Republicans say Arizona’s 2020 disaster is a lesson learned: ’Things are definitely different’

As former President Donald Trump‘s campaign kicks off the dust of the Ronna McDaniel days at the Republican National Committee, it is embracing a different strategy to avoid the disaster that the GOP suffered in Arizona four years ago. From developing relationships with conservative grassroots groups to embracing Demcorats’ early ballots initiatives, Republicans are racing to cement a win in the Grand Canyon State this November that is “too big to rig.”

“Team Trump is in full force on the ground in Arizona,” Arizona GOP Chairwoman Gina Swoboda told the Washington Examiner. Her words in July came after criticism the party faced earlier this year for Arizona’s sluggish start to the 2024 election cycle.

During an April 29 episode of The Charlie Kirk Show, Turning Point Action field strategist Matthew Martinez worried the Trump campaign had “zero” election offices in Arizona. Meanwhile, the Democratic campaign had opened two election offices in Arizona, including in Maryvale, a major Latino community in Phoenix, by the end of January.

“We’ll have about 400-500 full-time ballot chasers between Wisconsin and Arizona,” Kirk said. “We should have triple that.”

On the heels of Kirk’s interview, a Washington Post report in early May indicated that the Trump campaign was trimming back campaign resources in swing states, including Arizona. Kim Owens, a Republican operative in Arizona, called the decision “a terrible mistake,” while Swoboda reportedly called Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley to complain that the state was not receiving enough resources.

By July, Swoboda was singing a different tune. “Now, things are definitely different on the ground,” Halee Dobbins, the RNC Arizona state communications director and spokeswoman for Swoboda told the Washington Examiner. The chairwoman said Arizona is equipped with “a field operation of great staff and volunteers dedicated to turning out Arizona voters” for Trump this November.

The Trump campaign is building an initiative centered on the so-called Trump Force 47. It is a grassroots ground game aimed at building out campaign election offices throughout the state, strengthening coordination efforts with the Republican National Committee, and developing an army of volunteers designed to prevent a repeat of Trump’s failed 2020 race.

The Trump campaign now has six election offices in Arizona with more to come later this summer. After having no offices in the state at the end of May, the campaign moved to open its first office in June. Now, there are offices in Casa Grande, Kingman, East Valley, Scottsdale, West Valley, and Tuscon.

At the opening of the Casa Grande office on July 2, Whatley described the effort underway to recruit 5,000 volunteer election observers across the state. In April, the RNC announced an election integrity initiative designed to have over 100,000 volunteers and attorneys across every battleground state.

Whatley’s appearance at the Casa Grande grand opening was no anomaly. The RNC and Arizona GOP have cultivated a close relationship this election cycle. McDaniel’s resignation this spring, following public criticism from Trump, marked a change between the Arizona GOP and the RNC’s strategy to swing Arizona red this November. With Whatley and co-Chairwoman Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law, at the helm, Dobbins says it was clear the two “wanted the RNC and the Trump campaign to be working together, not separately, with the goal of electing Donald Trump as the 47th President this November. Dobbins noted the RNC’s active involvement with Arizona Republicans “is pretty different than other years, where the RNC and the campaign have been kind of separate entities.”

The 2024 campaign is focusing on lessons learned from a crushing loss in 2020, which some Republicans still dispute.

Democrats were the first to realize the appeal of early voting, especially to rural voters, in 2020. Their efforts were key to getting out the vote in Arizona, where Republicans have struggled to engage their base. Four years later, Arizona’s GOP is determined not to repeat the crushing mistakes of the last election cycle.

“We learned a lot from 2020 and we learned that mail-in ballots are just the state of play now,” Dobbins said.

On May 29, the Grand Canyon Times reported that over 50% of Arizona’s registered Democrats are on the state’s Active Early Voter List, compared to 46% of Republicans. Less than two weeks later, the head of American Majority Action, a conservative nonprofit organization that trains, organizes, mobilizes, and equips grassroots infrastructure, told the Grand Canyon Times the GOP was in “an arms race with the left in regards to generating more ballots among mid-to-low propensity voters and partisan voter registration in battleground states like Arizona.”

The RNC is partnering with outside conservative grassroots groups to build a ground game. Organizations such as Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA have become vital Trump allies in smoothing his path to victory in Arizona. When the Trump campaign announced its own election integrity initiative in April, Kirk was featured in a press release announcing the new program, coming after TPUSA had hired hundreds of field staffers and pumped tens of millions into battleground states including Arizona. Through programs such as its “Chase the Vote” initiative, Turning Point has become a powerful partner in the RNC’s goal to ramp up voter turnout and advance election integrity efforts in Arizona. In June, the relationship between the RNC and Turning Point was on full display when Kirk hosted Trump at a “Chase the Vote” event in Phoenix.

During Trump’s remarks at the event, the former President urged Republicans to vote so the election would be “too big to rig.”

Kirk, the founder and executive director of Turning Point USA, backed up the former president’s strategy.

“We are going to make November too big to rig and we are going to overwhelm the ballot boxes,” Kirk said. “There is no path to the White House without Arizona.”

American Majority Action is another organization that has lent a helping hand to the Arizona Republican Party and RNC efforts to promote the mail-in ballot strategy. As early as March, the organization was hard at work, according to Arizona’s District 3 Legislative Republican Committee.

“Through both our texting and our phone calling campaigns, we were able to connect with 13,000 registered Republicans who have expressed interest in receiving mail-out ballots,” the GOP lawmakers stated on X on March 13. “Ballot Chasing with American Majority is a way to win.”

As June waned, reports indicated that the nonprofit organization is continuing its efforts to push Republicans to vote early in the battleground state.

A good ground game certainly can’t hurt Republicans’ chances this November, but President Joe Biden’s incoherent debate performance might be helping them even more.

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A poll leaked from a Democratic polling firm that showed Biden lost 2 percentage points in Arizona after the June 27 debate. The polling, obtained and reported by Puck, also found Biden losing Arizona by 10 points. Meanwhile, the latest polling by the New York Times shows Trump leading Biden by 5 points.

In 2020, Trump lost Arizona by a razor-thin margin. Biden took the state by some 10,000 votes, flipping a state the Republican presidential candidate won in 2016.