Donald Trump’s campaign wants Republican lobbyists in D.C. to know: If they don’t vote in this Sunday’s primary, they won’t get access should the former president end up back in the White House.
“If you don’t bother voting, don’t bother calling,” said one Trump campaign official, who was granted anonymity to speak about campaign strategy.
Bryan Lanza, a Washington, D.C.-based Republican lobbyist who served on Trump’s 2016 campaign and his White House transition team, said that “The Trump campaign is very cognizant of who makes up the GOP primary voters in DC.” He added, “The worst thing for them would be not showing up.”
The ultimatum constitutes a blunt threat toward the influence-peddling community, one that is highly unusual for a presidential campaign but fits the more publicly hardball model that Trump has often applied to governance.
While the D.C. Republican Party ultimately maintains control over the voter data, the Trump campaign said they expected that information to be uploaded to Data Trust, a voter file collection system used throughout the Republican Party. At that point they’d see which individuals cast ballots but not which candidates they cast ballots for.
However, Patrick Mara, the chair of the D.C. GOP, said it would not be collecting digital data on the vote and it was unclear if they would share the paper files with Data Trust or the Republican National Committee.
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