Allies of Sen. JD Vance of Ohio are aiming to spend $45 million on a super PAC campaign to mobilize swing-state voters in support of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, according to a memo circulated to donors.
The super PAC, Turnout for America, is being spearheaded by Christopher Buskirk, a close friend and political ally of Vance who has been developing a donor network with help from the Ohio senator that includes some of Trump’s wealthiest backers.
In the memo from Buskirk seen by The New York Times, Turnout for America claims to have trained a network of at least 945 canvassers, “who are ready for deployment” in seven battleground states.
The group, which has come together quickly this month, is finishing an agreement to share data and coordinate voter mobilization with the Trump campaign, according to two people with knowledge of the effort who requested anonymity to discuss it. In the week before the memo was sent, the group said it had received donations and commitments for more than $5 million and was “actively raising the balance” toward its $45 million goal. Buskirk, who made some money in the insurance business, has strong relationships with tech donors. He runs a venture-capital firm called 1789 Capital that specializes in investing in companies and products popular with conservatives.
Buskirk’s effort is underway as Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democrats’ de facto nominee, is riding a wave of fundraising and organizing momentum after President Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed her. In the week after Harris began consolidating the party’s support, her campaign said it had raised more than $200 million, had gained 170,000 new volunteers and had begun investing in ground operations in states that had seemed out of reach with Biden atop the ticket.
Harris’ campaign told supporters on a video call on Tuesday night that it had “the support, resources and campaign infrastructure” to “play offense” in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina, as well as the so-called blue wall states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Those are the states that Buskirk’s group lists as its targets. Even more Democratic states such as Minnesota, New Hampshire and Virginia “could be added as polling and trends and resources justify,” according to the memo. It boasts that the group intends to use an innovative artificial intelligence “workforce optimization tool” that will “monitor all performance data systemwide in live time and distribute individualized improvement advice to each canvasser in the field via text, call and email.”
The memo suggests that the group intends to rely on a mix of paid and volunteer canvassers to target low- and mid-propensity voters. The 945 canvassers cited in the memo include people who have been trained by the super PAC and its vendors, some of whom will not be sent into the field until the final days of the cycle, according to one of the people with knowledge of the plans.
On the super PAC’s website, it is soliciting applications for full-time paid, part-time paid and unpaid canvassers.
Unlike many super PACs, the group emphasizes that it will focus only on field operations and will not become involved with paid media.
The memo indicates that the group intends to “operate in concert” with Trump’s campaign.
The group is one of several new pro-Trump organizations seeking to take advantage of new advisory guidance from the Federal Election Commission that allows outside groups to coordinate field programs with campaigns without violating a ban on coordination that applies to advertising. Another new outside group, America PAC, was co-founded by Elon Musk to fund canvassing in battleground states, and that group is also in conversations with the Trump campaign about a data-sharing agreement, one of the people said.
“Our mission is simply to execute on the president’s ground game plan — the thought leadership is theirs,” Buskirk wrote in the memo. “The ads and the air war are theirs. The on-the-ground-muscle is ours.”
Trump chose Vance as his running mate in part because he was close with some major donors from the tech industry. Some of those contributors are among those involved in a donor collective called the Rockbridge Network that Buskirk created. Its twice-a-year meetings have drawn appearances by Trump, as well as megadonors including Peter Thiel, Rebekah Mercer, Steve Wynn and David Sacks. Members pledge to spend $100,000 a year on Rockbridge-recommended programs, and the group said last year that it had about 125 members. Its most recent conference was held this year at Mar-a-Lago and featured appearances by Vance, Trump and his son Donald Trump Jr.
Buskirk has pitched Turnout for America to members of the Rockbridge Network, according to one of the people with knowledge of the plans.It was not immediately clear who had donated to Turnout for America, but it will be required to disclose its donors to the FEC in October.
Buskirk gained a following in the Trump orbit with a publication called American Greatness. On his podcast in 2020, he hosted Vance, who argued that when adults opt against having children, it makes them “more sociopathic and ultimately our whole country a little bit less, less mentally stable.”
The comments were resurfaced by CNN on Tuesday, adding to a wave of scrutiny that has followed Vance’s introduction.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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