Q&A: Journalist Isaac Arnsdorf Reports on MAGA's Ground Game to End Democracy
Trump's swing state army has made the GOP purer. But is it a strategy for winning?
Isaac Arnsdorf is a national political reporter at The Washington Post covering the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement and Donald Trump. He is the author of a new book, Finish What We Started: The MAGA Movement's Ground Game to End Democracy. In the book, he profiles MAGA activists in swing states who are trying to take over the Republican party from the ground up -- and expel the party stalwarts who do not believe that the 2020 election was stolen. Arnsdorf writes that the mass radicalization of the Republican rank and file makes Trump a stronger and more dangerous candidate than before. Before joining the Post in 2022, Arnsdorf reported on politics and influence for ProPublica and Politico. I spoke with Arnsdorf last week over Zoom. Our conversation follows, condensed and edited for clarity.
Luke Johnson: What is the precinct strategy?
Isaac Arnsdorf: The precinct strategy is a blueprint for taking over the Republican Party from the bottom up. The Republican National Committee (RNC) is just the top of the pyramid -- it goes all the way down to the state, district, county, and precinct level. This was an idea that someone had come up with a long time ago, but found its moment in the aftermath of January 6, when a lot of Trump supporters were struggling to understand what had happened.
Steve Bannon plucked this precinct strategy out of obscurity as the answer as to why Trump failed on January 6, which was that Trump was sold out by fellow Republicans.There's some truth to that -- the only reason that Trump failed to keep himself in power was because of a handful of Republicans who refused to cooperate. Steve Bannon and an Arizona Republican, Dan Schultz, presented the precinct strategy as the answer.
The immediate result was that thousands of people took up this call. It turned people out to physically show up to their party meetings and take positions. The effect that it has had has been to drive a lot of Republicans out of the party organization who were not election deniers. It has helped produce Republican candidates in the 2022 midterms who were election deniers, and to smooth Trump's path back to the presidential nomination.
This strategy has been very successful in consolidating Trump's support within the party and creating a more disciplined and organized vehicle for his base than existed before. In some ways, it makes him a more formidable candidate than before. On the other side, it has antagonized a lot of fellow Republicans, and it has made the party purer and smaller. That has a lot to do with why Republicans surprisingly lost in 2022. It is a huge challenge that the Trump campaign has to deal with now if they want to win in November.
LJ Are there one or two activists running this precinct strategy whom you profiled to stand out to you?
IA: Dan Schultz is the architect of this strategy. He was inspired by Barry Goldwater and the militia movement that grew up in the 1990s around gun rights. How he came to develop this precinct strategy became clarifying in connecting the historical continuity of the MAGA movement.
The two other main characters are foils for each other. One is a woman in Georgia named Salleigh, who heard Dan Schultz interviewed by Steve Bannon on his podcast. She was inspired by believing that the 2020 election was stolen to become active in her local party, and has in a few years worked her way up the party ladder to become a rising star and a prominent figure in Georgia Republican politics. She represents the new wave and how they are struggling now that they've gotten inside the system, which is often more complicated than it looks on the outside.
On the flip side, there's a woman in Arizona named Kathy, who is a lifelong McCain Republican -- being a Republican is core to her identity. Since 2020, she's been called a RINO (Republican In Name Only) and treated like she's not a real Republican. She was run out of the local party organization. She represents the toll that this transformation of the party takes on the old guard -- she says OG like "original gangster" -- Republicans, and also the struggle that they have with feeling like they don't have anywhere to go anymore in American politics. They're not Democrats, and they don't like voting for Democrats. A lot of them did in 2022. What they end up doing this November could have a really material impact on the 2024 election.
LJ: In Arizona, Kari Lake is running for Senate. A recent poll showed that 27% of Republicans in Arizona have a negative view of her. She is projected to win her primary. However, there's a Democrat, Ruben Gallego, who is running quite strongly. How do you think election denial will impact that race?
IA: The caricature of Kari Lake as a gubernatorial candidate in 2022 was, to quote Trump, if you asked her about the weather or her family, she'd say, fine, but the election was stolen. All she wanted to talk about was election fraud. Now, she seems to have learned her lesson from that very narrow loss, where she's distancing herself from [election denial] a little bit, although she still has a lawsuit trying to overturn the results. She went on a charm offensive of reaching out to a lot of the traditional Arizona Republicans who she alienated, including Kathy herself, who had a meeting with Kari Lake. This happened after I finished the book, but Kathy did not get the kind of apology and ownership of her mistakes that she wanted to hear. If Kari Lake is serious about winning back Arizona Republicans like Kathy, she has a lot more work to do.
LJ: Is she going to vote for her?
IA: I'll let Kathy speak for herself.
LJ: How did she come away from that meeting?
IA: Very disappointed and frustrated. Kari Lake didn't seem to really understand who Kathy was, which was weird, because she asked to meet with Kathy. When Kathy presented her with how her campaign had personally attacked Kathy, Kari seemed not to be aware of that. It left Kathy feeling very confused about why she asked for this meeting, if she weren't prepared to do what would be necessary to reconcile. It felt to Kathy like Kari thought she could get credit from having some meetings and then get a headline in Politico (which she did), but not actually reflecting and making changes.
LJ: I see. So Kathy is still undecided.
IA: Again, voting is a personal decision. But I would be shocked if Kathy ever voted for Kari.
LJ: How has Donald Trump encouraged the precinct strategy personally?
IA: He did formally endorse it in February 2022. As with a lot of Trump's endorsements on paper, there was a lot of lobbying that went into that. He didn't write the statement. Dan wrote that statement. I can't guarantee that he ever saw the statement or approved the statement, but there's a statement in his name. What Dan really wanted to happen would be to have Trump stand up at a rally and say, "Raise your hand if you're a member of your precinct committee. You should all do that." That never happened. Part of the point of the precinct strategy is to institutionalize the movement in a way that doesn't come natural to Trump, who thinks about things in terms of himself.
LJ: He did personally call Salleigh, and you describe that in your book. Can you describe that moment?
IA: That came about when Salleigh won her election to be the county chair in Cobb County, Georgia, near Atlanta, which is an important county in Georgia Republican politics. The state chair let Trump know that there was this woman who was newly inspired by believing the election was stolen, and gave Trump her number. He ended up calling to congratulate her. It really meant so much to her to validate Salleigh individually -- that didn't happen with formally endorsing the precinct strategy -- that she was doing something that mattered to him. Trump does have this ability to make the world stop for his supporters, which happens not infrequently.
LJ: You recently wrote a story with Josh Dawsey on the tension between Trump saying that the 2024 election will be rigged and how that could hamper get-out-the-vote efforts. If people think the election will be rigged, they might not vote, and they might not vote early [or by mail]. How do you think this will play out?
IA: It's a huge problem, and it starts in the story of the book. In the aftermath of the 2022 midterms, Republicans realize that Democrats are voting for 30 days, and they're voting for one day. But where did Republicans get the idea that they're always supposed to vote in person on Election Day? From Trump, obviously.
There's been an increasing recognition that if Republicans are serious about winning, they need to encourage people to vote, however it is convenient for them so that they cast their votes. But that doesn't stop Trump from continuing to vilify those voting methods, because it's core to him claiming that the 2020 election was rigged. They're trying to have it both ways.
The message from the RNC is that Republicans think that election integrity is important, and should get back to one-day voting with paper ballots. But in order to get there, Republicans need to play by the rules as written. They say that Republican voters can hold both ideas in their head at the same time. But Republican campaign professionals are struggling with this because they go door to door to Trump supporters and ask them to vote by mail for Trump. And they say, "I don't trust the mail."
LJ: The precinct strategy activists are really focused on winning, like pretty much everybody in politics. But they lost in the 2022 midterms, and they have this tension about get-out-the-vote efforts. How do your subjects reconcile these different ideas?
IA: Part of what's going on with the precinct strategy is a recognition that rank and file Republicans lost faith in the election system. Let's just put to the side who it was that torched their faith in the election system, because they don't want to deal with that. But if you just start from the notion that it was a fraud, then one of the ways that Bannon, [former RNC chairwoman] Ronna McDaniel, and a lot of Republican leaders came up with to deal with that is to bring people inside the system. If you have MAGA people who are their local party leaders, telling people that your vote is secure, then that will help reassure Republicans that their vote will count, and that will encourage them to vote.
Has that been successful? They still lost in 2022 where it counted. I think the answer is that because they're refusing to deal with the underlying issue -- all of this is about election denial. It's costing them with moderates, independents, and even some Republicans who they still need if they're going to win elections.
LJ: Has the precinct strategy had any electoral wins?
IA: It has had a ton of success in party elections. There have been changes in leadership in Michigan, Arizona, and Georgia. Many of the key state parties have had new leaders who came up through precinct strategy support. But those leaders are now struggling with raising money and infighting among traditional Republicans vs. MAGA Republicans. In red areas, the party has continued to consistently move further right towards MAGA conformity. But there are a few places that decide the Senate, House, and Electoral College. In those places, the precinct strategy has had this dual effect of mobilizing the base but antagonizing the center.