The strategist who drove DeSantis’ ill-fated bid is working with Musk to organize Trump voters

Victor Boolen

The strategist who drove DeSantis’ ill-fated bid is working with Musk to organize Trump voters

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Ron DeSantis’ senior political aides gathered last year at the Florida governor’s campaign headquarters, an office across the street from the Red Lobster north of Tallahassee, to plan an announcement of his candidacy for president.

Some wanted the Republicans to go to the baseball stadium in Tampa, near where he grew up and starred in Little League, because they hoped for a photo rally with his young family. Campaign manager Generra Peck championed a different idea — one she had been quietly working on for weeks with Elon Musk, the then-new owner of the platform then known as Twitter, according to people familiar with the matter. The people spoke on condition of anonymity to reveal their inner thoughts.

DeSantis opted for an audio-only chat with Musk on Twitter Spaces. The phone call, which initially aroused interest and curiosity, turned out to be a disaster. The feed went down due to technical glitches, creating an inauspicious opening to DeSantis’ ill-fated campaign.

Peck, who was demoted three months after DeSantis’ nomination, and Musk are now working together again, this time at the super political action committee, America PAC, which is dedicated to electing Donald Trump, who defeated DeSantis en route to winning this year’s Republican nomination. .

Trump’s campaign is largely leaving paid election and get-out-the-vote efforts to outside groups like America PAC, relying on new Federal Election Commission guidelines that allow campaigns to coordinate with outside groups in ways previously not allowed. But in doing so, the campaign has outsourced a core function to a bunch of untested groups operating independently. Indeed, DeSantis’ decision to enlist an outside group for him was cited as one of the reasons his presidential bid failed.

The slim margins that an effective turnout program can achieve could be especially important in a tight presidential race with Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris drawing more enthusiasm than President Joe Biden’s bid for re-election.

America PAC aims to identify likely Trump supporters

America PAC’s mission is to identify likely Trump supporters in key states through door-to-door research and digital engagement. It is one of a handful of organizations to which Trump’s team has turned over the bulk of the organizing effort, including Turning Point Action and the Faith and Freedom Coalition.

Its work – and Musk’s role – has attracted unusual interest.

“America PAC uses the information it collects to register voters and encourage them to vote,” lawyers for the group wrote in an Aug. 7 letter sent to a staffer for Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, whose office was cited in August. 4 A CNBC story examines the group’s efforts. “While not all of our plans or strategies are public at this time, any scrutiny of our efforts will prove premature and ill-advised.”

Benson’s office, which released the letter, responded two days later, saying it announced the review “in response to concerns that America PAC’s website misled potential Michigan voters into believing they were registered to vote, when in fact they were not.”

“Thank you for confirming that the website offers voter registration and that your client intends to use the information collected to actually register voters,” Benson’s office added in the letter.

Musk has denied reports that he is funding pro-Trump efforts to the tune of $45 million a month this year. But he has been vocal in both supporting Trump and amplifying conservative voices on a platform he renamed X from Twitter.

“The PAC’s key values ​​are supporting meritocracy and individual liberty,” Musk wrote in July. “Republicans are mostly, but not entirely, on the side of merit and liberty.”

A year after Trump repeatedly mocked DeSantis’ failed deployment, he appeared on the same platform this week to speak with Musk. But their call was also plagued by interference and was delayed for 40 minutes, followed by a lengthy conversation in which Trump’s voice often sounded slurred.

“Based on these two hours of X messing around, if you get Musk as a client, it’s probably good. But if you don’t, you can see how that’s good, too,” said Mark Campbell, who ran the 2021 campaign for Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-Va.). .” Because Elon Musk’s politics extend. , he’s 0-2.”

A spokeswoman for America’s PAC declined to comment. Peck did not respond to messages seeking comment.

America PAC Brings DeSantis Alumni

In mid-July, America PAC dropped the reporters it had hired for digital strategy, polling, polling and advertising. In addition to hiring other firms, it replaced those vendors with firms associated with Phil Cox, another former DeSantis campaign aide and former director of the Republican Governors Association, who is Peck’s business partner in a company called P2.

Peck is not the only leader of the PAC. In addition to Peck and Cox, Dave Rexrode, another top contributor to the Youngkin campaign, is also a senior adviser.

People familiar with the matter say Peck — and DeSantis — have maintained close relationships with Musk.

About a month before DeSantis launched his campaign on Twitter Spaces, Peck held a late-night Zoom meeting with Musk, who visited him overseas, along with Musk’s friend and tech billionaire David Sacks and Adam Laxalt, chairman of the DeSantis party super PAC, about Musk’s situation. interest in contributing to DeSantis’ looming presidential campaign.

After that meeting, Peck told members of DeSantis’ political team that he expected Musk to be the biggest player in the super PACs’ 20-year history. Groups can take unlimited amounts and defend a candidate as long as they don’t match. campaigns.

From then on, Peck guarded Musk carefully, people familiar with the operations said.

While typically senior political operatives with connections to major donors hand those relationships over to the campaign’s CFO, Peck, in Musk’s case, did not retain his role as one of the DeSantis campaign’s conduits to Musk. “It was all him,” one person said.

Likewise, Peck typically did not include senior advisers from Never Back Down, the super PAC to which DeSantis had entrusted his organizational efforts in the early states, to participate in the calls with Musk. While there are rules preventing coordination between campaigns and super PACs, they can be accommodated on conference calls by asking PAC officials to hang up during strategy discussions.

Peck kept communications with Musk private to the point that top aides were not allowed to discuss Musk’s interest in the campaign.

“Nobody was able to talk to get in touch with the Elon stuff,” the source said. “During the deployment and immediately after, it was clear that Generra spoke exclusively to them.”

Others in DeSantis’ political orbit said Musk didn’t need to be associated with the Florida governor’s campaign because the billionaire defies the profile of even the biggest political donors. They say those who say Musk was out of touch with key people may have expressed resentment that they didn’t have more contact with him.

Others question how much America’s PAC matters

Ultimately, Musk is not listed in Federal Election Commission filings as having donated to either the DeSantis campaign or Never Back Down.

Peck previously worked as policy director for Republican Ed Gillespie’s losing bid for governor of Virginia in 2017.

“If he’s also trying to develop Elon Musk, I’m not sure it’s that different from what a lot of political consultants are doing, which is combining two different sides of their business, the political side and the corporate side,” Campbell said.

Surveillance and voter outreach are the most visible parts of the campaign, although some strategists say observers consider the so-called “ground game” too much. Campbell argued that both candidates — and not outsiders — will determine the fate of the race.

“Anything related to Musk is side noise,” he said.

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