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. | 