Trump Campaign Breaks Online Fundraising Record, Sets Its Sights on Minnesota
With a massive haul of cash under its belt, the Trump campaign is targeting riot-ravaged Minnesota, which has not sided with a GOP candidate since 1972.
Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien said the campaign raised $26 million on Thursday, around the time of the presidential debate, and pulled in 30 percent more digitally than in any prior 24-hour period, according to The Hill.
“October is already Trump Victory’s largest online fundraising month ever,” the campaign announced in an email, Fox News reported.
The campaign said Minnesota is first in line for a campaign ad blitz. Trump lost the state by 45,000 votes in 2016.
“The new buy is going to be a heavy buy. I emphasize heavy,” Stepien said.
“You won’t be able to turn on the TV without seeing a Trump ad.”
The campaign is also sending 60 staffers to the state to follow up on those ads.
“Our ground game is another component to why we feel so good … those 60 staffers are knocking on doors, getting ballots returned and what gives us heightened confidence,” Stepien said.
“We now have heavy air cover for the troops that have been blanketing the state for the past two years. Joe Biden has been running a lot of TV ads. He’s got nothing on the ground. We’re now giving added air cover to the people who have been making sure that those ballots that have been sent, those voted early are returned and putting the president in position for a victory on Election Day,” he added.
Further, Vice President Mike Pence will head to Minnesota on Monday to rally support there, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
Earlier this fall, Minnesota Republican Senate candidate Jason Lewis said that even a state with as liberal a track record as Minnesota is shifting ground.
“It’s sort of a microcosm of the entire country. As the urban liberals become a little bit more crazy, it drives everybody else into Trump country and red country,” Lewis told “Fox & Friends.”
Lewis thinks Trump’s chances to win the state keep improving.
“And especially so since Donald Trump has done the most important thing he could for the GOP, and he’s brought the working man and woman back to the party,” he said.
Lewis said that the law and order message Republicans are supporting resonates with voters after a summer of riots.
“I think we are going to win, and I think the president is going to win,” Lewis said.
Others say Democrats have handed the state to Trump.
“The Democratic party left us. Even in the past four years it’s changed so much. Supporting people who riot? Defunding the police? That’s crazy. I think a lot of us up here are Democrats in Republican clothing now,” Larry Cuffe, the mayor of Virginia, Minnesota, told The Guardian.
Cuffe, along with five other longtime Democratic mayors from the North Star State, signed a letter in August announcing their support for Trump.
“Like many in our region, we have voted for Democrats over many decades. We have watched as our constituents’ jobs left not only the Iron Range, but our country. By putting tariffs on our products and supporting bad trade deals, politicians like Joe Biden did nothing to help the working class. We lost thousands of jobs, and generations of young people have left the Iron Range in order to provide for their families with good paying jobs elsewhere,” the mayors wrote.
“Today, we don’t recognize the Democratic Party. It has been moved so far to the left it can no longer claim to be advocates of the working class. The hard-working Minnesotans that built their lives and supported their families here on the Range have been abandoned by radical Democrats. We didn’t choose to leave the Democratic Party, the party left us.”
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