Allies of Donald Trump have begun plotting to take down or weaken potential Democratic challengers in 2020, including several who will be on the ballot in next year’s midterms.

The 2018-focused work ranges from a major donor-funded super PAC designed to blemish Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s image, to a full-scale effort to defeat Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown outright before he gets the chance to take on Trump. Beyond that, after months of monitoring dozens of potential challengers, Trump allies are building research files and crafting lines of attack on Democrats seen as most threatening to Trump and who will be on the ballot next November.


The patchwork push is less organized than past efforts orchestrated by presidential reelection campaigns. But it’s beginning to resemble Republicans’ successful attempt to drag down Hillary Clinton before she announced her 2016 run. Plus, with Trump under siege from Democrats and Republicans — and with his team wary of a GOP primary challenge — it’s more confirmation that Trump allies are already maneuvering for a bruising 2020 campaign.

The bulk of the early preparations underway focus on seven possible 2020 Democrats who are up for reelection in 2018. Within the Republican National Committee and Trump-aligned outside groups in recent months, operatives have regularly met to discuss plans for constructing the research material, money and staff they’ll need to chip away at Democratic White House hopefuls’ reputations in 2018 and 2020.

“There’s wisdom in putting the 2018 Democratic candidates on notice — and some Republicans who are making noises as well — that there is going to be a well-funded, diverse set of groups that will be taking them on,” said Matt Schlapp, the American Conservative Union chairman and former George W. Bush political aide who is close with Trump’s White House.

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Trump’s official reelection team has already made some early moves. A March fundraising email branded a group of Democrats — including potential opponents, Sens. Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Bernie Sanders — as "radical liberals" for standing against Trump's Muslim travel ban. This month it released a cable television ad that called Warren a “career politician.”

Of the group of Democrats on the ballot next year, six are expected to win easily and use their campaigns to build war chests that can be used to run for president. The list includes Sanders, Gillibrand, Warren, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar and Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy.

None of the gambits to go after incumbents is more pointed than the little-noticed launch of a big-money group earlier this year set up specifically to tarnish Warren.

In June, a previously unknown super PAC called Massachusetts First — an apparent nod to Trump’s “America First” slogan — started running radio ads lashing the senator as a “hypocrite professor” for taking a high salary as a Harvard instructor before she was elected. While Warren is unlikely to face a competitive challenge, a barebones website associated with the organization says the group “is committed to providing voters the full and real story on Senator Elizabeth Warren’s failure as a United States Senator, and to bring to light her hypocrisy and out-of-touch policy positions.”

Federal filings show the group, which has run around $150,000 worth of radio ads, was organized in March. Of the roughly $200,000 it raised between then and July, $150,000 — the amount needed to fund the ads — came from Robert Mercer, a hedge fund billionaire whose political operation is closely tied to Trump’s, largely through former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon.

It was Mercer’s biggest donation of the year to any candidate or group, according to Federal Election Commission records.

But the GOP efforts extend far beyond Warren. At the White House and the RNC, political operatives are monitoring dozens of Democrats’ strategic moves and public pronouncements. At the committee, they’ve started filing public records requests on some. And leading GOP researchers have started identifying vulnerabilities for high-profile contenders in an attempt to harm their political prospects early.

“It hasn’t been difficult so far, as Democrats angling for 2020 are tripping over themselves to see who can spout the most extreme far-left positions and who can be the biggest obstructionist,” said RNC research director Mike Reed.

Operatives are aiming to replicate the pounce-early-and-often model they used against Clinton in 2014 and 2015, multiple GOP operatives familiar with the effort told POLITICO.

The RNC has already used memos to reporters and allies to start painting likely contenders including Gillibrand and Klobuchar as knee-jerk obstructionists. And it has also been working with opposition research firm America Rising to gather background on the candidates and explore strikes against them.

Leaders of pro-Trump America First Policies — the political nonprofit tied to the America First Action super PAC, where close White House allies including former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski landed — have also begun coordinating with America Rising about setting up 2020 plans and compiling research on likely candidates. America Rising has already publicly announced campaigns against Cuomo and Warren.

White House aides have lobbed a few warning shots, too. Bannon floated regulating Facebook as a public utility in a jab at CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who he sees as a possible opponent.

Leading Republican donors and money men have yet to see formal proposals for 2020. Trump's own political team has had to focus more on trying to keep the Republican Party behind him to pass his policy agenda, and less on drawing up comprehensive plans against Democrats.

"There's only one person that could beat Trump right now: It's Trump," explained Trump campaign pollster John McLaughlin, justifying the emphasis on wrangling his own party. "[Democrats] could have one, two, 30 opponents against him, but his ability to get reelected is based on getting his policies through."

Nonetheless, with the Trump-driven political climate so volatile, the Democratic front-runner to take on Trump could change repeatedly between now and 2020. That underscores the importance of starting the preparations, said Virginia Republican Party Chairman John Whitbeck.

“There’s no question that this kind of effort should be going on this early,” he said.

Republicans are also closely watching Brown. A finalist to be Hillary Clinton’s vice president in 2016, the Ohio senator is now running a close campaign for a third term in a battleground state that Trump carried after Barack Obama won it twice.

Seeing a chance to beat the populist senator before he could even consider a White House run, people close to Trump’s political team have signed up with two different Republican candidates vying to unseat Brown.

Jeff Roe — the Ted Cruz campaign manager who has been in close touch with members of Trump’s circles, including son-in-law Jared Kushner — is helping guide state treasurer Josh Mandel’s second attempt at beating Brown. And Lewandowski held a fundraiser for Mandel in Akron last month.

Other Trump allies are working to elect Cleveland banker Mike Gibbons, a 2016 Ohio co-chair for the joint committee run by Trump and the RNC. New Hampshire-based Michael Biundo, a former senior national political adviser to Trump’s campaign, is leading Gibbons’ bid, joined by strategists at the Prosper Group digital media firm that also worked for the president last year.

Because the other potential Democratic contenders are all likely to skate to reelection and the GOP’s short-term task is simply to dent their image or test messages against them, Trump allies see beating Brown as an ideal way to segue from the midterms to the presidential reelection bid.

“We have an opportunity [to unseat him], especially after last year, when we had so many blue-collar voters come over to our side,” said Ohio Republican Party executive director Rob Secaur, who led the national party's 2016 effort in the state Trump won by 8 percentage points. “It’s a bonus that it would stop a 2020 run from him."

