Reince Priebus says Republicans need to get excited about ‘boring’ voter outreach

The onetime chair of the state and national Republican parties offered some advice to Wisconsin delegates at the last day of the RNC in Milwaukee: You need to get really good at boring stuff.

Reince Priebus chaired the Wisconsin Republican Party from 2007 to 2011, leaving the job to chair the Republican National Committee until 2017. That year, Priebus became former President Donald Trump’s first White House Chief of Staff, a position he held for about six months.

A Kenosha native, Priebus told delegates that being a good party chair means “being good at a lot of boring things,” like identifying voters, finding out who’s for you and against you and making sure they vote.

“How do we do it? We do it through data,” Priebus said. “I mean 10,000 points of consumer data on every single person. We know what beer you drink, what car you drive, how much money you make, how many kids you have, how old are they, whether you missed a mortgage payment or not. We know everything about you.”

Priebus said an effective political party uses that data to identify a supporter and send them an absentee ballot request form that they can mail to their local clerk. Priebus said the party needs to knock on their door if they don’t ask for the ballot, then knock on their door again until they complete it and send it back.

“That’s an expensive round-robin that we just went through for one person,” Priebus said. “We have to get to people in Wisconsin that have the ability to help fund this effort excited about boring stuff.”

Priebus said Republicans need to be motivated about what small margins can do in elections in a state like Wisconsin, and other swing states.

“We have to be a process-crazy party. It’s not about being candidate-crazy,” Priebus said. “We can’t have a cocktail reception with (Florida U.S. Sen.) Marco Rubio or whoever every time we want to go raise some money.”

Priebus, who currently serves as president of the law firm Michael Best & Friedrich LLP, is also chair of the Milwaukee 2024 Host Committee, a nonprofit formed to raise money for the Republican National Convention. It reported last week raising $87 million for the convention.

Wisconsin GOP delegates also heard Thursday from U.S. Rep. Scott Fitzgerald, R-Clyman, who said Republicans should be optimistic about their chances for single-party control in 2025.

Fitzgerald said GOP House candidates in states like New York and California were faring better than expected.

“So if we’ve got the East Coast and we’ve got the West Coast, guess what? We’re in a great position to maintain the majority in the House of Representatives,” Fitzgerald said. “And that’s the big enchilada this time.”

Fitzgerald said if Republicans keep the U.S. House, “you’re going to get the Senate and you’re going to get the White House.”

“And President Trump is going to do a wonderful job, I think, in driving an agenda that he’s going to lay out tonight that both the House and the Senate can embrace,” Fitzgerald said.

The Republican National Convention is scheduled to wrap up Thursday night with Trump’s address from Fiserv Forum.

WPR’s Rich Kremer contributed reporting.