By Mitch McAndrew | [email protected]
With Nov. 8 not quite five months away, Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign organization is already largely in place in Iowa.
Donald Trump, on the other hand, is just getting started.
Kane Miller, the Hillary for Iowa state director, said the Clinton campaign has had a staff presence in Iowa ever since Clinton announced her candidacy in April 2015, working to give Clinton an edge in the swing state.
Clinton, who in early June earned enough Democratic Party delegates to become the first female presidential nominee of a major party in U.S. history at the party’s national convention next month, has hired what organizers call a robust Iowa staff. Many are veteran staffers from the Iowa caucuses in February, Miller said.
“Our staff is working from river to river to recruit volunteers, connect with supporters, and build the personal relationships that are the backbone of any successful campaign,” Miller wrote in a prepared statement to The Daily Iowan.
Arthur Sanders, a political-science professor at Drake University, said the Clinton campaign is similarly well staffed in states across the nation.
“Hillary Clinton left behind a ground game in every state; she hasn’t pulled out of anywhere,” he said.
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Trump, meanwhile, hired Iowa renewable-fuels advocate Eric Branstad as his Iowa state director last week. To date, Branstad’s hiring is the only public organizational move Trump’s campaign has made in Iowa.
Plans for Trump’s Iowa operation have not been unveiled.
“We’re working with the campaign to put together something more formal,” Branstad said in an interview with The Daily Iowan on Monday. “The planning and protocol and all is in the works.”
Instead of constructing a large-scale ground operation of his own, Trump will rely on the Republican National Committee to organize his ground game in several swing states, including Iowa.
Lindsay Jancek, a spokeswoman for the RNC in Iowa, said the national GOP’s 2016 election efforts have been underway for years, and that the operation is better staffed than in 2012, when Romney lost Iowa in his failed presidential bid.
“The RNC has organizers and volunteers who have been working to build teams and communicate with Iowans for years,” she said. “We’ve got 50 times the staff in battleground states than at this time four years ago.”
While Trump’s lone Iowa staffer works with the national Republican Party’s teams to formulate a plan of attack, Clinton is already executing hers.
The first volley from Clinton’s operation comes in the form of a television ad blitz in eight battleground states to the tune of $23 million. The ads will first air on Thursday in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia.
A statement released by the Clinton campaign said the ad blitz is part of an initial six-week television buy that “will lay out the choice voters face in this election.”
In a stark contrast to Clinton, Trump has spent $0 on advertising heading into the general election.
Trump gives poli sci a gift – chance to see what happens when one side runs $23 mil in ads, the other 0 https://t.co/yxwBwV0lL1 via @YouTube
— David Lauter (@DavidLauter) June 19, 2016
However, Trump’s lack of ad buys does not mean he will be absent from the airwaves.
Sanders said heaps of unadvertised Trump media coverage, along with Trump’s widespread name recognition, served effectively in place of a robust communications team during the primaries, and that this free publicity could continue to boost Trump over the summer. Trump has received $3 billion in unpaid publicity.
“It’s not ads; it’s headlines,” said Tamara Scott, Iowa Republican chairwoman.
But Sanders said the general election is different from and the primaries, as Trump now must appeal to a wider audience.
“Just saying outrageous things and appealing to a certain element in the Republican Party and dominating the airwaves that worked,” Sanders said, referring to Trump’s GOP primary strategy. “But it was never going to work in a general election, where you have to appeal to a very different kind of audience.”
According to new Federal Election Commission filings, released Monday, Trump’s fundraising has also suffered. Trump raised $3.1 million in May and ended the month with $1.3 million in the bank. Clinton brought in $27 million, which brought her account up to $42 million.
Trump responded to questions about his ability to raise money with a prepared statement Tuesday morning.
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“If need be, there could be unlimited ‘cash on hand’ as I would put up my own money, as I have already done through the primaries, spending over $50 million. Our campaign is leaner and more efficient, like our government should be,” Trump wrote.
Further evidence of Trump’s campaign hardships came on Monday when Trump fired his campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, following steady reports of power struggles between Lewandowski and campaign head Paul Manafort.
Another example of the animosity between Trump’s top aides quickly followed: Adviser Michele Caputo also left the campaign on Monday, after he tweeted a mocking response to Lewandowski’s dismissal, declaring, “the witch is dead.”
Sanders said Trump’s recent campaign shake up might indicate a coming change in Trump’s approach to campaign structure.
“He didn’t surround himself with people who were telling him what he needed to do. He surrounded himself with people who told him to do what he wanted to do,” Sanders said. “So he doesn’t have any idea how to run for president of the United States in a traditional way.”
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But part of Trump’s appeal has been his non-traditional, “outsider” status.
Scott, who co-chaired Bachmann’s 2012 presidential run, said Trump’s approach to campaign structure which relies on Trump as a brand instead of a set of policies could be an advantage, not an obstacle, in November.
“As we’ve seen in the primary already, he’s done nothing conventionally and it’s paid off,” Scott said. “Paid staff are not necessarily as loyal as folks who have heard his message.”
In early June, Trump defended his approach on Twitter.
“I am getting bad marks from certain pundits because I have a small campaign staff. But small is good, flexible, save money and number one,” the tweet read.
I am getting bad marks from certain pundits because I have a small campaign staff. But small is good, flexible, save money and number one!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 6, 2016
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