The first GOP debate is at risk of losing its draw

The GOP primary debate seemed originally like it could result in political fireworks. But with less than two months to go, it is veering toward something far less crowded and consequential.

The party’s rigid donor criteria stands to limit the number of GOP candidates that debate in Milwaukee this August. Its polling requirements could trip up campaigns, too. Several candidates are openly mocking the Republican National Committee’s idea of a loyalty pledge requirement to participate. The leading candidate, Donald Trump, is downplaying the idea that he will show up at all.

A stage that was once expected to be as sprawling as it was in the 2016 GOP primary could end up a slimmed-down affair, with the longshots not qualifying and the frontrunner following through on his threats to boycott. In all, the events could draw far fewer viewers than in years past — and take on far less significance in altering the outcome of the campaign.

“I think for those people who don't make the debate stage, it's very hard for them to make the case for why they should stay in the race, and I suspect they will have trouble raising money after that,” said former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who is still trying to secure the 40,000 donors needed to qualify for the first debate, set to be hosted by Fox News on Aug. 23.

The debate uncertainty is the product of a decidedly different approach the RNC is taking than it did eight years ago, the last time the party faced a seriously contested race for the nomination. During that primary, a horde of candidates appeared onstage, making for chaotic showdowns. There were so many candidates that the committee set up “undercard” debates — otherwise known as the “kiddie” table — featuring lower-polling candidates who appeared before the leading ones televised in primetime.

This time around, the RNC was intent on weeding out candidates who lacked any serious prospect of winning the primary or who were trying to use the debate stage to further their personal interests. But it was the frontrunner himself who decided he wasn’t all that interested.

Trump advisers say he remains opposed to participating in the August debate, and that he sees no reason to appear onstage against candidates who are polling far behind him. Beyond that, the former president, they say, remains upset with Fox News over what he regards as their unfair coverage of him.

“Why would I let these people take shots at me?” Trump asked, in an interview last month on Fox.

By skipping the debate, Trump advisers hope to rob what could be his opponents’ best opportunity to trip up the former president. It’s possible that Trump could hold an event that would compete for attention and steer viewers away from his rivals.

Trump is not the only candidate whose appearance on the debate stage is either unlikely or uncertain. Other candidates have said they will not sign the RNC’s loyalty pledge to support the eventual nominee, a prerequisite set by the committee to participate in the debate.

Those threats may ultimately not matter, since only those who have met the RNC’s polling and donation thresholds will be asked to take the pledge anyways. Lower-polling candidates who’ve come out against the requirement — like former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and former Texas Rep. Will Hurd — may not get the opportunity to sign onto the loyalty agreement. Christie has openly refused to support Trump but also said he’ll sign whatever is required to get on the debate stage.

Some of the other requirements may prove more cumbersome.

So far, campaigns for Trump, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Tim Scott and Vivek Ramaswamy are the only ones to say they’ve reached the required 40,000 donors — and the RNC says that figure must include at least 200 unique donors in each of 20 states. Other campaigns are projecting confidence that they’ll hit the mark in time for the August debate, though the early intraparty skirmish for cash has already resulted in bruised feelings and egos among candidates and their respective orbits.

Last week, former Vice President Mike Pence brought in roughly $250,000 at a fundraiser in central Indiana, according to his campaign. The next day, allies of DeSantis announced a dueling fundraiser in Pence’s backyard of Hamilton County, Indiana. But what most raised eyebrows was that the fundraiser would also be hosted by Bob Grand, the Indianapolis attorney and lobbyist whom Pence installed on the Trump-Pence inaugural committee and showered with attention and flights on Air Force Two during his vice presidency.

But the other question was what it would mean for Pence’s ability to hit the RNC’s donor threshold.

A spokesperson for Pence’s campaign told POLITICO they’re confident he will qualify for the debate, but noted he got a late start on fundraising in this quarter, announcing his candidacy on June 7.

An adviser to North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum’s presidential campaign said his team wasn’t surprised that the RNC decided to implement a robust donor threshold, but offered no comment on how close the wealthy candidate is to reaching it. Burgum has already spent more than $4 million on television advertising in his bid, according to ad buy tracking firm AdImpact.

Larry Elder, another lesser-known contender, said the RNC has “rigged the rules of the game” to favor “establishment, inside-the-beltway, corporate candidates,” while Hutchinson’s campaign manager, Rob Burgess, accused the committee of picking “winners and losers.”

But with second-quarter fundraising reports still two weeks from being published, it remains difficult to gauge candidates’ progress. Despite saying last month he had met the RNC’s requirement, Scott’s campaign continues to send fundraising text messages and emails pleading for supporters to send as little as $1 to assist him in qualifying for the RNC debate.

“I need your help to confirm my spot on the Presidential Debate Stage!” read one such appeal from Scott on Tuesday.

And it isn’t just fundraising the candidates have to worry about. Polling criteria could also trip up some of the longshots. In order to qualify, candidates must earn at least 1 percent support in three approved polls conducted after July 1 but before the deadline on Aug. 21. The RNC’s stringent polling criteria could mean that candidates polling around 1 or 2 percent — but not necessarily hitting those marks in every single survey or the approved surveys — could get shut out of the debate.

Elizabeth Stoddart, a spokesperson for Michigan businessman and presidential candidate Perry Johnson, argued that “early state polling should remain the first priority ahead of national polling,” noting that Johnson has focused his outreach on those states, while slamming “arbitrary donor thresholds” the RNC has put in place.

This year’s criteria were set by the RNC directly — a shift from the last open primary eight years ago, when the television networks and cable outlets sponsoring the debates set the parameters. For the first debate in 2015, which also aired on Fox News Channel, Fox allowed all 16 declared candidates to debate, though they used polling averages to identify the top 10, who appeared on the prime-time stage.

Adam Wren, Steve Shepard, and Kelly Garrity contributed to this story.

No One Should Be That Shocked by What’s Happening in Tennessee

The world of politics experienced a collective shock this week as Tennessee Republicans expelled two young, Black, Democratic House members for protesting gun laws on the chamber floor after a deadly school shooting in Nashville.

But for those who have closely watched the chamber in recent years, the events were of little surprise. The place has been defined by partisan vitriol, pique, scandal, racism and Olympic-level pettiness for years.

I know. I covered it.

The protest and subsequent expulsion over decorum rules took place in a chamber where a GOP member, for years, rang a cowbell every day of session as a raucous, attention-grabbing substitute for applause.

When I covered the Tennessee Capitol from 2018 to 2021, the family-values espousing Republican House speaker had to explain why his text message trail included discussions of pole-dancing women and his chief of staff’s sexual encounters in the bathroom of a hot chicken restaurant.

After a Republican lawmaker was accused of sexually assaulting 15- and 16-year-old girls he had taught and coached, he was made chairman of the House education committee.

Protesters filled the halls week after week, year after year, calling for the removal of the bust of the Ku Klux Klan’s first Grand Wizard, a piece of art featured prominently between the House and Senate chambers. Democrats pushed for its removal, while Republicans resisted.

A Democrat who declined to support the current speaker’s reelection had her office moved into a small, windowless room. In a twist of fate, that same Democrat, Rep. Gloria Johnson, a white woman, narrowly escaped expulsion on Thursday. (Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearce fared differently.)

And then, of course, there was the famous peeing incident, where a legislator’s office chair was urinated on in an act of intraparty retribution over shitposting. The actual identity of the Republican urinator is a closely-held secret among a small group of operatives who have bragged about witnessing it. But it’s generally accepted that former state Rep. Rick Tillis, a Republican and the brother of U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis, did indeed have his chair peed on in the Cordell Hull legislative office building.

It wasn’t always quite like this.

There was a time before when one-upmanship wasn’t the organizing principle inside the Tennessee statehouse. Not so long ago, there was more balance in power and, with that, more comity in the chamber. But as Republicans have made bigger gains, they’ve also become more politically confrontational.

The modern Tennessee Republican Party was forged by Howard Baker and others in the 1960s and 70s by tapping into a bipartisan coalition of voters — bringing the GOP from near irrelevance within the state to soon producing some of the nation’s top Republican talent.

“This kind of scene Thursday was the last thing they would have wanted to see happen,” said Keel Hunt, an author of books on Tennessee politics who worked as an aide to then-Gov. Lamar Alexander, a Republican.

I’m reminded of an evening I was sitting in the House press corps box in April 2021, when the House honored Alexander — a Republican and champion of civility, now remembered for his moderate flavor of politics — after his recent retirement from the Senate. Moments later, Republican leadership brought far-right conservative commentator and MAGA firebrand Candace Owens onto the floor, describing her as one of the party’s leading thought leaders of the day, fighting against “creeping socialism and leftist political tyranny.” The Tennessee House passed a resolution thanking her for moving to the state.

The state party knows that it’s drifting. Some openly and proudly admit it. It’s also evidenced by Sen. Bob Corker’s decision not to seek reelection in 2018, and Gov. Bill Haslam’s opting out of running for Alexander’s open seat in 2020. Both Corker and Haslam know they were unlikely to have survived a primary in the state, had they stayed true to their own brands of more moderate conservatism. Corker’s Senate seat ended up going to Marsha Blackburn, a Trump loyalist, and Bill Hagerty, now in Alexander’s seat, handily won the GOP primary after securing his own endorsement from Trump.

The same dynamic is on display at the state Capitol, where former Rep. Eddie Mannis — a John Kasich-Gary Johnson voter in 2016 and a gay Republican — entered the legislature in 2021 with plans of voting like a moderate, in line with his Knoxville district. Last year, he bowed out after just one term, later saying there were “too many people there who are just mean and vindictive,” only caring about “winning at all costs.” Other members live under the fear and dread of a possible primary challenge — the only election that now matters in most districts in Tennessee — if they stray from the party orthodoxy on guns, access to abortion and other issues.

But even for the jaded, Thursday’s expulsions were still extraordinary to watch play out. Longtime political insiders around the Capitol on Monday were stunned to see how quickly expulsion resolutions were drawn up against the three members. Mannis, who now occasionally opines on his former colleagues’ behavior, posted to Facebook: “Today is such a sad day for our State…”

For them and others, the speed with which the Tennessee House acted this week to throw out two young Black legislators must be put into perspective by all the other issues the legislature has declined to act on.

For more than four years, House Republicans declined to expel one of their own, Rep. David Byrd, after he was accused of sexually assaulting three teenage girls, students he taught and coached on a high school basketball team. Byrd was on tape apologizing to one of them, decades later. Even the Republican governor said he believed the allegations to be credible. But House Republicans — some conceding in private that they suspected Byrd may actually have preyed on minors — dug their heels in, saying he was fairly elected.

The debate around removal of the bust of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest went on for years, even as Black lawmakers pleaded with their colleagues to take down the statue. Republicans punted on opportunities to authorize removal, with many wanting to keep the statue in place. In return, protesters — often led by Jones, one of the expelled representatives — rallied at the Capitol on a regular basis, their shouts outside the chambers carrying through the thick, shuttered wooden doors as lawmakers took up other legislative business. (The bust was finally removed in 2021, with resistance from Lt. Gov. Randy McNally and House Speaker Cameron Sexton, after GOP Gov. Bill Lee whipped votes on the necessary state commissions to resolve the issue once and for all.)

The undercurrent of race is present in many of the Capitol’s controversies.

“Black people are idiots,” Cade Cothren, the chief of staff to former House Speaker Glen Casada, once wrote in a text message during a conversation about Common Core curriculum. It was one of several uncovered prior to his resignation in 2019. Both Casada and Cothren are now awaiting federal trial in a case involving alleged bribery and kickbacks at the legislature.

A former GOP legislative staffer told me that in 2020, a member of House Republican leadership in a text message referred to Jones, then an activist, and another Black lawmaker as “baboons.” Former GOP Rep. Brandon Ogles, then vice-chair of the Republican caucus, at the time also recorded the staffer discussing the text. He shared a copy of the recording with POLITICO. The member of leadership in question denies sending the text. The comments were allegedly made while Jones was taking part in protests following George Floyd’s murder by police.

A member presenting a bill about sanctuary cities in 2018 used the term “wetback” while telling a story. On two separate occasions in 2020, Republican legislators publicly cracked jokes about Black people eating fried chicken.

And on and on.

Politics changes over time, of course. It was the Tennessee Democrats who led the charge to install the Forrest bust in the 1970s and who made life difficult for Republicans when they ran the state legislature for decades.

The state’s Republicans may very well transition too. Perhaps — though there is not an ounce of evidence supporting this theory — that bygone era of Howard Baker bipartisanship will be resuscitated.

But we are clearly not living in it now. Instead, the current era of the Tennessee legislature has been defined by a non-stop stream of befuddling scandals and unforced errors by a Republican supermajority that is seemingly insulated from being punished for them. That body has given the state’s Capitol press corps — a fraction of the size it was decades earlier — no shortage of things to uncover and try to explain to readers. Sometimes, the audience becomes global.

When I departed Tennessee less than two years ago to cover national politics — leaving after a whirlwind of a few years at the state Capitol and the ouster of a House speaker — I wondered if the legislative news there would settle down. Maybe things will become boring back in Tennessee, I thought.

I got my answer pretty quickly.

The Trump world-Fox News war gets nasty

In his first minute onstage at CPAC on Friday, Steve Bannon identified one of his top targets of the moment, an entity he claimed is opposing Donald Trump’s presidential campaign at its own peril: Fox News.

The host of the popular War Room podcast and longtime Trump hand started by ripping the conservative channel for announcing that Joe Biden had won Arizona on election night in 2020.

“Fox News illegitimately called it for the opposition, and not Donald J. Trump,” the Trump adviser-turned-talk show host told the crowd in National Harbor, Maryland, an audience full of diehard MAGA supporters.

Ten minutes in, Bannon went after the network again, rousing the audience to their feet as he called out Fox for not having Trump on since he announced his campaign in November. He called out Rupert Murdoch, the News Corp. founder who sits atop the media empire.

“Murdoch, you’ve deemed Trump's not going to be president,” Bannon continued as the crowd roared with applause. “But we deem that you're not going to have a network, because we’re going to fight you every step of the way.”

Far from random broadsides, Bannon’s screed against Fox News was the latest in what has become a hot war between MAGA world and the longtime conservative channel. Trump himself has gone off on Fox News before, often for coverage he has deemed unfair. But the current state of affairs — coming at the start of what promises to be a deeply contested GOP primary — is as strained as it has ever been.

The network hasn’t featured the former president on its airwaves since November. The face of CPAC, American Conservative Union chairman Matt Schlapp, himself a close Trump ally, has also not appeared on the channel since allegations emerged in January that he sexually assaulted a campaign staffer. (Schlapp has denied wrongdoing). And in the halls of the CPAC conference, disdain for Fox News wasn’t an uncommon sentiment among those gathered.

Sandra Salstrom, a harpist from Houston, said she gets all the news she needs from Bannon’s War Room show, and enjoys tuning in to programs hosted by Charlie Kirk, another prominent right-wing commentator.

“I now have nothing to do with Fox,” said Salstrom, explaining she does not have a television at home, but used to watch the network while she was at the gym. “They disgust me.”

“I haven't watched Fox in years,” said Andra Griffin of Manatee County, Fla., who said she stopped watching the network in 2019, and was completely “unplugged from Fox” by 2020. Instead, right-wing activists like Griffin have turned their attention to more alternative conservative networks like Newsmax, which had a heavy presence at CPAC.

Fox Radio skipped its usual booth on media row at CPAC this year. Fox Nation didn't livestream or sponsor receptions as it has in years past. There were no primetime Fox News stars like Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, or Tucker Carlson scheduled to speak on stage — a contrast to years past, where Fox stars were in heavy rotation on the stage or in the halls.

“Dominion’s lawsuit has always been more about what will generate headlines than what can withstand legal and factual scrutiny, as illustrated by them now being forced to slash their fanciful damages demand by more than half a billion dollars after their own expert debunked its implausible claims. Their summary judgment motion took an extreme, unsupported view of defamation law that would prevent journalists from basic reporting and their efforts to publicly smear FOX for covering and commenting on allegations by a sitting President of the United States should be recognized for what it is: a blatant violation of the First Amendment," a Fox News spokesperson said in a statement.

The absence of Fox News at CPAC has fed larger questions about the role the Murdoch-owned network is gunning to play in the Republican primary. Trump’s likely 2024 rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, has been featured across Murdoch-owned entities as he promotes his recently published memoir. The anti-Woke activist Vivek Ramaswamy launched his presidential campaign with an appearance on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show. And former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley has repeatedly appeared on the network, with her launch announcement covered live on TV.

All of this comes as Fox is facing a defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems, which is asking for $1.6 billion in damages over the role the network played in covering conspiracies around the 2020 election. Recent depositions reveal that high-level network officials privately cast doubt on Trump's claims that the election was stolen, even as on-air voices were backing Trump up on the false narrative.

While Trump himself has not been interviewed lately on Fox News airwaves – Semafor reported he is facing a “soft ban” by the network – he does continue to receive coverage and his campaign is referenced by hosts.

For his part, Trump has ramped up his attacks on the longtime conservative television channel, in recent days sharing multiple posts on his Truth Social platform critical of the channel and its owner, Rupert Murdoch. “Too many incompetent RINOS at FoxNews!” Trump posted on Thursday. A day earlier, Trump called Murdoch and other Fox executives a “group of MAGA Hating Globalist RINOS” who should “get out of the News Business as soon as possible.”

With Fox stars out of the picture, attendees at CPAC flocked to popular right-wing alternatives like Bannon’s War Room, which hosted its podcast live, along with Newsmax, OAN, Right Side Broadcasting Network and others.

William Marks, a software developer and manager from southern Maryland, said he still watches both Fox News and Newsmax, but believes the former is “moving further away from the conservative landscape,” a fault not of the anchors but of “the ownership,” he said.

Even with such defections, Fox News remains king of cable news and prime-time ratings. The top ten most-watched cable news shows are all on Fox News, with Tucker Carlson and the Five boasting over 3 million viewers according to AdWeek. And for conservative stars, Fox News’ evening shows are still the #1 spot for attracting attention for their cause.

“I love being back on Fox News and I have nothing bad to say about it,” said Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., who frequently appears on Fox News as well as Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast.

The GOP field descends on Iowa, readying to eat some humble pie

DES MOINES, Iowa — Sen. Tim Scott arrived in Iowa this week amid buzz about a presidential bid to come. But shortly after stepping foot in the state, that enthusiasm was complemented by the humbling elements that come with politicking in such an intimate place.

Scott chose a reading room at Drake University, hoping to reach younger voters who don't always hear from Republican candidates. There, he received enthusiastic applause from conservatives in the front as he stuck closely to the prepared speech rolling on teleprompters. But his message was a harder sell to some of the other young voters who didn't respond to his lines about gender identification and the teaching of racism. Later, they confided that they would never vote for him. After all, they were Democrats.

“That’s exactly what I assumed he was going to say,” said Gavin Hoedl, a 20-year-old student, who had come merely to witness the possibility of an announcement being made. “That’s the standard Republican stump speech.”

Over the course of three days in Iowa this week, the political pitfalls and opportunities of the state already became apparent. Any candidate for office can be rewarded for the right amount of gladhanding and pork eating and farm marveling. And those with an eye on the presidency in 2024 gave it their shot. But the voters In Iowa are picky too. They don’t hide it.

“We like to be courted,” said Patti Parlee of Urbandale, who was at the Polk County Republican dinner on Wednesday to hear Scott speak.

Just a few weeks into the 2024 GOP primary, that courtship has begun. Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley held packed town halls in Iowa on Monday and Tuesday, while former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former Vice President Mike Pence have made their own stops in the state. Biotech entrepreneur turned anti-woke activist Vivek Ramaswamy has come as well, bringing autographed copies of his book, “Woke Inc.,” to offer the first 100 people who showed up Thursday at Machine Shed, a popular restaurant for Republican gatherings in Polk and Dallas counties.

The nature of the campaign and the caucus makes it impossible for candidates to hide their personalities or evade scrutiny. The results are an even playing field.

“Even though Trump is probably the favorite, I wouldn't say it’s in the bag,” said Steve Scheffler, Iowa’s Republican National Committeeman. “If Iowans feel like they’re taken for granted, it doesn’t sit too well.”

After announcing her presidential candidacy just over a week ago, Haley drew capacity crowds and tangible enthusiasm. At an event space inside Legacy Manufacturing in Marion, Elton John’s “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” blared from the speakers as Wendy Hartman stood outside the room, peering in through the doorway. There was a standing crowd in the back.

“I've not ever been to a political event before,” said Hartman, a conservative from Cedar Rapids.

Hartman was among a series of Iowa Republican voters interviewed this week who said they’re inclined to support Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — should he get into the race — are cautious about former President Donald Trump, and open to hearing from the rest of the field. Backing Haley, to Hartman, was a distinct possibility: the type of candidate who could bridge the good of Trumpism without the drama, all while reinstalling traditional Republican politics.

At her stop that night, Haley tried to sell voters on her experience as executive of a state, a member of Trump’s Cabinet standing up to world leaders and a mother crusading against children learning about sex and gender in schools. But she also got a whiff of the indignities that female candidates often encounter when seeking higher office.

During the question and answer portion of Haley’s town hall, one man suggested that she choose South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem as her running mate.

“Because …” Roger Dvorak, 80, started to explain.

“She’s hot!” another man in the audience called out. The audience erupted in laughter.

“Nikki, you’re not too bad yourself,” Dvorak continued.

Haley gave an uncomfortable laugh before saying the exchange was “digressing quickly.” In an interview afterward, Dvorak acknowledged the remark was inappropriate. If not Noem, he added, Haley should run with former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard.

Iowa political veterans say that the state’s extremely up-close style of politicking serves a purpose, chauvinistic episodes and all.

Still, there is fear that Iowa this cycle may not play its traditional role. With the exception of Trump, who last week announced top staff hires in Iowa, none of the candidates or prospective candidates appear to have yet established any robust campaign operations in the state. Democrats have left Iowa behind in the party’s nominating process, voting to move South Carolina first on the calendar. And even Republicans in the state are worried about what the change could mean for them.

Gloria Mazza, chair of the Polk County Republican Party, corrected an audience member at the Lincoln Dinner who shouted out that the Iowa Democrats are “losers!” for no longer having the No. 1 spot.

“No, not losers,” Mazza said sternly, suggesting the GOP faithful urge their Democratic friends to lobby state Democratic officials to do something to fight back. “They want it as much as we do.”

But as top GOP stars like Trump and DeSantis have so far avoided Iowa, others in the prospective and declared field are trying to make an early mark on the Hawkeye State.

Kelly Koch, chair of the Dallas County Republican Party, said she continues to field calls from high-profile Republicans wanting to visit the county, one of Iowa’s fastest growing. Last week Kari Lake, who lost her November race for Arizona governor, held an event with the Dallas County GOP. On Monday, the local party hosted Haley and Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds in a packed showroom at Royal Flooring in Urbandale.

Scott, too, seems likely to be a fixture here as he adjusts to the politics of the state and his place within it. Making his way to the West Des Moines Marriott on Wednesday evening for the Lincoln Dinner, the senator got a call from his longtime friend and fellow South Carolinian Trey Gowdy, reminding him of the surrealness of it all.

“When you were at Stall High School about to flunk out,” the former congressman said, “could you imagine taking a trip to Iowa, to talk about restoring faith in the nation?”

Older voters balk at Nikki Haley’s competency test

URBANDALE, Iowa — Older Republicans say they aren’t opposed to Nikki Haley’s call for a new generation of politicians leading their party.

But when she calls for mental competency tests for politicians over the age of 75, some of them start to feel insulted.

The 51-year-old Republican presidential contender has made evaluating the mental acuity of elder statesmen a key part of her opening campaign pitch. It’s one of the only ways Haley has sought to explicitly differentiate herself from former President Donald Trump, who is 76. And it’s one of the cudgels she’s deployed against 80-year-old President Joe Biden.

It’s also a risk.

In her short time on the trail, Haley has irked some older voters, the cohort that just so happens to be a substantial and reliable voting bloc within her party.

“I do like Nikki’s platform, her plank regarding term limits. I think that’s important,” Richard Ploss, 71, of Exeter, New Hampshire, said at her town hall in Manchester. But the mental competency test? “That’s a little over the top.”

“Well, we’re old …,” his 72-year-old wife, Susan Ploss, interjected. The Republican couple, who own a chemical supply company and previously voted for Trump, hesitated to applaud the line in Haley’s speech and ducked out before the question-and-answer portion of her event.

Interviews with more than a dozen attendees at Haley’s first campaign events in recent days — all but three in their 60s, 70s and 80s — revealed a GOP primary electorate open to a younger standard-bearer but sharply divided over the insinuation that someone their age might be lacking in mental aptitude. Seven said they opposed the call for applying mental acuity tests to elderly politicians. Three thought the testing requirement should apply to people of all ages. And three thought her plan targeting older people was a good idea.

Some political veterans in the key states said they weren’t surprised by those findings.

“I just feel like the competency test was a gimmick to get attention and one that ultimately could backfire, because arguably, the largest voting bloc in the Republican primary is older voters,” New Hampshire-based Republican strategist Mike Dennehy said. “New Hampshire’s population has been aging over the last decade. There are more and more older people coming to New Hampshire to retire.”

Haley’s campaign, in a statement to POLITICO, said she is merely suggesting the type of brief screening that doctors frequently used to measure older patients’ cognitive abilities.

“When 81-year-old Bernie Sanders is chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, it’s not too much to have him take a 10-minute test to see whether he has the mental ability to draw a clock or identify an animal,” said Nachama Soloveichik, one of Haley’s campaign advisers. “We’re not talking rocket science here.”

On the trail, Haley has framed her call for cognitive tests on septuagenarian politicians as “not being disrespectful” but, rather, pursuing “transparency.”

The call was part of her campaign launch in South Carolina, accompanied by tangential proposals under the umbrella of generational change: such as calls to drain the swamp and institute congressional term limits. The proposal was echoed in her speech before a few hundred Republicans packed into the showroom of Royal Flooring in Urbandale on Monday. It was delivered between popular lines about stopping gender lessons and “woke ideologies” in schools and ending national “defeatism.” Mostly, Haley drew a rhythmic applause from the crowd, including when talking about competency tests. But approached directly, not all older voters were totally on board.

Eric Riedinger, 63, of Des Moines, said he could get behind a competency test that would apply to candidates of all ages — and believes “Trump would do excellent.” But he is against merely targeting people who have reached their 70s.

“Why base it on your seniors?” Riedinger said. “You know, I'm a senior now, too.”

Haley’s potential opponents on the trail have largely dismissed her call or come out in opposition.

Trump, for his part, spent much of the last week ignoring it. But by Tuesday morning, he had embraced it, adding that such a screening should not just apply to older politicians. “ANYBODY running for the Office of President of the United States should agree to take a full & complete Mental Competency Test,” Trump posted on his Truth Social website, also suggesting candidates take “a test which would prove that you are physically capable of doing the job.”

Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, 72, on Tuesday said there was no need for more restrictions on voters’ choices.

“The U.S. Constitution lays out requirements to hold the office of President of the United States, so let’s stick with that,” Hutchinson, who is considering a run for president, said in a statement to POLITICO. “Additionally, there is a mental acuity test every time a candidate stands before voters in a town-hall setting, a diner on the campaign trail, or on a voter’s door step.”

Vivek Ramaswamy, the 37-year-old entrepreneur now eyeing the Republican nomination, said Haley was “dead wrong” in calling for competency tests.

Former Vice President Mike Pence largely deflected when asked by a reporter last week, laughing as he said that voters in Indiana “think every politician should submit to a cognitive test.”

A representative for Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) declined to comment about Haley’s proposal, while staff for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu did not respond to requests for comment.

In an interview at Haley’s Urbandale event, Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-Iowa), 67, said “there may be something” for Congress to do, eventually, with regard to gauging candidate competence. But she wasn’t convinced that there was any need for an immediate fix.

“But I would like to say that Sen. Grassley is tremendously competent,” the congresswoman, an ophthalmologist, said of 89-year-old Chuck Grassley, Iowa’s senior senator. “You talk to him, there's not a subject that he's not proficient in.”

Haley’s call comes as more than half of registered voters in a new national Harris/Harvard Center for American Political Studies poll say they doubt Biden’s mental fitness. That includes 66 percent of independents who, in open-primary states like New Hampshire, could pull a Republican primary ballot.

But Haley’s mental competency suggestion could prove to be off-putting to crucial voters in New Hampshire, which has the second-oldest population in the country based on median age, according to the most recent Census data.

At her town hall at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics in Manchester, Haley’s stump-speech line about cognitive tests for 75-year-olds drew noticeably less applause than her calls for generational change in leadership and for congressional term limits. Some voters grew visibly uncomfortable when asked their opinions of it.

Walter Neuman, an 80-year-old Republican from Hopkinton who voted for Trump in 2020, said “it’s about time” for younger leaders to take the helm of the party. But he added that he was “on the fence” about testing politicians’ mental acuity.

“I understand the concept,” Neuman said. “But we’ve been pretty successful through the years without it.”

Still, Haley has sold some voters on the idea, including those in the advanced-aged bracket. David Freligh, a 78-year-old from Pella, Iowa, said he fully supports the proposal.

“I'm slipping a little bit,” said Freligh, who wore an Air Force cap and a Haley 2024 T-shirt to her Monday town hall. “I think I'm still quite competent, but I'm not what I used to be.”

Republican Betty Gay, a former New Hampshire state representative who voted for Trump in 2020, said she would want mental competency tests “for people much younger” than 75.

“Age is not a guarantee that you’re wise,” the 77-year-old Republican said.

But there are signs that Haley knows the messaging on the competency tests needs to be fine-tuned. Across her two nights in New Hampshire, she added a line that tacitly acknowledged some older voters might be offended by the concept.

“I don’t mean any disrespect by that,” Haley said in Manchester. “But we all know young 75- year-olds and we all know old 75-year-olds, right? And you look at D.C. and you see a whole lot of old people. What I’m saying is you should have trust in who you send to Washington.”

By Monday night in Iowa, instead of focusing on all the old folks in D.C., Haley mocked Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-V.T.) disapproving response to her cognitive test suggestion. She then moved along to another topic.

Kim Schmett, a Republican consultant and activist in Iowa, said he “had to chuckle a little” when he first heard Haley’s competency test suggestion.

Schmett, who noted that his own age is creeping up, said he didn’t believe a cognitive exam is necessary for candidates, despite acknowledging concern about some aging officials. But he didn’t imagine the proposal itself would be determinative to Haley’s presidential prospects.

“I think most senior citizens realize there are some physical questions and so forth that are more frequent when you’re older,” Schmett said. “I don’t see any backlash for her on that.”

Trump’s ‘24 game plan: Be the dove among the hawks

Donald Trump is settling on a simple foreign policy pitch in his second bid for the White House: Want World War 3? Vote for the other guy.

Over the past week, Trump has assailed President Joe Biden’s handling of Afghanistan. He has said he could end the almost year-long conflict in Ukraine within “24 hours,” but without any indication how, and suggested sending tanks to the country could spark nuclear war. He has railed against China and called Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis a “globalist.”

The claims are a continuation of a posture Trump sought to project both as a candidate for president in 2016 and while in the White House — one occasionally contradicted by his record.

But his renewed focus on international affairs also comes as the Republican primary field is expected to get crowded with potential challengers likely to pitch their own foreign policy bona fides. That includes two former Trump lieutenants: former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley and former secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

Those close to Trump’s campaign operation say he plans to try and paint himself as an anti-war dove amongst the hawks. They believe doing so will resonate with GOP voters who are divided on, but growing wary of, continued support for Ukraine in its war with Russia.

“Trump is the peace president and he’s the first president in two generations to not start a war, whereas if you look at DeSantis' congressional record, he’s voted for more engagement and more military engagement overseas,” said a person close to the Trump campaign, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions.

“Trump is the only person who has said no more funding for the Ukraine war. I haven't heard Nikki Haley say anything like that... Pompeo or Pence? Where do they stand on Ukraine?”

In fact, Haley, Pence and Pompeo have all, to varying degrees, called for the U.S. to fund Ukrainians and even, on occasion, criticized the Biden administration for not doing enough.

Still, Trump’s modernized “America First” framework has already had profound implications, both in upending establishment Republican and neo-conservative orthodoxy on foreign policy and in muddying the consensus on issues ranging from military intervention to how to handle ruthless dictators.

And as multiple Republican officials noted for this story, last week the conservative and once-hawkish Heritage Foundation stepped away from its long standing demands for a robust defense budget and said cuts to Pentagon spending should be on the table as part of the debt limit negotiations.

“I do think national security is going to be a much more important issue in 2024 than in many of the most recent presidential elections,” said Trump’s former national security adviser-turned-public critic John Bolton, who also is considering a 2024 run. “You may have noticed there's a Chinese balloon floating over the country today.”

Aware that his instincts aren’t as hawkish as some of his potential Republican challengers, Trump and his aides have started to draw contrasts and set the parameters of the debate.

On Thursday, Trump said Pompeo “took a little bit more credit than he should” for accomplishments made while he was secretary of State, a sign that Trump may try to minimize his opponents’ foreign policy experience, despite having been appointed by him. Later that day, the super PAC supporting Trump highlighted recent attacks on Haley by right-wing conservative commentators, some of whom called her a “warmonger” and “Neocon Nikki.”

Trump’s team was also eager to tout a Wall Street Journal op-ed endorsement this week from Sen. J.D. Vance, the populist Republican from Ohio, who touted Trump’s inclination against getting into foreign entanglements.

“Every Republican running is going to be opposed to [critical race theory]. Every Republican running is going to say we need to secure the border and we need to oppose amnesty. Every Republican running is for lower taxes and less regulation,” a Vance adviser said of Trump’s early foreign policy play. “It makes sense for Trump to drag the race where his opponents don’t want to be.”

Trump’s team also sees foreign policy as an area to draw distinctions with his potential top political foe, DeSantis, who gained national attention for his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and embrace of cultural wars but who, as governor, has a limited track record internationally.

“The governors will have a tough time proving their foreign policy chops because it’s not in their job description so they’re going to have to do something to step up and prove to voters that they’re capable of handling all these issues that present themselves on the global stage,” said David Urban, a Republican strategist who remains close to numerous potential 2024 contenders.

“[Potential] candidates such as Pompeo and Haley and Pence and the [former] president can say, ‘Here’s me sitting down with Kim Jong Un, and here’s what we were able to accomplish with the Abraham Accords or on USMCA.’ Everyone has something they can talk about on concrete terms, where governors can’t and that will be a point of differentiation among a wide group of them.”

There are already signs that DeSantis is making moves to address this likely line of attack. He has had phone calls and meetings with foreign leaders and ambassadors in recent months, including a face-to-face session in Tallahassee last week with Mario Abdo Benítez, the president of Paraguay. Relatives of Paraguay’s first lady – Silvana Abdo – were killed in the deadly Surfside condominium collapse of 2021.

Back in December, DeSantis met in his office with Michael Herzog, the Israeli ambassador to the U.S., along with Yousef Al Otaiba, the ambassador from the United Arab Emirates. Right after DeSantis handily won re-election he met top officials from Japan, including Koji Tomita, ambassador to the United States, as well as Japanese business leaders.

“Florida continues to be an important political and economic partner to many countries around the world, and as foreign officials request meetings with our office it is appropriate to further develop these ties,” said Bryan Griffin, a spokesman for DeSantis.

Bolton, for his part, said he thought Trump would prove vulnerable on foreign policy when it became clear that he had none.

“He doesn’t have policy on much of anything, he has Donald Trump,” he said. “So his most recent musing is that if he were president he could solve Ukraine-Russia dispute in 24 hours — I think it is so ridiculous it falls on its own weight. …I think people over time and self-identified Republicans just don’t buy it."

But so far, Trump’s other likely opponents aren’t taking the bait. DeSantis this week hit back on Trump’s digs about the governor’s Covid response, touting his margin of victory in Florida’s November election, but has not sought to defend his record on foreign policy.

A person close to Haley’s political operation, meanwhile, said the former U.N. ambassador will tout her own foreign policy record, one that involved helping Trump secure some of his top accomplishments abroad. They include moving the United States embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, repealing a nuclear deal with Iran and securing buy-in from China on sanctions against North Korea.

While some big gulfs do exist between Haley and her former boss — she has championed U.S. support of Ukraine and became a vocal critic of Putin and Moscow during her tenure in the Trump administration — she likely won’t take swings at Trump, choosing instead to criticize Biden’s approach to China, Iran and the U.S withdrawal from Afghanistan.

“That is not the focus,” the Haley ally said of contrasting with Trump. “We are focused on Biden.”

Matt Schlapp accuser files a second suit against top conservative operative

The Republican staffer who accused conservative stalwartMatt Schlapp of sexual assault and filed a lawsuit against him for nearly $10 million has filed a separate suit against another top GOP operative alleging defamation.

Caroline Wren, who most recently ran Harmeet Dhillon’s campaign for RNC chair and Kari Lake’s run for governor, was sued Tuesday in D.C.’s federal district court, according to a complaint obtained by POLITICO.

A fundraiser who also helped organize former President Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6, 2021, Wren is a close ally of Schlapp and his wife Mercedes, a former Trump White House staffer. In his suit, the plaintiff alleges that Wren defamed him while attempting to defend the Schlapps from his sexual assault allegation.

Among other things, the suit accuses Wren of using the plaintiff’s name in tweets and saying he was fired from multiple jobs “for lying and unethical behavior” and for “being a habitual liar.” An attorney for the plaintiff on Jan. 12 sent Wren a letter demanding a retraction of statements she had made about the plaintiff on Twitter, according to the complaint, but Wren “continued to maliciously post statements about Mr. Doe.”

While the plaintiff has been terminated from multiple jobs — including from one last week — his attorney states in the filing that the plaintiff has not lost jobs because he was a liar or unethical.

Wren’s tweets “have placed Mr. Doe into contempt, ridicule, and disgrace within the community,” the complaint states.

The plaintiff is seeking more than $500,000 in damages from Wren.

Wren did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The suit adds another chapter to a political and legal saga that has affected Republican campaign operations and conservative activists, of which Wren is an increasingly influential one.

The plaintiff, a former Herschel Walker campaign staffer, first shared with the Daily Beast his account of Matt Schlapp allegedly sexually assaulting himafter a campaign event for the Senate candidate. In a subsequent lawsuit, he provided more details about the alleged incident.

According to the suit, the alleged assault took place in October while Schlapp was in Georgia stumping for Walker. The men went for drinks in Atlanta, where they returned after the staffer drove Schlapp back from a campaign event Oct. 19. The plaintiff accused Schlapp of “aggressively fondling” his “genital area in a sustained fashion” while he was “frozen with fear and panic,” according to the original lawsuit filed Jan. 17.

Schlapp has denied the charges and, through a lawyer, suggested he may counter-sue the plaintiff.

The plaintiff sued Matt Schlapp for both sexual battery and defamation. In addition, he sued Mercedes Schlapp for defamation. Wren was named in the first lawsuit, but was not listed as a defendant.

The plaintiff filed both the suit against the Schlapps and the one against Wren as John Doe, since he says he is a victim of sexual assault. In addition to the more than $500,000 in damages he is seeking from Wren, the plaintiff is seeking more than $9 million from the Schlapps. The couple are prominent Republican commentators. Matt Schlapp chairs the American Conservative Union, which hosts the influential CPAC confab. Two ACU board members have released a statement of support for Schlapp.

The lawsuit against the Schlapps has not stopped CPAC’s largest annual event from going on as planned. The CPAC gathering, scheduled for March 1 through 4 at Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center in Maryland, is slated to feature Trump and other top GOP figures as speakers.

Kyle Cheney contributed to this report.

Ronna McDaniel wins RNC chair race that grew very messy by the end

DANA POINT, Calif. — Ronna McDaniel will serve a rare fourth term as chair of the Republican National Committee, emerging victorious in a contentious bid for reelection.

McDaniel on Friday defeated her main challenger, the RNC’s California national committeewoman Harmeet Dhillon, by a vote of 111 committee members to 51. MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, whose campaign drew little support, received four votes.

The at times fierce, two-month-long race sparked debates about how the RNC has managed its finances and fared in recent elections. It also saw some members — on both sides of the contest — publicly calling into question the character of their colleagues, putting McDaniel and her allies on the defensive and forcing the incumbent chair to assemble an aggressive whip operation to shore up her support.

“We need all of us,” McDaniel told committee members after calling Dhillon and Lindell to join her onstage. “We heard you, grassroots. We know. We heard Harmeet; we heard Mike Lindell… [W]ith us united and all of us joining together, the Democrats are going to hear us in 2024.”

Speaking to a swarm of reporters after the vote, Dhillon said she is committed to working toward repairing fractures in the party, but that party unity won’t come overnight.

“We did not expect this to become a national grassroots movement,” she said. “So I'm committed to healing and coming together with folks, but at the end of the day, if our party is perceived as totally out of touch with the grassroots — which I think some may take away from this outcome — we have some work to do.”

The committee meeting at the Waldorf Astoria Monarch Beach, a luxury seaside resort, illustrated the tense division within the Republican ranks that continue to exist months after the 2022 elections.

Dhillon, whose firm represents former President Donald Trump, raised her profile over the last year with regular appearances on Fox News’ evening programs — garnering support in her bid for chair from a prominent cast of conservative commentators. That list included Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham and Charlie Kirk, who helped mobilize an army of grassroots activists to call and email RNC committee members, urging them to oppose McDaniel’s reelection. But those high-profile figures were not always a value add.

On multiple occasions, on-the-fence members told Dhillon and her allies that they would be open to supporting her if Kirk weren’t one of her surrogates, said Oscar Brock, the national committeeman from Tennessee who was part of her team. Dhillon had assured concerned members that Kirk, a firebrand conservative figure, wouldn’t be part of RNC staff, should she win. But there was never a conversation among her whip team about asking Kirk to dial down his support.

“There probably should have been,” Brock said. “But there wasn’t.”

In an interview Friday, Kirk called McDaniel’s victory “a direct insult to the grassroots people that they send 10 emails a day to, begging for money.”

“I think the RNC is going to have a lot of trouble raising small-dollar donations, a lot of trouble rebuilding trust,” Kirk said. “Going into 2024, the apparatus that should be a machine and clicking on all cylinders and firing on all cylinders is going to be in a trust deficit.”

Kirk wasn’t the only Dhillon ally whose aggressive advocacy ended up turning off members of the committee. Caroline Wren, who most recently ran Kari Lake’s gubernatorial campaign in Arizona, got into a heated exchange with Georgia state Rep. Vernon Jones on Thursday night in the lobby of the Waldorf Astoria.

According to three people familiar with the confrontation, Wren, who has been Dhillon's top adviser in her campaign for chair, told Jones: “Everyone knows you’re here fucking whipping votes for Ronna.” She proceeded to call him a “fucking sell out,” adding that, “the grassroots will never support you again.”

A person familiar with the conversation said Wren had also approached Jones two other times this week, once while he was speaking with an RNC member, during which she called him “the fucking enemy,” and another time as Jones was speaking with Lake, during which she called him a “sellout.”

Wren confirmed she was frustrated with Jones because he had previously been a public supporter of Dhillon. But she downplayed the tenor of Thursday night’s conversation, saying she did not use profanity and adding that she even laughed at one point. Asked Friday about the encounter, Jones smiled and shrugged, saying “there’s not much more to say.”

In addition to relying on prominent conservative figures, Dhillon’s whip team also held calls once or twice weekly, said Brock. But several committee members in recent days said that calls and emails from Dhillon’s team had become too much, eventually solidifying their support for McDaniel.

“I think Harmeet could have taken a different approach and said, ‘The RNC, it isn't where we want to be. And here's what it will be like when I become chair,’ without, you know, calling into question the motives of all the people that are a part of the organization,” said Paul Dame, the Vermont Republican Party chair who joined the committee in fall 2021. After remaining undecided for much of the chair race, Dame put his support behind McDaniel this week.

Dhillon drew a last-minute nod of support from Ron DeSantis on Thursday, though it’s unclear whether it swayed any votes. The Florida governor’s decision to weigh in on the race stood in contrast to Trump.

Despite choosing McDaniel as his RNC chair after his 2016 victory, the former president publicly stayed out of this year’s contest, though Dhillon said he sent her a text message through one of his advisers on Wednesday. In the text, Trump joked about disliking one of her endorsers (she declined to say who). Prior to that message, Dhillon hadn’t spoken with the former president since shortly after she announced her chair bid. She said that when she told Trump she was running, he remarked that McDaniel had also announced a campaign.

“He said, ‘OK, well, that'll be interesting,’” Dhillon recalled. “‘Good luck.’”

Despite calling for wholesale reforms to the party moving forward, Dhillon declined on Friday to answer whether she supports Republicans moving on from Trump in 2024, saying it was inappropriate for an RNC committee member to influence voters in the primary process.

While Trump stayed mum, his top aides were privately supporting McDaniel’s reelection bid — though advisers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles disputed the notion that they were whipping votes for her while meeting with members at the Waldorf Astoria in recent days.

Ultimately, McDaniel’s team, with the help of allies, convinced members that a fourth term was earned even after the lackluster midterms. It left Dhillon’s supporters exasperated.

“Ya got me,” said Bill Palatucci, the national committee member from New Jersey, about why his colleagues on the committee overwhelmingly backed McDaniel, despite multiple cycles of GOP disappointments. “That has been my speech to these people on email and via phone calls and meetings here. We just had this terrible midterm cycle, and you guys don’t want to make a change? For whatever reason, they have their heads buried in the sand.”

McDaniel’s bid for a fourth term was a fight before it officially started.

Former Rep. Lee Zeldin, the GOP gubernatorial nominee in New York whose race drew national attention for being closer than expected, floated his name for RNC chair shortly after the midterms. (He received one write-in vote on Friday.) And Palatucci — upset by what he described as McDaniel’s brief “disaster” of a call with RNC members on Nov. 9 — emailed top RNC staff and some members his concerns. In the note, he wrote that McDaniel’s remarks “showed incredible unwillingness to face the reality of what happened last evening,” adding that he and other members “want a real, honest assessment of what happened.”

When she formally announced her bid on Nov. 14, McDaniel held a lengthy call with members — taking questions and making her case for why she should continue in the role. McDaniel had previously told members in 2021 she would not seek another term after her third.

By the end of the week, McDaniel had assembled a list of more than 100 members publicly supporting her. Just after Thanksgiving, she announced she was launching a “Republican Party Advisory Council” to “review” the party’s electoral performance in 2022.

Last week, McDaniel sent members a document she called her “Vision for Unity,” which included plans to improve Republicans’ “legal ballot collecting” efforts, find new tactics for small-dollar fundraising that has suffered in recent years, and boosting the youth vote. In the document, first reported by POLITICO, McDaniel made an appeal to members who were inclined to support Dhillon, saying she would work with Dhillon and Lindell over the next two years in an effort to unite all corners of the GOP.

“I look forward to uniting once again as a Party and working together, alongside Harmeet and Mike, to heal as a Party and elect Republicans,” McDaniel wrote.

The event at the Waldorf Astoria drew an assortment of Republican officials, from Lake and Jones to former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a likely 2024 presidential contender who could be seen meeting with reporters in the hotel lobby on Wednesday and Thursday. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo — another presidential hopeful, though he did not attend the meeting — left stacks of his new book on a check-in table for attendees.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin made an appearance Friday morning, posing for photos with attendees before an RNC security guard at one point asked to see her credential lanyard.

Rachael Bade contributed to this report.

‘Fox News in Spanish’: Inside an upstart media company’s big plans to impact the 2024 election

Republicans have made notable inroads among Hispanic voters in recent election cycles. Now, a conservative media network is looking to cement and further those gains by trying to become theFox News of Spanish-speaking America.

Americano Media, which launched in March, is embarking on an aggressive expansion plan to shape center-right Hispanic opinion during the upcoming election cycle. The network has hired more than 80 Latino journalists and producers, are expanding their radio presence to television, and by the end of the year will have studios in Miami, Las Vegas and D.C. with reporters covering the White House, Congress and embedding in 2024 presidential campaigns. This month, Americano is launching a $20 million marketing campaign to draw in new viewers.

It’s the latest development in an arms race to reach and win over the nation’s second-largest demographic group, one playing an increasingly critical role in election outcomes.

“We don't have a Fox News in Spanish, and that's what Americano intends to be,” said the network’s CEO and founder Ivan Garcia-Hidalgo. He said he has listened to Hispanic Republican leaders lament for 25 years about the need for something like it, but no one ever took serious action.

Garcia-Hidalgo, who worked as a Hispanic surrogate for Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign after a career in telecommunications with Tyco, AT&T and Sprint, said he wants to “blow up” the traditional ways in which conservative Hispanics interact with the media, which he said consisted of going on liberal-leaning networksto “apologize for being Republican, bow your head and take a beating for an hour.”

Americano started with a suite of radio shows out of Miami, where it remains headquartered, but plans to have a presence on television and radio in battleground states across America in the next year, in addition to driving Spanish-speaking audiences to its online and streaming platforms.

To date, Americano Media has raised $18 million from its first three investors, and is set to complete its first and only round of equity investment this spring to generate another $30 to $50 million, Garcia-Hidalgo said. Thomas Woolston, a northern Virginia patent attorney, and Doug Hayden, a San Jose, Calif.-based investor, were the first to provide capital; Americano declined to disclose the third investor.

Americano is taking every opportunity it can to build a profile in conservative political circles. The network aired live from CPAC Dallas in August. In December, they set up a massive booth on radio row at Turning Point’s AmericaFest, featuring a “No mas fake news” display that delighted attendees at the Phoenix Convention Center who lingered nearby to watch a cast of conservative celebrities give interviews. As a sign of their growth, the network has scored recent interviews with Trump and several top elected Republicans, including Sens. Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.), Rick Scott (Fla.), Marco Rubio (Fla.) and Mike Lee (Utah), and Reps. Jim Jordan (Ohio), Andy Biggs (Ariz.) and Steve Saclise (La.), along with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.

Ultimately, however, the Spanish language network’s intended audience isn’t the type of conservative diehards who attend political conferences or tune into Steve Bannon’s “War Room.” It’s working-class Hispanic people living in America, who prefer to speak Spanish, aren’t particularly ideological and who lack options for commentary on the news of the day.

“Hispanics are normies,” said Giancarlo Sopo, a GOP strategist who led the 2020 Trump campaign’s Hispanic marketing efforts.

Strategists behind Americano’s expansion efforts say they believe there is a limit to the GOP’s gains with Latinos in recent years. The low-hanging fruit has already fallen, they say, requiring Republicans to do a bit more work to pick off remaining centrist voters, something Americano intends to do by offering a combination of fairly straight news, mixed with conservative commentary and eventually entertainment offerings.

Democratic operatives, who have long warned that the absence of more robust investments in Spanish media could have boomeranging effects, acknowledge that targeting that type of niche audience could be a highly effective plan.

“There is an information war in Latino and bilingual communities in this country,” said Tara McGowan, the founder and publisher of the Democratic-aligned Courier Newsroom network, who has been vocal about the left needing to build new, progressive media outlets. “It’s a very smart and very alarming move by conservatives to double down on their investment in Americano Media.”

Americano’s venture mirrors that of the liberal Latino Media Network, which in June announced the purchase of 18 Latino radio stations around the country. One of those stations, Miami’s Radio Mambi — a longtime fixture in the conservative Cuban-American community — lost several prominent hosts to Americano Media after the sale was announced. Lourdes Ubieta, Dania Alexandrino and Nelson Rubio are among those who made the switch to Americano. Most of Americano’s hosts, producers, directors and technicians came from Univision, Telemundo and CNN en Español, according to network officials.

Mayra Flores, the Republican who flipped a South Texas congressional seat in a June special election, becoming the first female Mexican-born House member, has recently signed a contract to become one of Americano Media’s senior political contributors. Flores lost reelection in November after redistricting made the seat more Democratic.

Other top executives at the startup include Michael Caputo, a longtime GOP operative who advised Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and briefly served as an official at the Department of Health and Human Services at the start of the Covid pandemic, and Alfonso Aguilar, who led George W. Bush’s citizenship office, is serving as Americano’s political director.

After years of trying to get a news network off the ground and creating a lineup of podcast talk shows, Garcia-Hidalgo launched Americano in March as a partnership with Sirius XM’s Latino variety station. The strategy, he concedes, was not to reach the small number of Latinos listening to satellite radio, but to grab the attention of investors and top radio network executives. Americano pulled its lineup from the satellite channel in October and moved over to a Miami-based Audacy radio station.

The network’s ambitions are broad. By the end of this year, Americano plans to be on 25 radio stations. They’ve added content to every major streaming platform, and have built a digital news website and phone app. They’ve spent several million dollars building studios to launch new television programs, with plans underway to be on cable in every major battleground state ahead of the 2024 election, and in Puerto Rico in the coming weeks, Garcia-Hidalgo said.

“The most underserved news consumer is a center-right Spanish speaker,” Flores said in an interview, noting that many of those fairly conservative Latinos in South Texas have traditionally voted Democratic, though some have begun to leave the party, data show.

While heavy on conservative commentary, Americano does feature liberal guests. On one show, Democrat Jose Artistimuño, a former Democratic National Committee press secretary who worked in Barack Obama’s administration, debates Republican Jimmy Nievez each evening. The network says they’re in the process of adding more Democratic commentators to their roster.

“It’s definitely a space that needed to be filled, and I’m saying that as a Democrat,” Artistimuño said of the lack of Republican-versus-Democrat talk shows in Spanish. “I may not agree with all the policies that Americano supports, but that’s OK. In order for democracy to work, both sides need to talk to each other and debate.”

Latinos in America are still more likely to favor Democrats. But those margins have shrunk dramatically in recent years.

CNN exit poll data in November found that Democrats’ lead with Latino voters has narrowed by nearly 10 percentage points since the 2018 midterm election, with 60 percent supporting House Democratic candidates this fall and 39 percent GOP. Four years ago, 69 percent of the Latino electorate backed Democrats and 29 percent Republicans,the exit polls found.

“The biggest challenge Republicans have had is they usually engage Hispanics from a perspective of electoral politics, just to get their vote, and they usually do it three months before an election,” said Aguilar, Americano’s political director. “It’s very difficult to build confidence in a community when you arrive so late.”

One of the problems still facing Republicans has been reaching Latinos who primarily speak Spanish.

Sopo, whose work includes GOP advertising to Latinos, noted that his firm, Visto Media, conducted a poll for a client this fall that found Democrats held a 40-point lead on the midterm ballot with Hispanics who receive all or most of their news in Spanish. That number fell to a 13-point lead with Hispanics who prefer English news sources.

There are also challenges to successfully capturing an audience of Latino viewers hailing from different countries, Sopo said. Content that appeals to Cubans in Miami isn’t always what Mexicans in Texas are interested in. A mix of culture, news and conservative commentary, Sopo said, is likely a “formula for success with Hispanics,” and something that isn’t widely available.

“If they want to broaden out and grow the tent, the programming has to look more like Fox and less like Newsmax and OAN,” Sopo said, referencing two further-right TV news channels. “Straight news, combined with conservative commentary, and you add some entertainment, which they’ll need for that demographic.”

Matt Schlapp sued by former Herschel Walker aide over sexual assault allegations

Matt Schlapp, a top Republican political operative, and his wife Mercedes Schlapp, a one-time Donald Trump aide, are being sued by a former Herschel Walker campaign staffer over allegations that he sexually assaulted him while on the campaign.

A lawyer for Schlapp on Tuesday said his clients deny the accusations and are considering “counter-lawsuit options.” The suit was filed in Virginia Circuit Court for the city of Alexandria.

The former Walker staffer, who filed the lawsuit anonymously, is seeking $9.4 million in damages from the Schlapps, saying not only did Matt Schlapp commit sexual battery, but he and his wife defamed him afterward.

Reached for comment, Schlapp’s attorney Charlie Spies called the complaint “false,” and said the “Schlapp family is suffering unbearable pain and stress” as a result. Schlapp also tweeted the statement from Spies.

“No family should ever go through this and the Schlapps and their legal team are assessing counter-lawsuit options,” said Spies, who is representing the couple.

The lawsuit follows claims earlier this month by the former Walker campaign staffer, who said Schlapp sexually assaulted him in Georgia in October while Schlapp was visiting the state to stump for the Republican Senate candidate.

The male staffer said Schlapp, without consent, “groped” and “fondled” his groin while the staffer was driving Schlapp back to his hotel Oct. 19. POLITICO previously confirmed the existence of the allegations, which were first reported on Jan. 6 by the Daily Beast. In the lawsuit, Schlapp is said to have placed his hand on the staffer’s leg before he “began aggressively fondling Mr. Doe’s genital area in a sustained fashion” while the staffer was “frozen with fear and panic.” Schlapp then reportedly invited the staffer up to his hotel room, which the man declined.

The pair had gone out for drinks in Atlanta after Schlapp spent the day campaigning with Walker in Perry, Ga., Walker campaign officials told POLITICO.

In a statement, the plaintiff’s attorney Timothy Hyland said his client “takes no joy in filing this lawsuit,” but that Schlapp “has had ample time to accept responsibility and apologize for his despicable actions.”

In interviews with the alleged victim and four campaign staff members, POLITICO confirmed that a small number of campaign officials were made aware of the staffer’s claims about Schlapp within hours of the alleged assault occurring. They advised the staffer not to get back in a vehicle with Schlapp as he was scheduled to do for a campaign event in Macon, Ga. the next day. The staffer said he ultimately did not drive Schlapp again.

After consulting with higher-ups on the campaign the morning of the 20th, the alleged victim sent Schlapp a phone number for a private driver unaffiliated with the Walker campaign, according to two people aware of the events. Schlapp ultimately did not show up at the Macon rally, and Walker campaign staff who had previously coordinated with Schlapp’s team said they never heard back from them or an explanation on why he cut his trip short.

A senior Walker campaign official said that even if Schlapp had found his own transportation to the Macon rally, he would not have been permitted to speak after his alleged misbehavior the night before.

“If he had shown up to the event, we were not going to have him speak,” said the senior Walker official. “We were going to politely decline.”

Walker himself was eventually made aware of the situation, according to a person on the campaign with knowledge of the matter, and advised another staff member to put the alleged victim in touch with the campaign’s attorney to offer legal help. The Walker campaign also informed the staffer they would cover the cost of therapy. The staffer told POLITICO that he never heard directly from Walker on the matter.

After a few days of Walker officials following up with the staffer to make sure he felt the situation was being handled appropriately, the alleged assault was never mentioned again, the senior campaign official said.

In late-December, however, the staffer in question tweeted out a veiled reference to misbehavior by Schlapp and tagged his wife Mercedes Schlapp, before eventually deleting the post. The tweet was part of a series of posts about “Festivus” grievances, according to two people who saw it.

The staffer alleges in his suit that he was defamed by both the Schlapps and conservative operatives aligned with them. The lawsuit includes a screenshot, purportedly of a text Mercedes Schlapp sent to a neighborhood group chat Jan. 7, calling the accuser a “troubled individual.” The text message describes the man as someone who was “fired from multiple jobs,” including for “lying on his resume.” The staffer claims none of the allegations are true.

Hyland described his client in the complaint as someone who “is and has since 2012 been involved in conservative and Republican Party politics” in roles such as field coordinator and grassroots director. On the Walker campaign, the plaintiff worked as a “mid-level staffer.” Hyland said his client was protecting his identity because he is the victim of sexual battery.

The lawsuit comes weeks before CPAC is set to host its largest annual conference March 1 through 4. The event is returning to Gaylord National Harbor in Maryland after a stint in Orlando during the Covid pandemic. CPAC has expanded its conference schedule, hosting other summits over the past year in Texas, Mexico, Hungary, Israel and Australia.

Two ACU board members released a statement of support for Schlapp after the Daily Beast story published on Jan. 6, and a previously scheduled CPAC donor gala that weekend went on at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort as scheduled.