In Florida, Trump faces a Clinton campaign behemoth
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at a rally at University of South Florida in Tampa, Fla.
MIAMI >> For Donald Trump, the fight for Florida begins and ends with mass appeal: signature rallies and direct social media contact with voters who believe he can “make America great again.”
Add some 30 Florida Trump employees to about 80 Republican Party field workers deployed around the state and that pretty much covers the GOP nominee’s conventional ground game operation in the largest battleground state.
Then there’s Hillary Clinton: 51 offices, with more on the way, and 500 employees combing Florida, and an overall ground game that rivals that of the previous Democratic nominee, President Barack Obama.
Trump loyalists say they have a deliberate strategy and far-reaching footprint to counter the Clinton behemoth, even if his apparatus doesn’t measure up in campaign offices, staff and paid advertising. But the organizational disparity leaves more than a few Republicans scratching their heads. All agree Trump has no path to the required 270 electoral votes without claiming Florida’s 29.
“Everyone keeps saying you’re not doing this in a traditional way, why?” says Trump adviser Karen Giorno. “Well, we don’t have a traditional candidate.” She oversaw Trump’s Florida operation from the primary season until last week, when she moved to national duties.
Giorno points to thousands of volunteers led by unpaid chairmen in each of Florida’s 67 counties. The Republican National Committee says it has 1,000 trained volunteers to go with its employees.
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Yet only after Labor Day did the Trump campaign open outposts other than the nominee’s state headquarters in Sarasota. Giorno’s replacement by Susie Wiles came just two months before Election Day.
Giorno and Wiles say their candidate is in good shape. Either Trump or his running mate Mike Pence will be in the state at least weekly until the election, Giorno said. Between visits, she added, a volunteer network, led by people in each of Florida’s 67 counties, will use more conventional methods to build the Trump coalition.
Wiles, in an interview on her first day as the new Florida boss, said judging the campaign by offices and staff “isn’t the right measure we should use,” because “you don’t meet voters sitting in an office.”
Prior to her job change, Giorno described a two-track strategy she developed with Trump’s blessing.
“Ten thousand people in an arena and thousands of people on social media are just as good as (Democrats) knocking on 10,000 doors — and we’re doing that, too,” Giorno said. “I don’t see how people say we have no ground game just because they don’t see something that operates just like they think it should.”
Scott Arceneaux, senior strategist for Clinton’s Florida campaign, calls that “ridiculous spin” in a state where marginal shifts in a diverse electorate can tilt the statewide result. Obama won Florida by fewer than 3 percentage points in 2008 and less than a percentage point four years later, with turnout exceeding 8.3 million both times. Polls for months have suggested another tight race.
Trump’s Orange County chairman, Randy Ross, said Arceneaux discounts people like him.
Ross, whose territory includes Orlando, shepherds other volunteers who run phone banks and knock on doors using voter lists produced by the Republican National Committee’s data operation, expanded after Obama’s two victories. “We happen to be using things Republicans learned” from Obama, Ross added, “but we are really a movement, just like Mr. Trump calls it.”
Brian Ballard, a Trump fundraiser and top lobbyist in the state capital of Tallahassee, said, “Counting campaign offices just doesn’t matter these days.”
Florida is slightly less white than the national electorate, but still roughly a microcosm. If the electorate largely reflects 2012, Clinton would capitalize on her standing among African-Americans and Hispanics wary of Trump. Even among Cuban-Americans, a population that has historically leaned Republican, Trump appears to be underperforming — a circumstance that would pad Clinton’s advantage.
Yet even if Clinton maintains her advantage among minorities, turnout could drop in places like Orlando and south Florida’s Broward County, yielding her fewer overall votes. That could give Trump an opening if he’s able to goose turnout among whites, particularly in Pensacola, Jacksonville and other GOP strongholds in north Florida.
Even so, said Arceneaux, “This is a 1 percent state, so if we win by 2 percent, that’s a landslide.”
Facing such a landscape, Giorno conceded Trump is late building his paid campaign infrastructure. But other Florida Republicans point to strong local parties that already were using the national party’s data and support, while running their own outreach programs.
Michael Barnett, chairman of the Palm Beach County GOP, for example, says his party has for several years built relationships within the Haitian-American community. That pocket — numbering in the tens of thousands — shows up as black voters on paper, Barnett notes, “but doesn’t have the historical connection with the Democratic Party” that American-born blacks do.
Arceneaux, the Clinton strategist, questions whether the overall Republican effort can identify and mobilize voters beyond those who identify themselves as eager supporters, given fewer employees and Trump’s late effort.
He joked: “We like to say that Mr. Trump gives us many avenues to victory.”
34 responses to “In Florida, Trump faces a Clinton campaign behemoth”
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I don’t give a hoot about these darn hordes of campaign workers calling and street wavers. They only bother informed people. Unfortunately the louder they scream the more fools they influence to vote Clinton.
LOL…I saw you standing out on King Street waving signs.
former Secretary of State Colin Powell called Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump a “national disgrace and an international pariah” in a June email that was leaked on Tuesday.
Buahahahahahaah
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell speaks from experience because his U.N. speech leading up to the wars was a “national disgrace.” To this day, he calls it a blot on his record. Sad.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/09/politics/powell-calls-his-un-speech-a-lasting-blot-on-his-record.html?_r=0
Looks like some Republicans are listening to the racist rants of Donald.
Bill Clinton helped sink his wife’s chances for an endorsement from Ted Kennedy by belittling Barack Obama as nothing but a race-based candidate.
“A few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee,” the former president told the liberal lion from Massachusetts, according to the gossipy new campaign book, “Game Change.”
Guess your reading list is a little backlogged. Game Change, the “gossipy new” book about the 2008 election was published six years ago in 2010 to generally favorable reviews for a book in its genre.
Cellodad..good for you..whatever rocks your boat.
From what the pollsters are saying–the race is between two candidates that don’t measure up to what one would want for a President and that the election will hinge on the debates.
I agree that the debates have the potential to sway quite a few voters one way or the other. Personally, I think this election is so weird and the candidates so unappetizing (and I include all four of them to greater or lesser degrees) that a significant number of voters won’t really know until election day and they look down at the ballot asking themselves “What am I going to do?”
Among the hacked emails leaked by D.C. Leaks, an anonymously managed website that publishes documents hacked from military leaders and political figures, was an exchange between Powell and major Democratic donor Jeffrey Leeds, who noted that Clinton struggled to climb podium steps.
National disgrace…not, “could be better”, not “the best we can do,” Any thoughts on that?
See below..Any thoughts on that?
It doesn’t matter whether or not Hillary can’t stand Obama. You still didn’t answer the question related to Powell’s emails. Do you disagree with a Republican former Secretary of State and 4-Star General?
You haven’t heard or have been informed that Colin Powell has sided with the O party a long time ago..during O’s first term? I disagree with him but like him when he disses hiLIARy…is that not ok with you which doesn’t really matter for me anyway.
Well, endorsing Obama isn’t the same as siding with his party. Thanks for the response.
You’re welcome.
Florida JMC Analytics (9/7-9/8) POLL: TRUMP 46% hiLIARy 42%
WASHINGTON — Former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who served as President George W. Bush’s top diplomat, derided Donald J. Trump as a “national disgrace” and an “international pariah” in personal email exchanges that were leaked online Tuesday.
In the emails, reported by BuzzFeed News, Mr. Powell also accuses Mr. Trump, the Republican nominee for president, of having embraced what Mr. Powell called a “racist” movement when he questioned the validity of President Obama’s birth certificate. Buahahahahahaah
Mr. Powell also called Ms. Clinton “sleazy”.
But a national disgrace, an international pariah and a a racist. Again, the relative shortcomings are not even close….
You conveniently leave out the fact that Powell endorsed Obama for president. His statement is partisan. Counts for nothing. Just another politicized opinion.
How is it partisan if Powell is a Republican…endorsing Obama makes him the opposite of partisan. And, the emails were leaked, they weren’t intended to be out to the general public, so this really his opinion, not a politicized one.
It makes him a democrat, obviously.
Ahhhh, the grand obfuscation continues–see:http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/15/us/politics/donald-trump-health-dr-oz.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur
The New York Times’ endorsement of Hillary Clinton against Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary consists of an unreadable, illogical piece of fiction. In this post, I will critique the paper’s position in detail, but first I want to take a step back and explain to people what I think is going on in the bigger picture.
In its endorsement of Hillary, the New York Times editorial board did such a sloppy job I can’t help but think it may have done permanent damage to its brand. Upon reading it, my initial conclusion was that the editorial board was either suffering from Stockholm syndrome or merely concerned about losing advertising revenues should they endorse Sanders. Then I thought some more and I realized my initial conclusions were wrong. Something else is going on here, something far more subtle, subconscious and illuminating. The New York Times is defending the establishment candidate simply because the New York Times is the establishment.
One of the biggest trends of the post financial crisis period has been a plunge in the American public’s perception of the country’s powerful institutions. The establishment often admits this reality with a mixture of bewilderment and erroneous conclusions, ultimately settling on the idea people are upset because “Washington can’t get anything done.” However, nothing could be further from the truth. When it comes to corruption and serving big monied interests, both Congress and the President are very, very good at getting things done. Yes it’s true Congress doesn’t get anything done on behalf of the people, but this is no accident. The government doesn’t work for the people.
With its dishonest and shifty endorsement of Hillary Clinton, I believe the New York Times has finally come out of the closet as an unabashed gatekeeper of the status quo. I suppose this makes sense since the paper has become the ultimate status quo journalistic publication. The sad truth is the publication has been living on borrowed time and a borrowed reputation for a long time. Long on prestige, it remains very short on substance when it comes to fighting difficult battles in the public interest. Content with its position of power and influence within the current paradigm, the paper doesn’t want to rock the boat. What the New York Times is actually telling its readers with the Hillary Clinton endorsement is that it likes things just the way they are, and will fight hard to keep them that way. It is as much a part of the American establishment as any government institution….https://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2016/09/13/the-death-of-mainstream-media/
National disgrace, that has nothing to do with the NY Times.
They are one and the same.
At the end of the day, I have concluded that my focus on Hillary as of late (vs. Trump) has as much to with my disgust for the mainstream media as anything else. To see these organs, which have destroyed this country by keeping the people uninformed for decades, now rally around a sickly, corrupt, oligarch coddling politician as the empire enters the collapse stage is simply too much to stomach. Although I’m still voting 3rd party, it’s now become obvious that if my sentiments are widely reflected across the country, Donald Trump will win the election handily. As I tweeted earlier today:
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From Colin Powell leaked emails….
Leeds went on to say that the bitter 2008 Democratic primary left Clinton and Obama bitter rivals.
“And she HATES that the President (“that man,” as the Clintons call him) kicked her ass in 2008,” he wrote. “She can’t believe it or accept it.”
So Hillary detested Obama. Therefore SHE’S RACIST TOO!
I don’t like your questions–it’s badgering…..boohoo.
Kellyanne Conway, GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump’s campaign manager, defended the candidate’s decision not to release his tax returns and labeled questions about his charitable giving as “badgering.”
Ms. Conway scoffed at the notion that most Americans care about the contents of Mr. Trump’s tax filings. In the campaign’s internal polling, she told CNN’s New Day, releasing Mr. Trump’s tax returns doesn’t register as a top campaign issue.
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“I just can’t find where this is a burning issue for most Americans,” she said. “Somehow the issues vexing Americans are not the economy, jobs, terrorism, healthcare, immigration?”
Last week, the Trump campaign released ten years of vice presidential running mate Mike Pence’s tax returns.
Mr. Trump has repeatedly stated he can’t release his own returns because they are undergoing an audit by the internal Revenue Service, though it would be legal to do so. Critics including Democratic presidential rival Hillary Clinton have charged that his refusal to release current or past returns shows he has something to hide. By contrast, Mrs. Clinton has released decades of returns, which reveal income, charitable giving, financial ties and tax rates, among other details.
For the past 40 years, it has become a common practice for presidential candidates to release tax returns, to provide the public with information about their compliance with the law. Polls show that most Americans – 62% in a Monmouth poll taken in late August — think it is important that Mr. Trump follow suit.
When asked whether Mr. Trump would release a document proving he was undergoing an audit, Ms. Conway responded: “Are you calling him a liar?”
“We’re running against a Clinton and we’re going to challenge someone’s veracity?” she asked.
When asked if Mr. Trump would release a summary of his charitable giving, Ms. Conway answered: “I doubt it.” She added: “This is like badgering. I don’t see it as journalism, I see it as badgering. We’ve had this conversation so many different times on so many different networks, ….” WSJ
So worried about Trump’s tax returns, yet you forget what a tax return is. It is a signed statement of compliance with US tax law, meaning it’s not the document in which you “hide” something, other than by omission, since the tax payer actually sends it and associated data TO THE IRS.
No, tax returns are just used to embarrass candidates who have complied with US tax law.
The real issue is the elephant in the room,the clinton’s influence peddling via the Clinton Foundation and speaking fees. There are just two dots here, money and political access. Why are they so hard for you Clintonites to connect?
Not necessarily true as it relates to tax returns. Let’s look at Hee’s, well his company’s corporate returns, he included personal expenses, so those were not omissions, same for guys like Pfleuger. Plus sources of income via stock holdings or K1s are also included, so we can see from where his income was derived.
It’ll be a dream of all dreams should the running mates of Clinton and Trump becomes the leading candidates to replace, by reasons of incompetency, both current presidential candidates. Then we will have some semblance of an election of the past where the majority of the people can determine the choices between a candidate of competence and intergrity or of one incompetent and without Intergrity. Whatever, it’ll make a better election scenario than the present one!