Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus has been a consistent supporter of closed primaries. | Rod Lamkey Jr. for POLITICO RNC scrambles to calm state GOP officials Battleground Republicans say they’re outgunned by Democrats because the RNC has not supplied enough ground staff.

The Republican National Committee is scrambling to respond to increasingly frantic concerns from state GOP officials that the party has not provided enough field organizers and will be badly outgunned by Democrats in battleground states.

POLITICO surveyed nearly two dozen GOP chairmen, officials and operatives in key swing states who said the RNC hadn’t delivered on promises, imperiling their ability to launch the robust voter-turnout operation needed in the general election.


It’s a development that could spell trouble for Donald Trump, who trounced his primary competition despite the lack of a traditional field organization but is now relying on the national party for its infrastructure, and it has implications for the fragile Republican Senate majority, which is also depending on the RNC’s ground game.

In traditionally Republican states that could become competitive this election season, concern is mounting. Arizona’s state party chairman, Robert Graham, has only one RNC-paid staffer on hand — and had to fight with the national party to keep that person employed.

“That’s what we have,” Graham said in an interview.

On Thursday, the RNC released a memo saying it intended to double its field staff in battleground states. Top Senate campaign officials reacted with skepticism, saying that even with the boost promised, the GOP is still behind on the timeline. And in the battleground states, party operatives said they remain unclear the added commitment will bring the ground operations to levels promised in the fall.

The source of the problem is a fundraising shortfall months in the making, as an unusually lengthy primary kept big donors focused on preferred candidates rather than organized around the nominee. And, going forward, things might not get easier: With many of the party’s financiers cool on Trump, how much money the party will raise is an open question. Now the situation, state GOP officials say, is critical.

— In New Hampshire, party officials settled on a plan with the RNC to fund 20 field staffers who would be spread out by region, according to two people familiar with the budget, one of whom read the document to POLITICO. They would be accompanied by a handful of regional directors and a few others who would be responsible for such things as data maintenance and communications help. At this point, though, New Hampshire Republicans say they’ve gotten virtually no field workers.

— In Ohio, where Trump is banking on a win and GOP Sen. Rob Portman finds himself in a treacherous reelection contest, the RNC had promised to fund more than 170 field staffers to arrive by July 1, according to multiple party operatives. At this point, there’s only around 25. “If you’re on the ballot in Ohio this year, it’s a real concern,” said Kevin DeWine, a former Ohio Republican Party chairman. “It needs to get fixed fast, and hurry to give voters and donors a sign that Trump plans to compete and contest in Ohio.”

— In Wisconsin, state Republicans and the national party agreed on a sweeping ground program that would place nearly 100 RNC-funded field staffers across the state, according to one person who helped to finalize the plan. At this point, though, the state party counts only a handful of organizers, a small team of regional staffers, and a few others.

— In Pennsylvania, party officials had hoped for more than 175 RNC-sponsored field staffers but now have only a small fraction of that, according to senior state party official and a national party official.

— In Florida, the state party had been operating on the understanding that at least 100 RNC-paid staffers would be in place by July. Now, they count only around 30, according to a former state party official involved in reviewing the budget and a current national party official.

— In North Carolina, the promise was at least 100 RNC-paid field staff, yet Republicans there have only around half of that, according to a senior party operative in the state and a national party official.

— Colorado party chairman Steve House said the RNC currently had around a dozen field staffers in the state. He described the figure as “slightly behind schedule” but wouldn’t comment further.

Meanwhile, Democrats appear to be expanding on their infrastructure advantage. While side-by-side comparisons are inexact because Democrats coordinate their ground game differently from Republicans, few Republicans dispute that they face an uphill climb.

In Florida, the Democratic National Committee has more than 80 field staff on the ground, and state party executive director Scott Arceneaux projected a team of close to 200 by the middle of June. In Ohio, there are more than 70 full-time field staffers working the state. In New Hampshire, there are 25, with at least 60 expected to be crisscrossing the state by July.

And in Arizona, Democrats have 67 field staff in place, and have a goal of reaching 200 by August, according to the state party chair.

“Arizona is sometimes taken for granted as a red state, but if Republicans and the national party aren’t careful that will no longer be the case,” said Chad Heywood, a former Arizona Republican Party executive director.

The staff crunch comes down to money. The long primary season delayed until last week the party’s formation of a joint fundraising agreement with Trump, which enables him to raise money for the RNC in large increments. Even as he begins holding his first fundraisers for the party, there’s deep-rooted uncertainty that Trump will be able to raise the $1 billion many GOP operatives say they think he’ll need. Last month, the committee reported having just $16 million, a fraction of what it had at the same point in the 2008 and 2012 campaigns.

In an interview, Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker, the National Republican Senatorial Committee chairman, praised RNC Chairman Reince Priebus for his oversight at a politically complex time for the party but acknowledged the shortfall.

“I’m sure he’d like to have more money,” he said, “and so would I.”

Behind the scenes, Priebus has gone on defense. On Tuesday evening, the chairman appeared at a semi-regular gathering of prominent Republican operatives, lobbyists and donors. At the dinner, hosted by veteran lobbyist Rick Hohlt at the Hay-Adams hotel, Priebus launched into a protracted defense of his efforts to improve the party’s field organization.

During his remarks, according to one person present, Priebus pointed to Ohio and Florida as two states where the RNC had upped its investments from the 2012 campaign, when it found itself outmatched by Democrats. He said reporters are scrutinizing the durability of the party’s get-out-the vote efforts and walked the group of strategists — many of them tasked with helping to oversee critical congressional races — through a numbers-filled presentation, aiming to assure them that the party is on safer ground.

POLITICO reached out to the RNC for comment on Wednesday, requesting a breakdown of how many field staffers it had in swing states, how many it had promised state parties, and how many it had in comparison to 2012. The committee did not respond to the request or to a followup. On Thursday afternoon, it provided a memo to The Hill in which it promised to double the number of field staff in 11 battleground states and increase the number of paid staff in battleground states from 216 to 466.

Several top Senate campaign strategists said they received no advance word of the memo. The National Republican Senatorial Committee also did not know about the memo before seeing it in The Hill, according to two committee officials.

Some Senate Republicans have taken it upon themselves to set up their own get-out-the-vote programs rather than rely on the national party. John McCain, facing his most serious reelection fight in decades, recently hired a slate of additional field staffers, which he’s spread out across the state. Portman has adopted a unique approach, announcing that he’s hiring an eye-popping 500 interns.

The RNC has attributed the staffing shortfall to the complications brought on by a primary that was far more unpredictable than anyone expected. During the committee’s spring meeting in Hollywood, Florida, last month, its treasurer, Tony Parker, warned about the prospect of a contested convention, a “black swan event,” he said, that would delay the deployment of staffers to swing states until late summer.

Those explanations have done little to assuage the Senate campaign committee’s concerns.

Recently, NRSC staffers fumed when the RNC announced that it was forming a fundraising initiative to help out Senate candidates amid the staffing crunch. The RNC didn’t give the NRSC a heads-up before announcing the program, leaving staffers there confused and wondering whether their turf was being stepped on.

“First anyone here heard of it was in The New York Times,” said an NRSC official.



CORRECTION: The original version of this story misidentified the former chair of the Ohio Republican Party. He is Kevin DeWine, not Mike DeWine.

