A group of about 55 Republican “moderates” is coming together under one umbrella to form a “farm team” to help the party recapture the GOP majority from Democrats by 2022.
The Republican Main Street Partnership, which bills itself as “the governing wing of the Republican Party,” according to its website, is in its early stages of putting together a strategy to retake the House for the GOP, the Washington Times reported.
The group’s CEO Sarah Chamberlain told the Times her team is focused next year in protecting vulnerable House Republicans while attempting to flip a handful of Democrat seats added in the 2018 election.
She said she believes that Republicans ought to be able to pick up two or three seats next year, but probably won’t gain more than five, leaving the House majority out of reach until 2022.
“We’ve never really built a farm team, Main Street now is trying to really build a farm team,” Chamberlain told the Times. “We need a farm team and that is our big push.
“And that’s why our really big push with focusing on 2022 — hold what we have, try to add a few, and then really go all out in 2022,” she said.
Chamberlain claimed that the GOP is facing a “crisis” with suburban voters and in particular women who are “not opposed to anything [President Trump is] doing, they’re just opposed to how he’s doing it.”
The Republican Main Street Partnership will host its first-ever candidate school beginning next week.
Seven candidates for House seats will gather in private in Washington, D.C.
The will learn how to reach suburbanites with messaging, how to attract support from union members, and how to build an overall effective ground campaign.
Ms. Chamberlain said the GOP is facing a “crisis” with suburban voters, particularly women who are “not opposed to anything [Trump is] doing, they’re just opposed to how he’s doing it.”
“A Main Street-type Republican lives in a little bit different district, has to have a little bit different rhetoric, and we need to go and teach them that because that’s not something that they’re getting,” Chamberlain told the Times. “Not that the [National Republican Congressional Committee] isn’t doing that, but they’re focused on the big picture, we’re focused on our niche.”
The Washington Examiner, meanwhile, reported last week that President Trump’s reelection campaign was seeing a surge in donations from suburban women.
“Statistically, 28% of Trump’s ‘itemized contributions’ from women in 2016. For the 2020 election, they are 35%,” the news site reported.
“But it could be higher, and likely is, said OpenSecrets. That is because it is easier to get information on small donors who give $200 or less from Democrats than the Trump campaign,” the site added.