it was a apple researcher's dream the 2022 cycle with some of these candidates and that's what ecosystems are about because there was a bunch of data in in you know the the hard side has a lot of data on you know Apple research but the American Bridge for instance you know 80 percent of those articles you read about crazy things Republican candidates said came from American Bridge and that's what ecosystems are about so if you're trying to get a handle on this moving forward you need to understand the rules of engagement I for one Ryan said I I don't understand why Dan kelly didn't go through the Wisconsin yeah Republican party Dan Kelly is a republican candidate for um a supreme court who lost 10 points in 2020 when he was on the ballot and they put him back on the ballot uh this is nonpartisan I'm sorry uh they put him back on the belt and he lost by 11 points and I was with Ben wickler the the party chair literally day before yesterday and you know they spent literally like 25 cents on a dollar because the rules for party spending on ads allow you to get that discounted rate and I'll never understand why the other side didn't get that money let me let me follow up sit down Tom yeah I just can't see it if you just can't see when I'm sitting there um I'm gonna go on this yeah no yeah no um I guess I'm trying to get away from this uh uh so one of the things that I think is important to realize and I it's a little bit of a different take um the parties have done a good job of putting and getting everyone into their 48 bucket if you think about what's happening across the country in these Battleground States you know is better than anybody there are very few people deciding the outcomes of all of these elections just because there are actually very few people that aren't already well established in their bucket in their Republican or Democrat bucket look at Wisconsin between the senate race and the governor's race in 2022 there was over a hundred and twenty million dollars on the hard side spent fighting over about 50 000 people so you're trying to pull and you're trying to analyze what's the outcome in the election going to be weeks before the election after 120 000 120 million dollars get dumped on 50 000 people and it's not just dumped on 50 000 people without knowing what we're doing it's 50 000 people and we know really what beer you drink what car you drive how many kids you have how much money you make whether your mortgage is right side up or upside down and as far as the Hispanic data in Florida it's real simple take your Olive water file compare it to a license and Experian and Transunion find out where the credit card spending's been for the last five years and say oh guess what here are 200 000 people who spent more than 50 percent of their money in Puerto Rico well that might be a good indication that these people just moved from Puerto Rico so you know and the crazy thing about data is if I know that I've got this pot of people who are 80 percenters for Donald Trump and and they drive a red pickup and they drink Miller Lite and they've got two kids and if I take that data set and you're 80 percenters in Ohio and I take that same data set and I dump it in Indiana they're going to be 80 percenters too so when you're talking about that 50 000 people that we're slicing and dicing every one of those 50 000. and so predicting what 50 000 people are going to do with 120 million and then we're actually using the data to influence and persuade you on top of it that that is what is happening Across America which is why what you're seeing is ten thousand people and every one of these states are deciding who the next president United States is going to be David say one quick thing you know one thing let me just say before you worked out we you know you guys are both donating your time to this event and the only thing that we can give you is you're going to leave here with an incredible suntan when you artificially you can't see a single person out there it's great but the one thing I would simply urge you to do because you know elections are margins place as I've said but there's some remarkably you know fascinating stuff scary stuff happening Across America right now I would urge you to spend time in these communities talking to folks don't spend time writing about the latest poll spend time understanding you know what's happening in rural Pennsylvania you had I talked to a woman there who you know said don't tell my husband you know because it will be really mad I'm voting for the Democrat you know the world of post-dobs go out to the western part of Texas or the Kansas and you know talk to folks there um you know don't just assume things because right now is a remarkable moment and you're seeing people and you know I mean Donald Trump won white college educated women in 2016. he's not doing so hot Now understand like what's going on uh there was a 240 percent kind of helped having that opponent yeah yeah but but go to these places I really think there's an important Point here I mean I that I I don't mean to cut you up I do but yeah that's what you say when you do mean to cut someone off I don't mean to cut you off no uh but I just just because of time first of all you make an extraordinarily important point that I think we want to reinforce throughout which is don't cover polls cover voters uh and don't assume assume anything uh Gary Hart uh years ago when he was running for president in the 1980s told me something that was the most valuable thing anyone's ever told me which was Washington's always the last to get the news and I think that's an important thing to keep in mind a lot of you local reporters are in a well positioned to really have a better grip on what's going on in the country but every all of you should be out and uh and doing that but the other point uh uh that Ryan's just building on on your point it really behooves you guys to to to dive deep into the world of data and how it is used uh and how voters are being micro targeted and how much uh and and what models are being built to really identify the profile of a voter who is and this is something we started in 2012 with the amount of data that's available now is so much more uh it's it's so much more uh Rich um the uh talk about the the parties themselves and what role they play and what role they don't play and the division between the state parties and the national parties yeah well I mean when I was at the DNC the most important two things we had to do was rebuild our infrastructure and we've talked about data but also rebuild trust you know the 2016 campaign was a debacle we were a party divided we had a Unity Reform Commission and uh and we were able to come together uh and you know we had the largest field I think in history in 2020 and everybody who lost came together around Joe Biden and you see the same thing now uh people recognize that our differences pale in comparison to the differences between the two parties and so so what specifically what a big role of the party is through our actions so so I knew when I was running for DNC chair that um if Keith Ellis and I were the two Front Runners we had dinner three nights before the DNC election because we knew that if half the people walked away unhappy then we weren't going to succeed so we agreed that whoever won the other person was going to come together and and a big big role of the party David especially you got to understand the moment and the big role of the party was to make sure everything we did day in and day out reflected our commitment to inclusion we got rid of super delegates I don't need to give you a whole long primer on super delegates because that's kind of in the rear view mirror but super delegates for many were a metaphor for a party that was really a party of Elites when we were supposed to be the party of the people and so that was a big role that I think we were able to right um yeah specifically uh speaking about the Republican National Committee now we have this unusual situation where you have a former president who basically designated the chair who's there uh she was just re-elected a lot of the RNC members were were there under the auspices of trump um does that give him an advantage in the nominating process I don't think so no and I think you saw yesterday in his tweet uh yesterday I mean he basically said hey I don't like the idea of doing these debates and by the way no one consulted me before you decided to go to these debates and I'm not going to participate he didn't quite this was over the rule that said if you participate in the debates you have to pledge to support the winner of the not really I don't want to correct either but no please um no the the rule is if you're gonna the reality is the rule is if you're going to take the voter file the Republican National Committee you better pledge loyalty to the eventual nominee I mean it only makes sense so that that's what that is but that was just a dispute over the over the debates but as far as state parties are concerned the RNC is a lot smaller than the DNC uh we're only 168 members each state and territory gets three votes on the RNC Guam has as much power as Texas um and so 168 people the reality is what we try to do and if you take most Battleground States in our party we use the the RNC supplements the state party so the the the perfect scenario would be I've got a great state chair in Wisconsin I have a beautiful County party system with a board in each of those pair areas that reflect exactly what we need to get done I've got a state chair I've got executive director in Madison and I've got people running the data and political and com shop there that's very similar to what we'd be doing at the RNC and I'm raising money nationally and I'm using the state party along with the money they're raising as the vehicle to execute the ground operation all across the state of Wisconsin on the absentee ballot program early vote program voter contacts that's what we do and let me just give you one remind me where you're from again Wisconsin yes okay let me just give you one minute one minute yeah because we got to take questions okay do you want to hear one yes okay one minute okay so how it works is I gotta get out of this a lot of timing I how it worked I can't I can't escape it how it works is let me give you one I can't do it one example of the of how the voter contact program works I'm hooked up to every every municipal clerk in the state and if I you're all my target so let's say after doing all the data and all the research and the whole border file you're my targets I'm going to send you an absentee ballot request form it's going to have your name on it's going to be addressed to the municipal clerk and every day I'm checking to see if you my universe are sending in your request form to the clerk every day I check every day I check I see okay you did you did you didn't and the people that did I'm just monitoring you the people that didn't I'm knocking on your door so that's one round second round you sent in your request form you got your ballot but I see you didn't turn it in and every day I'm checking you didn't turn it in you didn't turn it in now I'm deploying the ground game on your door you're knocking on the door hey I know you have a ballot here somewhere because you requested it and I can see that you got it but you didn't turn it in then she turns it in she's off the list so that whole program takes the data the early vote smt ballot program the ground game executes it in the state that has its act together with much of the money that comes from the RNC um can we take some questions we won't be able to see you if you could describe yourself that'd be great yeah we can't we don't know who's asking yeah I'm really curious how to figure out what the part ner up to where are you from there we go um I'm curious for for those of us who are in monochrome States uh especially monochrome states that used to be purple but now our trending super majority in their legislatures I'm Rob Chaney I'm from The Missoulian in Montana um and we're in you know all across the Rocky Mountain West we're looking for where's the competition is it so much of a margin game that we're not going to see anything or are the the weaker party going to try to make a move because you know literally we are the cheapest date in the senate race uh dollar per voter but we're not seeing any activity we can't get any attention from the national parties because it's already the margin is gone is there any change in that strategy well you have a senate race I I think that may be the second or third most invested race in the country in Montana but you know one thing we did in uh I'll use Nebraska as an example you know which is a state that number one has a congressional seat that is uh swingy and number two if you look at minimum wage initiatives that have been passed by referendum every red State South Dakota one example I don't know if the North Dakota had it but I remember South Dakota did it every red state that put in a ballot initiative on the uh ballot to raise the minimum wage uh passed it and they were never close there's a reason for that though it's not a partisan right but but the re the reason I bring this up David is because what we try to do in states where you know it's the majority is we do other things in the organizing to demonstrate these are our values and that you you know you may vote Republican all the time but you ought to take a look at it but here's the question here just to answer the question the fact that you have a competitive Senate race May incentivize parties to put more of an effort into that state like at the Democratic party because of the democratic nominee is getting uh beaten so badly uh there it it'll affect so that is an interesting point in my experience when we have big races in states that normally are not on the radar the national parties play a much bigger role and actually executing the operation in those States because quite frankly it makes sense right because the state party's atrophy when all they do is win so if you have a red State that's always red most likely they fight each other more then in the Battleground States Battleground States there's not as much infighting there is but not as much as if and then um and and the atrophy and execution because they're not used to it and a lot of times the files aren't as sophisticated because they're not refreshing voter files in Montana uh you know 18 times a year like they are in most of the Battleground States oh wait wait wait wait we got to take some other questions yeah well I don't I'm not calling on anybody so you there's Whoever has the mic okay sir yes sir just filibustering hello hello can you hear me okay hi I'm Jennifer Brandel from Harkin democracy SOS election SOS and what I'm taking away from what you're saying so far in terms of the advice you're giving to journalists is understand how money Works understand how data works now if I go further on I think about okay well then The Logical conclusion is write more stories about those things and to me that means the tale is yet again wagging the dog in which the candidates and the money going in to campaigns is setting the reporting agenda because newsrooms don't have infinite reporting resources on this kind of stuff and the concerns of citizens and their needs for what they want candidates to be talking about is again left on The Cutting Room floor because you're just following what's already happening and creating more power where there's already a power imbalance so I'm wondering what your thoughts are on how what you've talked about today could actually help these stories that might come out of this could actually help regular people understand how candidates might govern and how they might actually impact their lives because to me it just feels like more power more power well I talked a lot about organizing and my sadness that we don't talk about it more and so you should follow a candidate who's running a Grassroots campaign and listen to the people I said you know don't don't write about the you know the poll of the day spend a week understanding what voters are really thinking and then figure out who connects you know the other thing about money that we didn't have time to talk about is you know we are now we are now um you know the majority of our money is small dollar money people will understand that and they will resonate with that and you you should think about writing stories about that transformation and that's very very important because people they feel agency when they give you know 30 bucks to you know uh judge Janet now she's on the court it's very yeah I would um take it before we talk about the delegates and no remembering that the delegates choose the nominee I don't know what state you're in or if it's more just a national effort but say you're in Illinois and just go you can look and see who the delegates were in Illinois in 2016 in 2020 on either side of the aisle and you can see what their how they were bound to vote and you can write an article that says I interviewed these 10 delegates that were delegates in 2016 and 2020 oftentimes they repeat and here's how they feel about the Republican field today here's how they feel about the direction of the party today because their voice is going to be really important most likely in 2024 I think more stories like that as opposed to you know I talked to Jim Smith in shiacton Wisconsin and he's really doesn't think anyone cares about his feelings well that's great about Jim Smith but if Jim Smith was a delegate in 2016 and 2020 aha now this guy might have a big say over who the nominee is going to be I mean I just I think your question was well uh uh was was well put and I just go back to what I said about 10 minutes ago which is yeah you want to cover voters you don't want to but there is a process and I mean I think it's extraordinarily important to give a picture of what's going on in the country and why people are doing what they do and why they make the decisions that they make on the other hand there is a process that leads to a nominee that and and that process uh has elements that you need also to understand and I think that's a point we're trying to make yes good evening uh my name is Josh Kane I'm a reporter with the San Francisco standard uh I was wondering with President Biden's announcement about running for re-election uh he focused very much on culture issues which have obviously been a major part of the lead up to what's going to be next year's election and in response the Republican Party put out a AI generated ad that actually showed people like marching out of San Francisco because it was a lost city and I'm curious what you think about both parties how they're going to attack the culture issues how say a city like San Francisco which obviously does have some major crises has kind of been used as a political football in some sense and how that might apply to other cities Across America in the coming election cycle well I think President Biden is going to talk about what he did and what needs to be done and I think you're going to talk about he when he ran four years ago he talked about a battle for the soul of our nation that battle continues and uh you know people uh in 2016 who are part of a focus group post-election when Trump got elected and were asked aren't you concerned about a woman's right to choose and their answer was oh that's well settled um they were wrong and so you know I think the president's going to talk about not only what he has done but what we need to do and what could happen you know he got criticized for talking about democracies on the ballot in 2022 he was spot on and uh I think he's going to continue to talk about those things because they're real and uh we we when rights get taken away um like we've had in Dobbs and Dobbs is not aging well and I think Dobbs is more than about a woman's right to choose that's enough but it transcends a broader issue which is freedom freedom to make choices and you know you're going to see a lot of people thinking about that and and I think the contrast between the two candidates couldn't be more Stark so I you know you're going to see a lot of what you saw in 2020 but now we have a record and now we see the consequences of three Supreme Court Justices that's on people I don't I don't think though he was asking the I think he was asking a more analytical question which is a more strategic question uh I think for the Republican party yeah I think cultural issues are going to be on the ballot and I think it's going to be important in swinging Battleground States but they cut both ways I mean you can see in in Suburban counties around parts of Milwaukee and Cleveland and Detroit uh you know that that goes both ways so I mean on one hand you might win in some of those areas with Suburban women and talking about girls sports or you know parental rights in school you know okay we're winning on that issue but then hey if we're going to go back to it 1849 law that bans abortion including life of the mother well now we got a problem so you know those things can cut both ways but I think I don't think they're going anywhere I think they're going to be a big part of the campaign and I think that so and of course so is the economy and we don't none of us know where that's heading right I think the challenge uh the challenge for the Republican party is that you have a primary campaign that's going to drive people toward those issues those cultural issues which Galvanize the Republican base uh yeah but I mean it's pretty much agreed I mean if you think about it and and these cultural fights within our own party they're not allowed to disagreements no I understand that but you see Governor DeSantis pro-life moving uh 15 weeks to six weeks and so on there are pressures on these candidates uh that will I think make it harder in a general election that often happens in uh when you have primaries in terms of the president uh you you mentioned his announcement but I mean I personally was surprised because um you know he went right from there to a union event where he talked all about economic issues that weren't reflected in the announcement video so it was an interesting strategic question well why was there such a difference between those two um and uh we'll say it felt like they're still trying to figure out how to put all those pieces together um but I don't think I think those cultural issues will drive this Suburban voter probably drive them toward Democrats the uh but the um the economic issues are ones and and Biden's identification with them depending on where the economy is you know he got five he got five percent more of those non-college white small town and Rural voters than Hillary Clinton had and I think those were partly because culturally he felt comfortable with them partly they were they were his economic message was uh was resonant so I you know I was I I'm not sure what what the strategy very difficult I mean one of the takeaways too I think from my viewpoint on when I get into these conversations and we're always trying to you know what's the smartest take on how things are going to turn out I mean the reality is a hundred thousand people are going to decide who the next president is when we consider and say It was decided because someone went too far on abortion or they went you mean a hundred thousand across Battlegrounds across Battleground States and and so you just don't know what it's going to be yeah you have no idea what it's going to be or what's going to move those hundred thousand people but one thing's for sure the parties and the organizations that we've been a part of are going to slice and dice and push and pull those hundred thousand people every day of the week okay I think we have to slice and dice and pull toward the bar now so one is um please join us for cocktails I'm here in this room outside and on the porch remember that tomorrow will be over at the Rubenstein Center and um thank you so much to Ryan's and to Tom and to David for this really interesting conversation thank you