With Roger Sollenberger, Political Reporter

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This week’s Big Dig . . . ‘Make the RNC White Again’: How the GOP Ended Its Minority Outreach Program

After years of accusations of financial mismanagement, the Republican National Committee is overhauling its 2024 election operations—a full-on MAGA makeover that the RNC claims will curb excessive spending and steer as much money as possible to supporting Donald Trump’s campaign.

But it appears that one of those strategic spending moves may have a profound effect on a successful minority outreach program, which two people with knowledge of the plans characterized as self-defeating, potentially erasing gains with groups of gettable new voters who have cooled on the Democratic Party.

As one of the sources put it to The Daily Beast, the tagline might as well be, “Make the RNC White Again.”

Shut it down

The program at issue is an initiative from the 2022 midterms, where RNC field staff engaged voters through gatherings and events held at community centers in areas with heavy minority populations, most specifically Latino communities.

In January, The Messenger reported that the RNC had already shuttered most of the nearly two dozen Hispanic Community Centers that served as the base for the program, leaving just five open. (The Messenger’s content vanished when it went out of business shortly thereafter, but the article was captured by the nonprofit Internet Archive.)

At the time, however, the RNC chalked the closures up as a temporary byproduct of its budget cycle. However, the organization also announced that it was preparing to double down on these efforts for 2024, opening 40 new centers in Latino, Black, Asian American, Native American, Jewish, and veteran communities across the country. That would include establishing outposts in key battlegrounds like Las Vegas, Nevada, Tuscon, Arizona, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Allentown, Pennsylvania, The Messenger reported.

Taken for granted

Jaime Florez, the RNC’s Hispanic communications director, told The Messenger that “Democrats have taken the Hispanic community for granted for far too long” and vowed that the RNC planned to capitalize on those opportunities.

“Republicans will continue to make historic investments in Hispanic voter outreach, from opening more community centers to launching ‘Deposita Tu Voto’, that will further our gains with Hispanic voters and deliver Republican victories in 2024,” Florez said at the time.

But two people with knowledge of the plans told The Daily Beast that the RNC has decided to scrap that effort. Instead, the people said, the community center program now appears to be another casualty of the RNC’s recent restructuring—a bloodbath that has already claimed several dozen jobs, including senior leadership posts, along with the apparent decimation of field operations and other strategic realignments that could come at the cost of Republican candidates across the country not fortunate enough to be named Trump.

Mirror, mirror

Instead of going after minority voters, the RNC apparently plans to remake itself even more in Trump’s image. 

While the size and complexity of modern presidential races demands close coordination between the candidate’s campaign and the national party, the unique pressures on Trump and the RNC—external and internal—forced a reckoning that has taken that standard teambuilding exercise to a new realm.

The catalyst for those events is the very real prospect of financial crisis now facing the two groups, thanks to stratospheric personal legal costs on Trump’s part and unsustainable fundraising and spending for both organizations. Coupled with demands for unconditional fealty to the MAGA brand—which have exacerbated fault lines within the party—the RNC found itself at an inflection point coming into 2024.

The real priority

To resolve the tension, Trump essentially took control of the RNC. He forced out longtime chair Ronna McDaniel, replacing her with a trio of MAGA loyalists—including Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump—who uprooted some of the RNC’s most experienced staff and welded the two organizations into what amounts to a single-purpose machine designed to fuel Trump’s attempt to reclaim the White House.

While one short-term goal is to minimize costs, the moves could come at great political expense in the long term, especially for down-ballot candidates who depend on the RNC for critical funding and other resources. But there are other intangible losses, like the exodus of talent, a blooming vacuum of institutional knowledge, and sapping momentum from field projects like the community center program.

That project not only had promise, it came at the right time. After ignoring their own “autopsy” of the GOP’s 2012 presidential loss, many Republicans began to court minority voters in the wake of Trump’s 2016 win. As paradoxical as that may seem, given Trump’s rhetoric and policies, those efforts appear to be bearing some fruit. 

Today, a sizable portion of minority voters—historically a reliable well of Democratic support—have exhibited a disaffection with the party, particularly in younger demographics, drifting towards Republicans who champion conservative ideologies that have long been culturally ingrained in those communities, but had not in themselves inspired voters to change parties.

The community centers were key to that effort. They were viewed as a success and point of pride, sources with knowledge of the project told The Daily Beast. 

While it’s difficult to measure the cost of these programs, people familiar with the effort shrugged off the expenses as comparatively minimal, especially given the positive preliminary returns. Most of the overhead, they said, would be related to renting space for the centers, along with staffing expenses and incidentals for events.

The RNC previously indicated that the rationalization for temporarily closing the centers was financial, considering the party’s cash woes. But if that’s also the explanation for a permanent shutdown, the savings would be thin.

Federal Election Commission filings show that in 2022, the RNC spent a grand total of just over $2 million on rent, with much of it going to campaigns and state and local parties for joint field work in the midterms. But some outlays give an idea of the cost—such as the $3,500 per month that the RNC paid to “No Limits Community Development” in Georgia. By comparison, around the same time, the RNC agreed to pay $1.6 million to cover Trump’s personal legal costs.

These rent payments also wouldn’t divert a penny of the RNC’s political money. Instead, the rent expenses came out of the party’s “building” account, a specially segregated bank account that can only be tapped for expenses related to buildings and maintenance.

The Daily Beast reached out to an RNC spokesperson for comment, who provided a statement from Trump campaign communications director Steven Cheung. The statement called the criticism of the community center closures “racist” and “complete bullshit,” but did not deny that the program had shut down.

“The racist accusations about the RNC and Trump campaign are complete bullshit, President Trump did more to benefit minority communities during his first term than any other President, especially Crooked Joe Biden, and that’s why he’s polling better with Black and Hispanic Americans,” Cheung said in the statement. 

The metric Trump most favors to measure his efficacy as an advocate for the Black community—Black unemployment—reached new record lows under Biden.

Read the full story here.

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From Roger’s Notebook...

Dirty laundry. Trump and the RNC just took an expected step that could carry unexpected consequences. In an FEC filing submitted on Thursday, the Trump campaign and the RNC formally entered into their 2024 joint fundraising agreement with dozens of state parties. It’s a standard move for both parties in a presidential election cycle, allowing the national party to effectively, and legally, launder millions of dollars in megadonor cash back to itself, thereby evading contribution limits on individual donors.

But for this election, and for this party, things are different. The filing rechristens the previously generic “2024 RNC Victory” as “Trump 47 Victory,” and its lineup includes not just the RNC, the Trump campaign, and an armada of state parties, but also Trump’s “Save America” leadership PAC-slash-legal slush fund. Brendan Fischer, deputy executive director of watchdog group Documented, called that move both “totally predictable and seemingly unprecedented.”

“I can’t think of any other example of a major party presidential candidate including their leadership PAC in one of these mega JFCs during the campaign,” Fischer said. “Every dollar soaked up by Save America to cover Trump’s legal fees is a dollar that isn’t going towards helping the GOP win elections.”

Save America, however, doesn’t stand to gain the most from the arrangement, because individual donors can still only give $5,000 a year. But Trump 47 Victory’s distribution formula is still unclear, so it’s possible that Save America could be the first destination for the donations.

While that’s important, it’s still not the most important possible consequence. This setup could steer millions of dollars back to the RNC’s separate “legal” account—a loosely regulated segregated fund that could potentially pay for Trump’s personal lawyers.

Here’s how the scheme works.

These massive joint fundraising committees (JFCs) essentially create a backdoor that lets national parties raise more money from megadonors than otherwise allowed under the law. Trump 47 Victory currently has 43 members, with 39 of them being state parties. (The roster includes Guam and D.C., but doesn’t count financially troubled Michigan, Arizona, or Colorado).

This means that one donor can contribute an amount equal to the combined contribution limits of all 43 committees. Trump 47 Victory can then allocate that money to the other committees, according to those donation limits. Given Trump 47 Victory’s current lineup, one single donor could theoretically cut a single $810,100 check. 

But there’s a second benefit on the back end. While a state party can only get $10,000 from each of those checks, those state committees are allowed to transfer unlimited amounts of money to the national party. This means the RNC can theoretically claw back all of the Trump 47 Victory cash that goes to the states—in lump sums that include cash from donors who have already maxed out to the RNC. (Hillary Clinton was the first candidate to take advantage of this loophole, in 2016.) In 2020, the RNC clawed back millions and millions of dollars this way—sometimes without the state parties even knowing it.

Today, though, there’s a third scenario: whether the RNC will direct some of that money to its “legal” account, and then use that money to pay Trump’s bills. In other words, this could be a pipeline for MAGA megadonors to funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars to Trump’s personal legal defense.

“The FEC has yet to lay down guardrails on how the legal account may be used, so there may be little stopping the RNC from dipping into the fund to cover Trump’s personal legal bills,” Fischer said.

However, as Pay Dirt previously reported, the FEC is currently taking up that very question—whether and how to further regulate national party legal accounts.

Counterpunch. While nowhere near as formidable, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) has also roped together her own joint operation to prepare for battle in 2024. On Monday, three Cheney committees notified the FEC that they had all aligned. They include two PACs—“Cowboy PAC” and “The Great Task”—and the super PAC “Our Great Task.” Affiliated committees can transfer money between themselves in unlimited amounts.

Up in the air. When the going gets tough, the Boeing PAC gives money. The aerospace giant has already had a turbulent year, as a series of near-disasters and regulatory setbacks have set its stock back by nearly a quarter of its value. So I’m sure you’ll be stunned to learn that last month, Boeing’s corporate PAC doled out nearly $250,000 to elected officials, candidates, and PACs, according to a filing submitted this week. Boeing swore off political donations in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack, but was back at it a few months later, and funding election objectors—multiple of whom also appear on this filing.

More From The Beast’s Politics Desk

Retreat from the retreat. House Republicans went to The Greenbrier resort for their annual retreat, where they hoped to settle on a message and a plan. Instead, half of the GOP conference didn’t even bother showing up, and those that did indicated nothing is going to change. Reese Gorman and Riley Rogerson have the latest from on the ground in West Virginia.

Wrench in the Trump prosecution machine. A trove of new documents were just handed over to Trump’s defense team in the Manhattan criminal case, and now the trial that was supposed to start in 10 days could be on hold for a month or more. This will push the entire timeline back, but it also is providing fodder for Trump’s lawyers to try to undermine the entire prosecution. Jose Pagliery has all the details.

Escrow scarecrow. On top of not having to put up his own money to appeal the $83 million judgment against him in the E. Jean Carroll defamation case, Trump almost got away with delaying payment to her should he, as expected, lose his appeal. Carroll’s lawyers caught the sleight of hand. Jose, once again, has the details.

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