After winning re-election in 2004, George W. Bush took a trip to Amish Country.

He hadn't come for a handmade quilt commemorating his second term, or a sampler of fresh preserves to keep onboard Air Force One.

This was business.

Specifically, Bush had come to thank Lancaster County Republican organizers who had worked on his behalf to secure strong turnout among local Amish voters that Nov. 2.

At the top of his list was a politically connected church family with growing influence and an increasingly checkered past as political organizers.

They had been called on by GOP brass months earlier, with Democratic Senator John Kerry leading Bush in the Pennsylvania polls, but just barely. Kerry's lead was so slim as to be within the margin of error.

Looking to seize an opportunity in a crucial swing state, Republican leaders mobilized a massive get-out-the-vote campaign.

It targeted new conservative voters who could, if registered in great enough numbers, sway the outcome in Bush's favor, or so the thinking went. It made sense, especially considering that just four years earlier, 537 votes in Florida had earned Bush the White House.

With this in mind, Republican strategists targeted evangelicals as well as the tens of thousands of eligible Amish voters in Pennsylvania and Ohio, another key swing state.

Bush would go on to win in Ohio, helping him to also win his second term. He would lose in Pennsylvania despite the Amish recruitment efforts here, however.

But the Amish strategy would be celebrated for its savvy and cost-effectiveness, and it is now being mimicked in another high-stakes election in which nothing, and no one, will be left to chance.

For-the-record: Ongoing wars, terrorism fears, a "don't change horses midstream" mindset and 10 million evangelical votes certainly had far more to do with Bush's reelection than Amish voter participation.

But a vein had been tapped, and the Amish would be looked to as difference-makers in subsequent presidential elections, including this one.

This year, a Super PAC has already been established to stir up Amish support for Republican candidate Donald Trump, who is neck-and-neck with Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton in early polls in states like Pennsylvania.

But the Amish community's support is far from a given, and its history at the polls complicated to say the least.

'The Amish will be voting for Donald Trump'

Chet Beiler was born Amish. He became a businessman, chairman of Lancaster County's Republican Party and launched his own, ultimately unsuccessful, campaign for U.S. Congress this past year.

Beiler was also one of the architects of the Amish voter drive in 2004, leveraging his ties to the church community on behalf of the Republican Party in Pennsylvania, of which he was an ambitious up-and-comer at the time.

While his immediate family had moved away from the community when Beiler was just a boy, he still had Amish relatives and also ran a gazebo manufacturing company that employed many church members.

For these reasons, he seemed an obvious choice to spearhead the GOP's outreach effort.

But the voter drive itself would prompt criticism of organizers like Beiler, who were accused of using scare tactics and hot-button issues, such as same-sex marriage and abortion, to get the Amish to the polls.

Four years earlier, Beiler had been charged with violating election laws by paying campaign workers $4 for every voter registered and $8 for every voter registered willing to support Bush for president, the New York Sun reported. The charges were dropped after Beiler pleaded "no contest" and performed 50 hours of community service.

"I simply answered the call where there were some folks in the Old Order community that wanted to encourage more Amish to vote," Beiler recently told PennLive of the 2004 campaign.

"Part of why they did that was because George W. Bush had reached out to them and met with 30 Amish leaders when he came to Lancaster County for a rally. He met with them privately and it kind of took on a life of its own. My cousin met with me and said 'How about we do this thing?' It went so well that the president congratulated him directly, in person, after winning reelection."

In the fall of 2004, approximately 10,350 Amish adults in Lancaster County were eligible to register and vote. Only 1,342 turned out to vote on Nov. 2, but it represented the highest number and percentage to have done so in nearly a decade of municipal and general elections, researcher Donald Kraybill noted.

It may have also signaled the start of a trend, wherein strategists would begin to rely on Amish communities as bastions of conservative support.

The Amish that do vote are overwhelmingly Republican. Almost none are Democrats. A few might be Independent, Beiler said.

But while they embraced Bush in 2004, this year, their Republican patronage has been called into question, with experts wondering whether the Plain community can be galvanized around Trump, the ostentatious and thrice-married billionaire.

Some already have.

Jeremiah Raber, a former "Breaking Amish" cast member, said "I can promise you this time around the Amish will be out in full force voting for president. And I can almost guarantee you that the Amish will be voting for Donald Trump. Because they vote for what is right."

He added, "How do I know that? I grew up Amish. I was adopted by the Amish and raised by them. I know their beliefs. I know what they think."

Others, meanwhile, aren't so sure.

'Kennedy won and God then removed him'

There were hurdles for Bush in 2004, as well, in the form of incongruities that impeded Amish support.

For one: The Amish are staunch pacifists, conscientious objectors even.

And many in the church traditionally felt it would be a conflict of interest to vote for the Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. military, let alone one in the midst of two wars as Bush was at the time of his reelection.

GOP recruiters overcame this by emphasizing the Republican/Democratic divide on social issues, such as abortion and same-sex marriage.

Bush, they said, would defend church principles on bell-wether issues like these. His values, the recruiters argued, were their values. Bush was also the only candidate to support a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage at the time.

"That was really ironic because the Amish don't debate or spend much time talking about same-sex marriage or abortion," said Kraybill, an expert on Anabaptist groups, such as the Amish, and a senior fellow at Elizabethtown College.

They consider them foreign issues, or issues without a place in their social milieu, he explained.

But the Amish were told, mostly by Republican recruiters and sympathetic church members, that they could no longer ignore what was going on in the larger society around them. It represented a dramatic shift in orientation, and was a sentiment in diametric opposition to the separation of church and state on which their communities were built.

It was that same belief that helped to fuel Amish misgivings about political participation at the national and state level, too. And as a result, their electoral history is spotty at best, and often even contradictory.

Historically, the Amish tended to favor micro-level politics over macro-level -- more often getting involved in the local and municipal elections they felt bore a more direct impact on their lives as businessmen, farmers and community members.

For many, presidential politics were of little concern. And for the most part that remains the case.

But there were changes afoot in 2004, changes that may continue today, as some community members began to question the "Pray instead of vote" directives handed down by church leaders for generations.

"An Amishman once told me, 'We pray Republican and we vote on our knees,'" Kraybill recalled. "And I think that really sums up their position pretty well."

Over time, though, some church members had begun to question and challenge this conventional wisdom.

Kraybill quoted one Republican activist in the community who in 2004 argued, "Why was a [Democratic] governor elected to our state who brings in gambling, slot machines, and wants to put liquor in the grocery stores? Did our people just not pray enough?"

In a paper titled, "Bush Fever: Amish and Old Order Mennonites in the 2004 Presidential Election," Kraybill takes an in-depth look at the Plain community's history of political engagement.

He found that while voting was once forbidden by church forefathers, involvement in the political process and tacit support for it has waxed and waned for generations. The Amish have traditionally been discouraged from voting but not forbidden. They were, however, forbidden from directly participating in political campaigns or holding elected office themselves.

He wrote, "The traditional Amish view of the state reflects a position of subjection rather than citizenship. Unlike citizens in the modern state who display a sense of civic duty and responsibility for the welfare of their country, Amish understandings of the state parallel those of subjects to a king."

Kraybill said Old Order Amish attitudes toward voting have "fluctuated by historical period and region of the country as well as by local church sentiment."

"Some Amish were energized by the 1896 presidential contest between the Republican candidate, William McKinley, and the Democratic challenger, William Jennings Bryan, and expressed support for Bryan who sympathized with farmers and the working class," he wrote.

"Old Order interest in voting also intensified during the presidential election of 1960 when Vice President Richard Nixon, a Quaker, ran against Senator John F. Kennedy, a Catholic. Anecdotal evidence suggests that Old Order voting spiked in that election because of fears of having a Catholic president."

In one particularly jarring anecdote, Kraybill cited an Old Order Mennonite who, following JFK's assassination, said, "Kennedy won and God then removed him from office . . . we can see what happens when people attempt to run ahead of God, or to take things into their own hands [by voting]."

But despite such entrenched resistance, the Plain community's openness to voting would grow, fueled by pragmatism, cross-pollination and in some cases the outside world's growing influence.

The trend arguably peaked in the 2004 presidential race, with the Amish, newly invested in the wider-world around them, coalescing around Bush's folksy, faith-first persona.

'They're not going to quit on us'

In the weeks and months before Election Day, Bush visited Pennsylvania Dutch Country on a number of occasions.

At around the same time, Beiler and his fellow Republican operatives began to beat the bushes, visiting Amish homes and businesses in an attempt to register the occupants. There were even voter registration booths set up at Amish auctions, community fairs and other events, Kraybill said, and free Election Day transportation would be provided to anyone who needed it.

The Amish community's embrace of Bush was itself remarkable, drawing national media attention and gasps from some inside the community who railed against the hypocrisy of voting for a "war president" like Bush, but then refusing to fight.

The debate continued even after the election was won, and after Bush signed into law a bill largely exempting the Amish from federal child labor restrictions. Bush signed the bill -- crafted by long-time Lancaster County congressman Joe Pitts -- in January of 2005, months after winning reelection.

Now, with another Election Day looming, the Amish are again being called on by a Republican campaign.

This time Donald Trump hopes to tap into the church's well-spring of conservatism.

His "Amish" Super PAC, or Plain Voters Project as it's known, expects to spend $41,000 on newspaper ads and billboards in the lead up to the election.

And despite the certainty of those like Jeremiah Raber, the jury is still out on whether the Amish will get behind Trump or return to a more passive form of civic engagement -- choosing to once again pray instead of vote.

"With Republican leanings, it's very unlikely that many if any would support Clinton," Kraybill said. "I'm also doubtful that they would be enthusiastic for Trump, but that is simply a guess, and not based on any discussions I've had with Amish people about him."

Kraybill called Trump's persona antithetical to Amish principles of humility, but added, "on the other hand, they do respect successful business people."

Even an insider like Beiler said he was unsure which of this year's Republican candidates the Amish would have preferred.

Only two things are certain then: There will be efforts to recruit Amish voters and internal debates about the compatibility of voting with Amish beliefs.

Many will likely recall the controversy of 2004, after which Kraybill said a sort of buyer's remorse was expressed to him by some organizers, some of whom questioned the legacy of that campaign on the religious order.

"Maybe I should not have done that [registered voters]," Kraybill quoted one with ties to the Amish community as having said. "Maybe we went overboard too much, I don't know. The politicians now want us to help again the next time. They're not going to quit on us."