Donald Trump gestures as he arrives to speak to a campaign rally in Raleigh, N.C. Trump says of his voters “I am your voice”
Donald Trump thundered to Americans, “I am your voice,” as he accepted the Republican presidential nomination this summer.
As president, he’ll find that Washington has a way of shouting back — even to the point of drowning him out.
The seat of the federal government is teeming with interest groups, corporate lobbyists and big-money super PACs. They will have some different goals than Trump and wide swaths of his voters, particularly on matters of government ethics and trade deals. There’s comparatively little in place to pressure lawmakers to follow Trump’s lead.
“This has always been the problem for conservatives,” said Brent Bozell, a longtime activist who leads a social media effort called For America. “We’ll get a person elected only to get the middle finger as soon as the person is sworn into office.”
To fight back, Trump and his allies are already taking steps to assemble a support system.
Members of his team are considering whether to convert his campaign into a nonprofit group, following a trail blazed by President Barack Obama. A nonprofit group similar to Obama’s Organizing for Action would not have to disclose its donors and could spend money in unlimited ways to urge supporters to pressure members of Congress and senators to back Trump’s legislative efforts.
Trump allies might also put together a well-funded super PAC that could loom as a threat to Republican lawmakers who break with him. In July, Trump said he could see himself spending USD10 million to $20 million to defeat Republicans who’d spoken out against his nomination, though since his election, he’s been setting up conciliatory meetings with some of them.
There’s no rule against Trump’s adult children — even Trump himself — promoting outside groups that align with him, or even showing up at their events. Although elected officials including the president are restricted in how much money they can solicit, they can freely give out of their own pocket.
“There’s plenty of legal room for a president to be involved in outside groups when it comes to policy matters and the election of other people to office,” said Paul S. Ryan, vice president of policy and litigation at Common Cause, a liberal-leaning government watchdog. “Especially when it’s their own money.”
Several of Trump’s closest aides, including campaign manager Kellyanne Conway and deputy campaign manager David Bossie, have experience leading outside groups. Brad Parscale, a senior Trump adviser who steered the campaign’s data and digital operations, hinted in a recent Fox News interview that he is interested in that kind of work. “My goal is to be a megaphone for people, for businesses, for candidates,” he said.
Any Trump-blessed political group could inherit or lease a list of more than 12 million supporters built up over the course of the campaign. A signed agreement means the Republican National Committee also receives the campaign’s supporter list and data.
Richard Worthington, a Las Vegas real estate developer who liked Trump so much that he gave the campaign money even before Trump was officially seeking donations, said Trump supporters — particularly those who can afford it — would rally behind any kind of supportive group.
“I know he will have some detractors,” Worthington said. “What he’s going to have to do is build some bridges in Washington, and that may be one way to do it.”
While an “official” Trump effort hasn’t been announced, already some of the outside groups that backed him this year are rebranding as White House boosters. Within 24 hours of the election, Great America PAC was publicizing a “2017 Trump Presidential Agenda Survey” as a way to continue building its supporter list. It’s also planning events for Trump’s inauguration Jan. 20.
“People have made the investment to get him elected, and we want to keep them active and see what we can do to help him,” said Ed Rollins, one of Great America’s leaders. “Trump has a tough, tough agenda, and he will need help.”
Eric Beach, co-chairman of the group alongside Rollins, said 300,000 individuals gave to Great America.
Rollins, who was a top aide to President Ronald Reagan, noted he had some of the same challenges when he arrived in Washington after campaigning as an outsider. Like Obama, Reagan counted on a network of political groups to push his message.
Tea party groups also could play a role in communicating between Trump supporters and the administration and Congress. That movement touched off in 2009 and pushed against increased government spending, among other economic issues.
One of the biggest tea party groups, Tea Party Patriots, backed Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in the GOP primary but was supportive of Trump during the general election.
Bozell, the longtime activist, said the same sentiment that drove thousands to mass at Trump rallies was behind the earlier tea party rallies — and for that matter the “silent majority” of the 1970s and the “moral majority” of the 1980s.
“The conservative movement has shown itself in different ways over the years,” he said, “and each name is just a snapshot in time.” Julie Bykowicz, Washington, AP
Latest chapter for rising Nevada’s political star Kihuen: Congress
Senator Ruben Kihuen
Nevada Congressman-elect Ruben Kihuen’s friends and family never doubted the former Las Vegas high school sports standout would go on to a dazzling career — they just thought it would be on the soccer field rather than the campaign trail.
Kihuen, who’s at orientation in Washington this week as he prepares to assume office in January, was in his early 20s when his family gathered the money to send him to Mexico to chase his childhood dream of playing for the Chivas of Guadalajara. But he broke his foot three months before a tryout, and was told by doctors that while he’d play his favorite sport again, no professional club would risk investing in him.
“I realized that my soccer dream was over,” said Kihuen, 36, a tinge of wistfulness in his voice as he recalls his onetime training partner, Herculez Gomez, went on ahead of him to join the U.S. men’s national soccer team. “Life takes some interesting turns.”
It was that foot injury that cleared the way for a charmed political career. First elected at 26 to the Nevada Legislature, the Democrat befriended presidents and the highest leaders of Congress en route to his latest feat — a decisive, four-point victory over freshman incumbent Republican Rep. Cresent Hardy in Nevada’s 4th Congressional District.
He exemplifies the magic that made swing state Nevada blue when most other parts of the country went red. A former staffer for Democratic kingmaker Sen. Harry Reid, his frequent presence at casino worker picket lines over the years earned him the singular loyalty of the formidable Culinary Union, and his immigrant success story — he’ll be Nevada’s first Latino representative in the House — has made him the hopeful symbol of an increasingly diverse state.
“He is an embodiment of the dream our members have for their children,” said former Culinary Union political director Yvanna Cancela, whose army of political foot soldiers prioritized his race and helped him clear a fierce primary before locking down the general. “I think that’s what every hard-working person strives for — not necessarily for their kid to be in elected office, but for their kid to have a better life than they did.”
Kihuen’s family enjoyed a comfortable middle-class life in Guadalajara, Mexico, where his father was a schoolteacher. But persuaded by relatives, the family moved north when Kihuen was 8 and his father picked strawberries and lettuce in California to make a living.
Kihuen’s mother Blanca took a job as a casino housekeeper when the family moved to Las Vegas a few years later. That was supposed to be a short-term job, but with good union benefits and a pension now within sight, she’s kept with the exhausting job for 23 years now.
“I thank my son because he’s proud, and he’s not ashamed that his mother’s a housekeeper,” she said in Spanish after a campaign event this fall. “I try to have a life that they can be proud of.”
Kihuen is the third of four children in the close-knit family. They stay in touch through a group text message, and Ruben is the one most likely to get them together on a Sunday afternoon and man the grill.
“He’s just very sensitive as a brother. He knows how to be there for us as a family,” said his sister Mariana, who gave up her job as a big-city lawyer to help her big brother on the campaign. “His desire to always work for the underdog and give a voice to people like my mom has always been his driving force.”
Kihuen relishes the personal side of the job — maintaining a superhuman schedule of community appearances on any given day or having conversations with voters at their doors, where he switches effortlessly between Spanish and English. He’s a dynamic public speaker who’s difficult to knock off message and can make even familiar campaign lines seem ripe with conviction.
His opponents have criticized him as a policy lightweight, pointing to a legislative session where he didn’t introduce any of his own bills. National Republicans trying to save the plainspoken Hardy in a district with a 10-point Democratic registration advantage tried to tie Kihuen to an ongoing FBI corruption investigation into a Las Vegas city councilman who used the Democratic public relations firm where Kihuen works.
But even ads that likened him to sleaze were no match for his sure-footed campaign. Kihuen’s the one who took a concession call from Hardy on election night and the one who’s making plans for a rural tour to visit the more conservative parts of the district he now represents.
“Everything Ruben does he wins. He blows them out. He soars on them. He swoops on them,” said Omar Lateef Bywaters, whose father coached Kihuen’s high school soccer team. “He always wins, and people know they’re going to win with him.” AP
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