McDaniel Says RNC is Well-Positioned Heading Toward November
WASHINGTON, DC – Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel appeared before a luncheon meeting of The Ripon Society this past Monday, delivering remarks about the effort she is leading heading into the mid-terms, and the steps being taken to help the GOP retain its congressional majorities this fall.
“The RNC is investing in over 70 races across the country,” McDaniel stated. “We’re already on the ground in 27 states. In California two weeks ago, there were seven races where Hillary Clinton won those districts. In six of those districts, more Republicans turned out than Democrats. That is very good for us in those primaries.
“The Democrats put $10 million into that state to push turnout. We put $300,000 in to push turnout because we knew how important it was. But we did it more strategically, and we knew exactly where our voters were because of our data. And we still beat them. A bellwether of who wins in the general has always been which party turns out more people in the primary. In the past four election cycles, the party that gets more people out in the primary usually wins in the general.”
McDaniel is serving her first term as Chair of the RNC, having taken the reins of the organization in January of last year. She previously served as Chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party, where she put in place the organization that helped Donald Trump become the first Republican to win the state since George HW Bush in 1988.
She discussed that experience in her remarks on Monday, and talked about how it has shaped not only her approach to her job as RNC Chairwoman today, but her belief that Republicans will need both money and data in order to be successful this fall.
“We have raised more money than any political party in history going into a mid-term,” she declared. “We have hit the $184 million mark. We plan to have raised $250 million, to have a quarter of a billion dollars to put into this election — which has never happened before. I think we’re absolutely going to hit that mark. We know it’s going to take those resources … On the data front, we are expanding our data. We’re making it quicker so that we can get those analytics onto the ground earlier and make decisions in different districts. What we need to do to calibrate our message so we can see if voters are going to be impacted by certain messages and how that will trend. That’s a huge part of our investment.”
Beyond money and data, McDaniel said that voter contact will also be critical to GOP success this fall.
“The other key for the party, and the other area where Republicans are ahead of the curve in terms of where they were two years ago, is in its ground game – that is, the volunteers who, she said, will be “doing all the things you need to do to turn out your vote.”
“In 2016,” McDaniel revealed, “we had trained 5,000 volunteers to go into the presidential election. And when I say volunteers, I mean these are the people who are going to knock on doors, they’re going to be making phone calls, and they’re going to be doing all the things you need to do to turn out your vote. This cycle, we’ve already trained 15,000. And when I say train, it’s not an hour-long session where you pop in and you get a few pamphlets and then leave. It’s a six-week course where we train these volunteers on our technology, on everything that they’re going to have to do throughout the campaign. By engaging them in that six-week course, they become eligible to be hired as staff. That’s our supply chain. They are absolutely engaged, and over half of them are women.”
McDaniel concluded her remarks by talking about the role of the party in the upcoming election, and why – in today’s political environment – it is increasingly difficult for candidates to go it alone.
“The reason why the party is so important for the success of our candidates — and I’m a Detroit girl, so I’m going to use a Detroit analogy – is that candidates, with their $2,700 limit, cannot invest in the data and infrastructure at the level that the party can,” she stated. “So we build a road — the party does — long before the candidates are picked … It is so important to have a strong party structure and a state party structure, and that is why we’ve hit the ground running going into 2018.”
To view McDaniel’s remarks before The Ripon Society lunch discussion on Monday, please click on the link below:
The Ripon Society is a public policy organization that was founded in 1962 and takes its name from the town where the Republican Party was born in 1854 – Ripon, Wisconsin. One of the main goals of The Ripon Society is to promote the ideas and principles that have made America great and contributed to the GOP’s success. These ideas include keeping our nation secure, keeping taxes low and having a federal government that is smaller, smarter and more accountable to the people.