President Donald Trump’s political operation will subsume much of the Republican Party’s apparatus ahead of 2020’s presidential election, party sources tell CNN, merging his already up and running re-election campaign with the Republican National Committee.
The re-election campaign and part of the RNC will work under one roof and be dubbed Trump Victory under the new plan, which highlights just how much Trump has conquered the party that once saw him as an outsider.
The plan would create different and distinct connections between the Trump campaign and the Republican committee, with former RNC staffers directly reporting to campaign officials.
Chris Carr, a longtime Republican strategist, will oversee the effort and work as the political director for the Trump re-election.
The plan, which was first reported by Politico, has been in the works for weeks and ramped up after the midterms, when Democrats notched significant wins by taking over the House of Representatives and a series of governor’s offices.
RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale talk daily, said one Republican official, and are currently working on the reporting structure inside Trump Victory and how to eliminate overlap. Much of the 2020 operation will be based in an office building in nearby Rosslyn, Virginia, the official added.
“The steps President Trump has taken building a campaign apparatus with the RNC in the past two years is already historic in scope and the scale of what we’re building with Trump Victory will be truly unprecedented,” McDaniel told CNN. “Even before a single Democrat has announced, President Trump will have a single hybrid operation preparing for the general election.”
The goal, McDaniel said, is to have the “biggest, most efficient, and unified campaign operation in American history.”
The melding it an attempt to escape some of the tensions that hurt state-based Republican operations in 2016, but it is also an acknowledgment that Trump’s reelection campaign, unlike past presidents, never truly ended and has been humming along — and fundraising — for months.
Trump formally filed his ree-lection campaign the day of his inauguration — January 20, 2017 — and his campaign, since then, has been holding rallies and fundraisers across the country.
