Inside the Trump campaign

“Rubio’s going to win, you know?” That was the take the immigration officer on the Vermont border had as we headed south. Telegenic, with money and party support behind him, how could Marco Rubio lose? Every four years, our crew of Canadian government staffers, lobbyists, and political consultants visits New Hampshire to watch the start of the race to elect the American president. We make the trip to see the drama of the primary season, and learn about new techniques and technology that we can bring back home. Primaries are initial intra-party elections to determine, state-by-state, whom the party’s presidential candidate should be. But we weren’t interested in Marco Rubio, one of the contenders to be the Republican presidential nominee. This year, left unemployed by Liberal Justin Trudeau’s victory over our Conservative government, we wanted to figure out what was happening with Donald Trump, an outsider surging in the polls. We were vaguely familiar with Donald Trump, of course. He made a lot of money, and spent a lot as well. He built casinos, married models, and had a reality TV show. It wasn’t the biography of a normal frontrunner candidate, but whatever he was doing, it seemed to work as he tore apart the Republican establishment and held firmly onto first place. Despite weeks of phoning and emailing the Trump office, we reached New Hampshire in February without a response and with no idea of how to get involved. With nothing else to do, we checked into our hotel, toured the city of Manchester for a few hours, and settled into a Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant to watch the Super Bowl. During a break, we spotted a couple of young men in Trump jackets waiting in line for a table to open and approached hoping they could connect us with the campaign. They quickly introduced themselves as Donald Trump’s sons, Donald Jr. and Eric. Both were extremely friendly, chatted about themselves—who doesn’t enjoy hunting?—and the campaign, posed for a few photos, and arranged for their father’s staff to reach out. We visited the Trump office the next day, and after observing the operations were assigned the plum task of shadowing Ivanka Trump as she visited volunteers and attended polling stations. A five-day visit turns into months Trump won the New Hampshire Republican primary and we returned home briefly before setting out to South Carolina for a planned five-day visit that would drag into weeks and months, taking us to 28 different U.S. states. After a few days in the Palmetto State, the campaign attached us to its field team and sent us ahead to Houston, where it was only beginning to fully activate its operation. What we found in Texas was entirely familiar: beating the bushes for volunteers, training them, and getting them to phone and knock on doors. The Trump campaign had a few interesting new techniques, but took a great deal of pride in stripping away the expensive artifice that has grown around the modern American campaign. It became clear the Trump phenomenon is driven from the top: the candidate himself and how his time and energy are focused by senior staff—an art not as simple to replicate as copying a piece of software. Trump also had the advantage of presenting a set of policies known to be popular but entirely ignored by virtually every office-holding politician at the national level. “I like what he is saying, I just don’t like how he says it” was the usual refrain from even the most anti-Trump voters. His campaign budget was lean by American standards and spin-fed news articles criticized the strength of his field operation, but spending was generous compared to a Canadian election and the structure appeared robust. His organizational strength was at least equal to that of his opponents, and the mystery inside our walls was where his competitors were spending the hundreds of millions of dollars they had taken in from their backers. A sign greets delegates to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in July. Photograph courtesy of Matthew McBain and Devin Dreeshen Yet the eye of the news media was always on Donald Trump. That the press seemed to be operating in an entirely different world would become one the defining features of this election. His campaign was a magnet for reporters from all over the globe seeking some new angle, something scandalous about the candidate guaranteed to make headlines. Not one story came from all the effort, but watching it happen provided an amusing break in the daily routine. Our Houston office doubled as a storage facility for exotic cars and was surrounded by a 20-foot security fence with an electric gate. After closing the office one night, we found our car being chased down the road by a man on foot yelling “Stop! Stop!” A news crew from a European state broadcaster had been covertly staking out our parking lot, and only realized at the last minute that its car and equipment was about to be trapped inside for the weekend. Similarly, during a frenzy over whether Trump supporters were being encouraged to harass minority protesters at rallies, a crew dropped unannounced into our Ohio headquarters, only to leave unsatisfied when members discovered an office staffed almost entirely by a dozen black volunteers who had shown up that morning to lend a hand. Why his message resonated A rundown neighbourhood in Houston, Texas. The inequality and decay helped explain why Trump’s message of restoring a past American greatness resonated, say the authors. Photograph courtesy of Matthew McBain and Devin Dreeshen After a relaxing campaign in California came the Cleveland Republican National Convention, where Trump would officially accept his party’s presidential nomination. Only later we learned it had been portrayed as a hotspot of Republican division. The sole place we encountered delegates expressing less than full support for the nominee was our off-site gathering for international observers, where marginalized establishment figures were carted in to dish to foreigners who saw Trump as a gauche reminder of the populist insurgents they were fighting back at home. “I spoke to Mr. Trump for two hours about battleground states last week, and I left unsure whether he even understood the concept,” one high-profile Republican consultant shared to amused chuckles. Having visited Detroit many times, we were no strangers to urban decay. But the state of cities such as Milwaukee, or Houston—a city associated with oil wealth—was shocking. In Houston, new homes often sat next to collapsing shacks. Guarded by locked gates and wire, doorbells out of reach deep inside, even those residents doing well had cut themselves off from any contact with a local community. The widespread inequality and decay in such a rich country was astonishing, and explained why Trump’s message of restoring a past American greatness cut through a policy fog of managerial tinkering to appeal to so many voters. We were able to meet Trump on a number of occasions, as he spent significant time personally greeting and engaging with his campaign volunteers in early states. Even later, when his time became much more divided, he spent longer working the room after each rally than any major candidate we’ve encountered in Canada or the United States. Whatever faults people may assign him, he appears to have a genuine interest in and affection for his supporters, and enjoys reaching out and listening to them. Trump lawn signs in New Hampshire. Photograph courtesy of Matthew McBain and Devin Dreeshen And his supporters, they reciprocate that affection. Most don’t fit the stereotype of down-on-their-luck Americans fighting to get 1976 back. They are, generally, quite successful in their private lives and come from a diverse mix of ethnic, professional, and political backgrounds: our morning carpool in Wisconsin included a black woman, an Amish man, and a native American. Unlike most conservative campaigns, there wasn’t a great deal of talk about policy—tax cuts, abortion, or what have you—though everyone had their personal views. The unifying idea was that an insular group of political elites was mismanaging the country, and Donald Trump offered a rare opportunity to break open this establishment and begin addressing some of the fundamental challenges America is facing. Victory is near Arriving at the Trump victory party in New York City on the evening of the election, the only question reporters asked was “Do you really believe Trump still has a chance?” The ballroom of the midtown Manhattan Hilton may have been the only place in America where the answer was still “Yes!” Donald Trump and his family on stage at his victory party in New York City. Photograph courtesy of Matthew McBain and Devin Dreeshen Being on the ground in the days before the election, as most in that room had been, it was obvious that the media, pundits, and the pollsters who model and survey the electorate had become out of touch with the public. They were screaming in the public’s ear about Donald Trump, but not listening to what was being said in response. Driving through New Hampshire or northern Pennsylvania, one would think that Trump was running unopposed, a local hero about to be appointed president. His lawn signs, both official and homemade, hugged the roads. Tens of thousands lined up for hours to hear him speak. Crazy pickup trucks flying a half-dozen American flags and a large Trump sign in the bed were a fixture of Wal-Mart parking lots. An old woman held court at the Dunkin’ Donuts near our campaign office in Manchester, N.H., most days, approaching customers with a disarming “Crazy election, isn’t it?” before slowly settling into her well-practised pitch for Donald Trump. Crazy pickup trucks flying a half-dozen American flags and a large Trump sign in the bed were a fixture of Wal-Mart parking lots. Photograph courtesy of Matthew McBain and Devin Dreeshen While Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton dominated the radio ad space, she had little organic grassroots support. People may have been willing to vote for her, but far fewer were willing to get off the couch to do so. The enthusiasm gap was immense, and polls giving her six- or 12-point leads were as detached from reality as 1930s Soviet crop reports. Watching a room full of Trump insiders—lesser Baldwin brothers, YouTube stars, teenage campaign employees, and professional internet trolls—celebrate victory, it quickly became clear that his government will not be any more ordinary than his election. We made some friends, and saw a lot of America. But driving back the next morning, we looked forward to a bit of ordinary old Canada. Devin Dreeshen and Matthew McBain are Canadian conservative political activists. They were in the United States campaigning with the Trump team from February to November on and off. The Hill Times