Turning Point Wants To Revolutionize How Republicans Turn Out Voters. Some Are Skeptical.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Turning Point’s representatives have made two things clear in meetings with state and local Republican leaders — Donald Trump has blessed their conservative organization to help lead his get-out-the-vote effort, and local party officials ought to use the group’s new voter mobilization app.

Both prospects terrify fellow Republicans.

Soaring to prominence after Trump’s unexpected 2016 win, Turning Point earned a reputation for hosting glitzy events, cultivating hard-right influencers and raising prodigious sums of money while enriching the group’s leaders. They’ve had far less success helping Republicans win, especially in their adopted home state of Arizona.

Now the organization has leveraged its ties to Trump to expand its influence in a way that could be potentially lucrative. Turning Point has sought to lead an effort to remake the GOP’s get-out-the-vote effort based on the theory that there are thousands of Trump supporters who rarely vote but could be persuaded to in this year’s election. And they are pitching their new mobile app as vital to this effort’s success.

The Associated Press obtained an unvarnished look at how Turning Point is promoting its strategy by obtaining several recordings of presentations made by its representatives to state and local Republican officials. In those presentations, Turning Point operatives honed in on churchgoers and hunters, citing statistics that purport to show how few of each group cast ballots in 2020. Their argument, which is questioned by critics, is if groups like Turning Point target such groups, Republicans will likely sweep the swing states for Trump, the recordings show.

The decision by Trump to rely on untested groups such as Turning Point could have