This year, the RJC is running the most advanced, sophisticated,
and data-driven approach ever used to persuade and turn out Jewish
voters in battleground states. Our efforts are getting results – and
media attention.
• Omri Nahmias at the Jerusalem Post
reports:
With less than four weeks until Election Day, both the
Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) and the Jewish
Democratic Council of America (JDCA) are preparing for the final
stretch effort, including phone banking, TV ads with celebrities, and
targeted ads online.
…Matt Brooks, executive director for the RJC,
told the Post that there’s no change to the coalition’s plan due to
President Donald Trump’s illness. “Our plan was put
in place back in 2018, and we’ve been executing it since then. We are
committed to spending $10 million in our outreach efforts to the
Jewish community this election,” he said.
“We have recently announced the launch of a $3.5m. TV ad buy
in Florida, and we continue to execute our grassroots plan, which has
already resulted in over 400,000 direct voter contacts with likely
Trump supporters and persuadable Jewish voters.” He said that the
RJC’s efforts are focused on critical battleground states: Florida,
Pennsylvania, Michigan, Arizona and Georgia.
“Our mail program has just been started,” he added. “We plan
to mail over 500,000 pieces of mail to our target voter list in those
key battleground states and, given the technological innovations that
have been implemented this year, we’ve got the most sophisticated
voter ID turnout operation ever in history, so we know everybody who
we believe is a persuadable voter based on our voter ID calls or is a
committed Trump voter.”
Brooks said that the RJC system could tell if a voter
requested a vote by mail or absentee ballot and will know when that
ballot has been returned. “We will know on a real-time basis if they
have voted early, and so [we could] target specific messages – for
instance, to the people who requested an absentee ballot but haven’t
turned it in yet, who we think is the likely voter for us,” he noted.
“We’ll make sure to give them a message to remind them to turn
in their ballot. If they voted early, we would know we don’t have to
work on them to maximize turnout on Election Day, so we take them off
the ‘Election Day, get out the vote’ effort.”
…“This is basically a 48% Democrat 48% Republican polarized
electorate. So we’re working hard to win over the four or five percent
of the people in the middle who are undecided,” he said. “And I remain
confident that when the election is over, it will demonstrate that the
president increased his share of the Jewish vote compared to 2016…
there’s no question in my mind that this race is still competitive.”
• In a
report in the Times of Israel about the Modern Orthodox
Jewish community’s voting patterns, reporter Jacob
Magid writes:
Republican Jewish Coalition executive director Matt Brooks
said that his group is realistic in recognizing that Trump won’t be
able to receive the vast majority of the Jewish vote come November.
But he is confident that Trump would be able to build on the 24% of
the Jewish vote that he won in 2016, asserting that crossing the 30%
mark may prove key to victory in a close election.
“We don’t need a majority. [Republican Florida Governor
Ron] Desantis won [the 2018
election] by less than 40,000 votes, thanks in no small part to the
Jewish community,” Brooks said.
“Because we see a clear correlation between the level of one’s
religious observance with the likelihood that they’ll vote Republican,
Orthodox Jews are absolutely among those we’ll be targeting to come
out for the president,” Brooks said.
He did not differentiate between strands of Orthodoxy, but said
that the propensity of the movement’s members to live in swing states
such as Florida, along with their tendency to vote in higher numbers
than other subgroups, gives them outsized influence on election day.
• Our newest
ads in Florida, “Deal
of the Century” and “Fights
for Us” were the subject of a
JTA report this week.
•
According to the New Jersey Globe, a debate this week
between Rep. Andy Kim (D-NJ-3) and his Republican
Jewish challenger David Richter included an exchange
about the RJC’s television ad running in that district, which points
out Kim’s record as an Obama administration official. Kim’s bad advice
at that time helped ISIS rise up in Iraq.