PHILADELPHIA — Blocks away from the Wells Fargo Arena, a mobile billboard passes by and cheers break out among Bernie Sanders supporters who’ve spent the better half of their day protesting in 90-degree heat. A single word — “enough” — adorns either side of the semi-trailer. The “H” is Hillary Clinton’s campaign logo.
The traveling billboard is insignificant when one considers the other avenues Republican National Committee officials plan to use to target disenchanted Democrats between now and November. But each piece of the puzzle counts, noted chief RNC strategist Sean Spicer.
While Donald Trump attempts to court Sanders supporters in 140-character form, the RNC has begun scouring through its expansive voter database to identify Americans who may be vulnerable to persuasion — and then persuading those Americans to cast their ballots for Trump.
“Going back to 2000, we have had a very close election every time. So if we take 5, 6 or 7 percent of Bernie voters who are fed up with what’s going on in the system, and they come over and vote for Trump because they share in that frustration, that puts us in a really good position,” Spicer told the Washington Examiner inside a warehouse where the RNC set up shop during their opponent’s convention.
After a turbulent start to this week’s convention, marked by the resignation of Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and daily (sometimes violent) demonstrations, Spicer said the RNC is in an ideal position to capitalize on the lingering division among Democrats.
“Look at what’s going on,” he warned. “This is not rhetoric, this is an ideological divide in the Democratic Party.”
The voter vault Republicans will rely on to identify potential Democratic defectors is a trove of information on more than 200 million Americans, all of whom have been scored based on “what messages they respond to, how frequently they vote and who their key influencers are,” Spicer explained.
“Right now, every voter has a voter score and when we find somebody that we think can be persuaded to come over to us, we’re absolutely going to go after them,” he said. “Whether that’s a Sanders supporter or someone who generally dislikes Hillary Clinton.
The RNC will begin by narrowing its target audience down from Sanders voters to voters who backed the Vermont senator in the primary but haven’t ruled out supporting Hillary Clinton in the general. “Within that subset we will then find out how many of them we can turn,” Spicer said.
Next comes the development of a get-out-the-vote message that thousands of GOP volunteers will deliver when they knock on the doors of pro-Sanders Democrats and independents, or send mailers to their homes.
“It depends with each individual voter,” said Spicer. “But we had tremendous success in 2014 in the Senate and governor’s races looking at each voter and figuring out what it took to get them on board.”
This election cycle, volunteers in major battleground states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Florida will likely focus on issues like trade, which Trump and Sanders have both said should be free, but “fair.”
“We need trade policies that are fair for the American worker, fair for poor people around the world, and not just designed to make the CEOs of multinational corporations even richer than they are today,” Sanders told Massachusetts voters one month before the Iowa caucuses.
“We need fair trade, not free trade. It’s gotta be fair,” Trump loves to tell voters at his rallies.
Without using language too harsh it turns voters away, it’s plausible the RNC will also focus on Clinton’s cozy relationship with Wall Street in the message they tailor to Sanders supporters. Both Sanders and Trump have accused the former secretary of state of being too beholden to special interests to bring change to the current political system or fight for the middle class.
“You’re not going to have a government that represents all of us, so long as you have candidates like Secretary Clinton being dependent on big money interests,” the 74-year-old socialist told CNN in April.
As both conventions come to an end and Americans prepare for what many expect will be an unprecedented mudslinging contest, Spicer had one message for Sanders supporters: expect us to work for your vote all the way up through election day.
“We’re going to look at every voter until we find out what message will persuade them,” he said.
