Trump campaign plans rapid Florida expansion

[DonViejo]

Source: The Hill

Donald Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee have agreed to a belated and high-speed expansion in the critical battleground state of Florida, according to a senior Trump official.

In a meeting Friday morning at the Bohemian Hotel Celebration in Orlando, senior Trump campaign officials and the RNC agreed to open 25 Florida field offices and install more than 200 paid staff on the ground in the state by Labor Day, said Trump’s senior political adviser and Florida chief strategist Karen Giorno.

That aggressive expansion – coming at a time of trouble for the Trump campaign, which is falling behind Hillary Clinton in both national and key swing state polls – means roughly doubling the current Trump and RNC field staff in Florida over the course of three weeks.

A budget goal for Florida was also agreed upon in the RNC meeting, Giorno said, but she would not provide the dollar figure.

-snip-

Read more: http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/291367-trump-campaign-plans-rapid-florida-expansion

[Jim Dandy]

1. So much for an early start.

What a clusterduck.

[Bonhomme Richard]

2. LOL..Unfortunately the still have trump.n/t

[cstanleytech]

3. So lets pretend he wins Florida and loses the rest what will he do then? Oh i know he will

claim he really won all the states and that the election was "stolen".

[yellowcanine]

31. He will say "Tim Russert said that the candidate who wins Florida wins the election!"

"Florida, Florida, Florida!"

[C_U_L8R]

4. The wonderful thing about PR and Promotion...

they make a bad product fail faster.

[jpak]

5. Let's hope it's too little, too late

yup

[OnDoutside]

6. if they are even telling the truth....

[onecaliberal]

7. Hillary doesn't really need Floriduh.

[Wednesdays]

8. Florida is still worth fighting for

And the latest polls show Hillary leading there by wide margins. This latest tRump press release conjures the image of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

[onecaliberal]

10. Definitely.

[moonscape]

24. But we really need down ballot and how sweet would a Rubio defeat be! n/t

[onecaliberal]

29. Yes we surely do need to win down ballot.

Sending lil Rubio home for good would be epic.

[forest444]

9. Who's financing it?

Reinaldo Bermudez?

Didn't work for Romney.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/host-romney-event-convicted-drug-132842285.html

[PSPS]

11. LOL. Well, there goes the last hope for down-ticket republicans!

[ananda]

12. They must figure Florida can be rigged for them ..

.. like it was in 2000.

[Funtatlaguy]

13. This is about Rubio as much as Trump

RNC wants to keep their golden boy for 2020 run.
If Hillary were to win Florida big she could carry the Dem Senate candidate (neither of which are grade-A) past Rubio.

[groundloop]

15. That makes more sense than anything else

tRump is scaring the hell out of GOPers about losing the Senate.

[geek tragedy]

20. Yep. Rubio's career is over if he loses to Murphy nt

[matt819]

14. Window dressing

Wanna bet this won't happen? Day after Labor Day, check the website and start visiting and making calls. I would put money on the likelihood that they won't exist.

[Kathy M]

16. According to the article below one of the offices is going across the street from

the Pulse night club

"We're all about expanding, expanding our base and expanding our outreach efforts," Karen Giorno, a senior Trump adviser who leads the GOP presidential nominee's Florida strategy, told Bloomberg Politics.

The Orlando field office, which will officially open Monday, is tucked inside a tax preparer's storefront, sandwiched between a tattoo parlor and a cell phone accessory shop.

It was unoccupied and locked Friday, but posters are taped to the front windows, chairs are neatly arranged, and packages of bottled water and snack chips, still wrapped in plastic, wait on a side table.

From the front door, one can see the steady stream of mourners who still visit Pulse throughout the day and night. The dark building is surrounded by chain-link fence and a privacy screen that's now covered with rainbow flags and homemade signs of sympathy and remembrance. Candles and flowers are arranged on the sidewalk.

Sounds like Giorno signs people up at rally 's as "super volunteers " for knocking on doors etc ...

http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/Trump-Open-Field-Offices/2016/08/12/id/743418/

Also article on 15 offices to be opened in Ohio , there is a list of areas in article .

http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2016/08/donald_trump_campaign_has_open.html

[Doctor Jack]

17. There is a two word problem with this plan: Voter Registration

Trump's people finally realizing that they need a ground organization this late has a fatal flaw. Lets say he hires everyone, gets the offices leased, gets everyone trained, gets all of the data that he needs for an effective ground game, etc. And lets say, despite history showing us otherwise, his team is halfway decent. And lets say, unlike a normal and experienced candidate, it takes him 4 or 5 weeks to get this operation fully up and running (instead of months or even years like it should). Then he is still massively fucked because he would have only 2 or 3 weeks to get voters registered. How many people are you going to register in that amount of time? Few hundred? Few thousand if you are extremely lucky. That isn't going to do shit. There is a reason why Clinton has had operations in these states since at least last year. These things take time.

Let me give you an example of how difficult this type of thing is. I used to work for the Red Cross and I helped set up 2 donation centers. If you ignore all of the time it took to get permits to build the centers, the construction work, and just focus on getting people hired, trained, and ready to open the doors, it took 4 or 5 months. 4 or 5 months just to sift through applications, call people, interview people, get furniture moved in, get people trained, target donors for the first few weeks. It would take 4 or 5 months just to get through the final leg of setting up the operation and making sure the people working there were minimally competent. And we had probably a dozen people who were extremely experienced and who did nothing but set up new centers running the operation. And it took months, just to find employees, train them, and get the inside of the center set up. And that was to get 20 or so employees.

The point is, anyone that has tried to get a new operation like this up and running, knows that to do it right takes time. And by time I don't just mean a few days or a few weeks. Trump is going to need to find people to hire that aren't painfully incompetent or that are even willing to work for him (most probably already are on board with other campaigns at this point) , find volunteers, find office space, get the operation moved into the office, find voter data, etc etc etc.

Anything that he tries to set up in a matter of days or weeks is going to be an absolute shit show just like everything else he touches.

[Hugin]

19. Trumpsky only figures he needs a few people wearing Brooks Brothers...

I can hear him now... Hey, it worked before.

[Kathy M]

23. In Rger Stone 's own words .....

"At one point on November 22nd, Stone said, he heard from an ally in the building that Gore supporters were trying to remove some ballots from the counting room. “One of my pimply-faced contacts said, ‘Two commissioners have taken two or three hundred ballots to the elevator,’ “ Stone said. “I said, ‘O.K., follow them. Half you guys go on the elevator and half go in the stairs.’ Everyone got sucked up in this. They were trying to keep the doors from being closed. Meanwhile, they were trying to take the rest of the ballots into a back room with no windows. I told our guys to stop them—don’t let them close the door! They are trying to keep the door from being closed. There was a lot of screaming and yelling.” (In fact, the Gore official in the elevator, Joe Geller, was carrying a single sample ballot.) The dual scenes of chaos—both inside and outside the building—prompted the recount officials to stop their work. The recount in Miami was never re-started, depriving Gore of his best chance to catch up in the over-all state tally. "

Rest of article which is very interesting , gives a snapshot of Stone 's life in politics in his own words .

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/06/02/the-dirty-trickster

With the Don 's group involved anything is possible ....... I do not trust group and Don himself at all ....... do not want to even call it a campaign

[Hugin]

25. Yep, It's beyond troubling.

Especially, since there are indications of hidden players influencing events.

Thanks for the very informative link.

[yellowcanine]

18. Too little too late. Clinton and allies have already dropped 20 million in ads in Florida.

And they have been on the ground there for nearly a year.

Trump is making the same mistake Romney made - not getting on the air with ads right out of the convention.

By the time he gets his ads up most people will have seen many devastating ads covering all of his weaknesses. It will be very difficult to reverse that.

Also by the time he gets those offices and staff in place we will be well into September and bumping up against the first debate. It is doubtful that he can put together an effective GOTV program by election day. And GOTV is what wins elections in close battleground states.

[Wounded Bear]

21. And I'm sure they will be fantastic offices....

The Best, The finest campaign offices Florida has ever seen....


Sorry, I can't carry on the bombast like Trump can.

[brooklynite]

22. That's the "Come to Jesus" meeting?

An agreement to invest in staff in FL? Nothing about the other 49 States? Nothing about "campaign message" or "pivoting"?

[Hugin]

26. Maybe Conrad Trumpinski performed a 360 degree pivot?

I'm pretty clear on their campaign message though... and I would be banned from DU and most of the civilized Internet, if I repeated it here.

Oy!

[apcalc]

27. He has business interests in Florida.

Wanna bet his campaign headquarters are in some property he owns? He can charge and write off campaign events, continue to pay himself, and more.

[grubbs]

28. And as the trump campaign swings into action

Racist enclaves in Florida report shortages of ammo, confederate flags , bed sheets, hemp rope and torches.

[salin]

30. Odd, the report I read yesterday refered to 25 field offices... but not the same way.

Trumps folks wanted a field office in each of the 50 states - funded and staffed by the RNC. RNC said planned to have staffed field offices in 25 of the states, and offices run by volunteers in the other 25 states.

I am not saying this report is wrong - but it is coming from the Trump folks as opposed to the RNC which was the source for a Politico item yesterday.

Either way pretty late in the game to just be starting to do this. As of right now, are there any active field offices for Trump outside of Trump Tower?