Donald Trump’s White House may take a page from the Karl Rove playbook.

The administration has been in talks to put conservative initiatives on the ballot in 2018 midterm battleground states in hopes of energizing base voters dispirited by the performance of Republican-controlled Washington.


The strategy is similar to the one Rove used in 2004. The George W. Bush political guru helped engineer a slate of anti-gay marriage amendments that year to boost GOP turnout in swing states such as Ohio, an approach that many are convinced helped pave the way for Bush’s reelection. (Rove has denied accounts that he orchestrated the 11-state effort.)

White House aides are less interested in a ballot initiative campaign focused on social issues, fearful it would serve to only further stoke an already-motivated liberal base. Instead, according to three people familiar with the deliberations, they're considering initiatives involving tax reform and other economic issues seen as more likely to invigorate conservatives. Tax reform also goes to the heart of Trump’s agenda, and he's expected to spend much of the fall pursuing it.

While the 2004 initiative campaign was spread across 11 states, the 2018 version would likely be narrower. Under an initial blueprint, the effort would focus on a handful of red states where vulnerable Democratic senators are up for reelection next year, including Montana, North Dakota and Missouri.

Those states are at the center of the Republican bid to expand their Senate majority in the midterms. They're seen as particularly compelling options because they are small and, therefore, easier and less expensive to run campaigns in.

Spearheading the discussions is Republican strategist Gerry Gunster, a referendum expert who helped to lead the successful 2016, populist-infused campaign for Britain's exit from the European Union. Gunster — who visited then-president-elect Trump in New York City along with Brexit leader Nigel Farage after the November election — has spoken about the ballot initiative concept with top administration aides, including political director Bill Stepien and Nick Ayers, the chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence and a veteran GOP operative.

Still, it's an open question whether a White House-backed ballot initiative effort will materialize. Those involved caution that the plans are in a preliminary stage and that the White House, while intrigued, has yet to give final signoff.

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Complicating matters has been the departure of chief strategist Steve Bannon, who was a leading internal proponent of the idea and thought it should be an administration priority heading into 2018.

Yet several people involved raised the prospect that Bannon, now free from the constraints of government, could orchestrate a campaign from the outside. He would have the financial resources: Bannon has a patron in Robert Mercer, the reclusive New York hedge fund billionaire who has long funded his political projects.

Neither White House officials nor Bannon would comment on the record. Gunster declined to discuss his talks with administration officials, but noted that his firm “has a well-documented history of managing initiatives and referenda that focus on tax reform and job growth. We do frequently work on state ballot measures that remove barriers to doing business."

An administration-led campaign would give conservatives a counterweight to liberals, who have already begun circulating possible initiatives in states aimed at mobilizing supporters in 2018 — some of them centered on marijuana legalization. Several midterm battlegrounds, including Missouri, Florida and Arizona, may see cannabis-related items on the ballot.

Some Republicans contend that putting tax cut-related measures on the 2018 ballot could give the party a boost.

"Probably it has some effect. It never hurts to have Republicans push on issues that are core to the party and that get people motivated," said Steve Linder, a GOP strategist in Michigan who has worked on nearly a dozen ballot measures, including the state’s 2004 anti-gay marriage amendment. "It's a way to reinforce the base, and can it help around the edges? Yes it can."

The deliberations come at a sensitive time for senior Republicans. They're increasingly worried that the party’s meager legislative accomplishments so far, the ongoing special counsel investigation of Trump campaign ties to Russia and the president’s intensifying war with GOP leaders will depress the base in 2018.

At the annual Republican National Committee summer meeting in Nashville last week, GOP officials convened a two-hour closed-door meeting in which they outlined their plans to mobilize their voters. The committee walked through a 200-slide PowerPoint presentation detailing how it would use its fundraising advantage over Democrats to build a turnout machine capable of reaching conservatives far and wide.

Republicans likely have to get going soon if they're going to pursue the ballot initiative strategy. Qualifying measures in each individual state can be complex, costly and time-consuming. Decisions on whether and how to proceed would probably need to happen before the end of the year, organizers say.

They've begun mapping out how many signatures they'll need and the deadlines in order to make the ballot in each state, as well as how much it will cost.

The extent to which the anti-gay marriage amendments boosted Bush in 2004 is the subject of debate. In the immediate aftermath of his reelection, there was general agreement that the 11 amendments, all of which were approved by comfortable margins, jolted turnout in Bush’s favor.

But in the following years, some political observers began to question the influence it had on the election results. A 2006 report by the Pew Research Center concluded that while an amendment may have been decisive in the critical state of Ohio, their effect in other states was less clear.

There is also uncertainty surrounding Rove’s role. The former Bush adviser has disputed that he was the architect of the amendment strategy, contending they arose organically in reaction to the 2004 Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling allowing for same-sex marriage. But in 2010, Ken Mehlman, the campaign manager on Bush’s reelection campaign, told The Atlantic that Rove helped drive the anti-gay marriage campaign.

Some Republicans are skeptical that running an initiative campaign will do much to help their 2018 prospects. Jeff Flint, a Republican strategist in California who specializes in ballot initiatives, said the party would need to find an issue that tapped into a deep vein of frustration in order to drive turnout. He argued that a tax cut-focused effort wouldn’t do the trick.

Absent such a driving issue, voters are bound to be influenced by their opinion of Trump and his performance, Flint said.

"Nine times out of 10," he said, "turnout is driven by the top of the ticket, or the" president.