LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Republican activists in battleground states say they see few teams canvassing on Donald Trump’s behalf to encourage unlikely voters to turn out to vote, and they expressed concern that the party’s presidential candidate is relying on outside groups for a key part of his campaign.
President Trump and his Republican National Committee have chosen to share get-out-the-vote efforts in key battleground states this year with groups such as America PAC, an organization backed by billionaire Elon Musk.
Watch: Trump speaks at rally in North Carolina, a battleground state
It’s hard to prove that something isn’t going on, but with less than 50 days until the Nov. 5 election, dozens of Republican officials, activists and operatives in Michigan, North Carolina and other battleground states say they’ve seen little or no canvassing from the group. In Arizona and Nevada, a Musk-backed political action committee replaced its canvassing company just last week.
“I haven’t seen anybody,” said Nate Wilkowski, Republican field director for Michigan’s high-turnout Oakland County, which includes a key Detroit suburb. He was speaking specifically of America PAC. “Nobody has let me know they’re around Oakland County.”
Trump has relied on the loyalty of his ardent supporters in an election expected to be decided by turnout. But evidence of what was described as a sophisticated operation is scant, and some party activists have questioned its value. The Trump campaign sees its race with Vice President Kamala Harris as a 50-50 contest among voters, but believes it has an edge among those who did not vote in 2016 or 2020, making it even more important to reach out to them.
The effort is especially important in Michigan, a state where Trump was defeated by fewer than 160,000 votes in 2020 and where Republicans are struggling with debt and started the year with an ugly fight for the rightful state party chairman.
Michigan Republican Party Chairman Pete Hoekstra said he had heard that USA PAC workers arrived and were working in late August. A PAC spokesman said workers are in the seven most competitive states: Michigan, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The spokesman declined to say how many workers there are in each state.
Megan Reckling, a Republican campaign company owner in Michigan, said she saw two USA PAC canvassers in Oakland County on Tuesday. Wearing blue polo shirts with “USA” emblazoned across them, they were working in an area where Reckling’s own data showed people less motivated to vote, she said.
“He was clearly having a very pleasant conversation with the woman who answered the door. They probably spoke for about five minutes,” Reckling said. “From what I observed, they were clearly having a face-to-face conversation.”
But in interviews with more than two dozen activists and party officials across seven battleground states, such reports were rare.
“I don’t know what the PACs are doing,” said Mark Forton, Republican chairman of Macomb County, Michigan, a populous suburb northeast of Detroit. “I don’t know if they’re going door-to-door.”
Trump aides say the campaign has an estimated 30,000 volunteer field marshals who are identifying voters who are unlikely to vote at the local level, including by canvassing neighbors.
James Blair, the campaign’s political manager, estimates that about 2,500 paid canvassers, mostly from America PAC, are working in seven states. The PAC has paid more than $14 million to campaign firms since mid-August for the presidential campaign’s activities, according to expenditure reports the PAC filed with the Federal Election Commission.
Blair denied that the campaign was handing work to outside groups, saying instead that the campaign was “leveraging the resources within those groups to increase the frequency of contact and the overall coverage we hope to have.”
“We’re very focused on disengaged voters because that’s what makes the most strategic sense in terms of how the president wins these states and the efforts of these groups are helping us reach them,” Blair said.
USA PAC is run by a former executive of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ failed presidential campaign. The Trump campaign also shares responsibility for reaching out to infrequent voters with groups such as Turning Point USA, led by prominent millennial conservative Charlie Kirk, and the Faith and Freedom Coalition, led by Christian conservative Ralph Reed.
The move comes in part because of a Federal Election Commission ruling this year that allows candidate campaigns and outside groups to work with super PACs to share voter rolls and data, particularly from door-to-door canvassing. That means campaigns can share much of the labor-intensive, expensive field work with groups that can accept unlimited donations.
Harris’s work in the seven states is being run by staffers hired by the campaign, which says it has about 2,200 staffers in more than 328 offices. Campaign officials said groups affiliated with labor unions are running the campaign independently.
Most of what outside groups backing Harris are doing is advertising. Based on ad bookings by Harris and the major super PAC backing her, Harris is on track to spend about $175 million more through Election Day than the Trump campaign and the major super PACs backing her. Since Harris entered the race on July 23, her campaign has spent twice as much on advertising as the Trump campaign, according to media tracking firm AdImpact.
The past week has been complicated for America PAC, the most high-profile group supporting Trump in 2024.
USA PAC fired Nevada-based campaign firm September Group, which it paid about $2.7 million to a month ago, according to Federal Election Commission reports, according to two people familiar with the matter. The people familiar with September Group’s firings spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private business decisions.
A spokesman for America PAC declined to confirm the move.
Trump is not the first candidate to outsource some of the routine functions of a campaign to outside groups, but other candidates who have tried the arrangement have had little luck.
Last year, DeSantis outsourced much of his Republican presidential campaign effort to a super PAC called Never Back Down, but a dispute arose between the committee and campaign officials just before the Iowa caucuses. Despite launching his campaign with roughly $100 million, DeSantis withdrew after losing his first contest in Iowa.
Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, in his unsuccessful bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, tried something very similar, handing much of his political platform over to a super PAC called Right to Rise, which raised more than $114 million in 2015.
Beaumont reported from Des Moines, Iowa. Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin, Mark Levy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Gary D. Robertson in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Jonathan J. Cooper in Phoenix contributed to this report.