RESEARCH TARGETS (As of 12/5/19)
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RESEARCH TARGETS (as of 12/5/19) We’ve set a really ambitious goal of 300 opposition research targets for the 2020 cycle. These are the first 40. 2020 SENATE RACES Republicans currently hold a 53-47 edge in the Senate and Democrats must pick up four seats for an outright majority. This is achievable. States included in this cohort: Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Michigan, New Hampshire and South Carolina. {TARGET: COREY LEWANDOWSKI} New Hampshire Note: Citizen Strong had tremendous success in New Hampshire in 2018: In the State House, we took out eleven of our GOP targets (including one race decided by six votes!!) – contributing to the Democrats taking the majority in that chamber. In the State Senate, three of our GOP targets were successfully defeated (one of these races being decided by fewer than 150 votes!) – contributing to the Democrats going from a 10-14 minority to a 14-10 majority. Right now, our New Hampshire focus is on the U.S. Senate race but we will select state legislative targets when those races take shape. Trump campaign operative and influence-peddler/unregistered lobbyist Corey Lewandowski has announced that he is considering a U.S. Senate run against Democratic incumbent Senator Jeanne Shaheen. Three Republicans have already declared that they are running and there are several others besides Lewandowski waiting in the wings. The scant polling shows Lewandowski leading the field but with ~50% of GOP voters undecided. Initial research tasks include: documenting Lewandowski’s ties to the state, documenting his educational and professional experience prior to the Trump campaign, uncovering any pre-Trump political beliefs and activities, checking public records for a complete list of businesses & corporate entities associated with Lewandowski, checking through campaign finance records for all payments to Lewandowski and his businesses (not only from the Trump campaign but from the full range of Trump-land PACs), comparing lobbying records against Lewandowski’s public statements describing 1 himself as essentially a lobbyist and media coverage of his clients. We’ll also submit Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for White House visitor logs and Air Force One passenger logs to accurately determine Lewandowski’s level of access to the White House. [TARGET: SUSAN COLLINS] Maine Susan Collins is New England’s last Republican member of Congress. Her political skills should not be underestimated. She has brilliantly marketed herself to Mainers by playing up her instances of political independence from the Washington establishment and the GOP base. She has successfully explained away or refused to discuss the many instances where she’s backed hardline right-wing policies that hurt typical Mainers (like the 2017 tax bill) or undermine principles that Collins has claimed are important (like her vote to promote Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court). Successfully holding Collins accountable will be an “all hands on deck” effort. Here are our initial lines of research: Susan Collins and Donald Trump: We are going to drill down into when (and why) Collins criticizes Trump vs. when Collins gives Trump a pass. She still refuses to say whether or not she voted for Trump for President in 2016. Is this normal for Maine Republicans or is Collins the only GOP officeholder in the state who refuses to level with Mainers? Is Collins going to skip the 2020 GOP Convention? Is she voting for Donald Trump in 2020? The bigger issue isn’t whether or not Collins supports Trump – but that she refuses to level with voters. Susan Collins and the Federal Judiciary: Her Supreme Court votes and position on reproductive freedom will rightly receive lots of focus in 2020. We are focusing on issues of economic justice – consumer rights, employee rights, patients’ rights, corporate wrongdoing – and assess the damage that has been done by far-right judges that Senator Collins has supported. 2 If Collins has been voting for the kinds of judges who make it easier to cheat retirees out of their pensions and harder for consumers to hold banks accountable when they get ripped off – then Mainers have the right to know. It will be a lot of work – but a really important contribution to the debate in Maine and will be the template for doing similar work to hold Senators in other states accountable. Susan Collins and Wall Street: Collins seems to have made peace with accepting massive campaign contributions from Wall Street (the executives, the corporate PACs, the lobbyists) and defending “independent expenditures” on her behalf by Wall-Street funded political groups. What has Susan Collins given Wall Street in return? We are going to add up all of the dollars Wall Street has spent on Collins (or against her opponents) throughout her political career. We’ll do a deep dive into the legislative record to understand whether Collins has voted for tax gimmicks, deregulation, and other things that Wall Street has asked for. (We won’t have to guess because the websites, public statements and lobbying records for various Wall Street interests will tell us exactly what they have been asking for and when.) Susan Collins and NAFTA: How does NAFTA impact Maine as a border state? Have you seen Senator Collins in the mix as the NAFTA renegotiations continue to drag on? We haven’t either. What were Mainers’ gripes about the old NAFTA (if any)? What were Susan Collins’ previous actions on those issues? And what has she done this time around? In 2014, Collins was re-elected with 67% of the vote but those days are long gone. Not only has Collins lost much of her “independent” cred, she is facing a far more serious Democratic challenger this time in Speaker of the Maine House, Sara Gideon. The race is considered a toss-up. [TARGET: JOHN JAMES] Michigan John James is an African-American conservative who won the Republican nomination for the Senate in 2018. Democratic incumbent Senator Debbie Stabenow was re- elected by a 6.5% margin. Although he lost, James made a positive impression with enough GOP bigwigs in Michigan and D.C. and now they are running him again. In 2020, Mr. James faces off against Michigan’s junior Senator, Democrat Gary Peters. Peters leads in the polls but James is building momentum. For example, in Q3 of 2019, JJames outraised Peters in campaign contributions. In 2018, James never got close enough to Stabenow in the polls to draw intense scrutiny. Additionally, both James’ record as a veteran and the fact that he is African- American tempered the on-the-record attacks Democrats might have launched. The strategic logic was essentially: leave him alone because we are going to win this race. 3 Today, James has the benefit of statewide name recognition and but enjoys the presumption of having been vetted. He just ran for Senate, of course he’s been vetted, right? Wrong! We are going to start with his business record (he currently runs a transportation and warehousing business that was started by his father), financial ties and any political activity before his 2018 Senate race. We are also going to go through James’ statements and build a running list of every media or political figure that he has verbally attacked – particularly on social media and at GOP rallies, rightwing fundraisers, gun- raffle BBQs and county GOP chapter meetings. (Given James’ broad-brush attacks on the entire Democratic party and on all Democrats, it’s hard to imagine him successfully representing all Michiganders.) We are going to assess James’ interactions with the black community during his 2018 race: we’ll fact-check the statements or promises made and evaluate whether there are inconsistencies or contradictions between what James is promising to voters and what he has said to well-heeled and conservative donors or indicated on candidate questionnaires for right-wing special interest groups. We’ll also take a close look at James’ activities between his Senate defeat on November 6, 2018 election and his June 2019 announcement that he was running for the Senate again. How much was left in his 2018 campaign committee and affiliated PACs and how was it spent? What political events did James attend? Did he receive any speaker or consulting fees during this time? This is all with an eye on making sure John James and his political allies are playing by the rules. [TARGET: JONI ERNST] Iowa When Joni Ernst was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2014, she ran a campaign ad promising to go to Washington, face down the powers that be and “make ‘em squeal” like the hogs she castrated on her farm (her analogy). As we look ahead to 2020, it seems that Washington On House of Cards, political fixer Jane Davis became the collateral has bested Senator Ernst: damage of a chaotic President’s chaotic foreign policy. Joni Nobody’s squealed, Ernst can relate. nobody’s castrated. The 4 Trump’s Administration’s ongoing trade war with China is probably the biggest factor in Ernst’s vulnerable status. Our initial research efforts will focus on the local impact of the trade war. We’ll submit FOIA requests for Ernst’s correspondence with the U.S. Trade Representative and the Agriculture Dept., White House and agency visitor logs (to verify and count how many times the Senator and her staff have actually sat down to meet with the relevant policymakers). We’ll also track Ernst’s direct engagement with Chinese officials (if any). We’ll match this with the public statements Ernst and her office have made – including combing through archives of local radio and television interviews - and build a timeline of what Ernst has said and done.