Breaking Battlegrounds Midterm 2022 Analysis and Review 53:16

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Welcome to Breaking Battlegrounds. I'm your host, Chuck Warren, and my co-host, Sam Stone. Today, our first guest, Ryan Tyson, founder, president of the Tyson Group. He has consulted for some of the biggest names in Florida, Marco Rubio, Rick Scott, and of course, Ron DeSantis, the buzz of the Republican Party right now. Ryan, thanks for jumping on.

Absolutely. Good to be with you guys. So, Ryan, Sam and I were talking before and we've had this conversation. Everybody thinks Florida was always this, you know, people have short memories. Florida has always been this big red juggernaut. And we've known you for a while now. And we've been trying to explain to our friends who are on suicide watch that Arizona is much like Florida was four, five, six, even two years ago.

Can you explain to our listeners how Florida's changed the last decade since you've been heavily involved? And your strategies have been a big part of this turnaround there. And so I'd like you to paint a narrative of what's happened in Florida and not taking away anything from Governor DeSantis, who's a remarkable governor and has great instincts. But go ahead.

Sure. Sure. Absolutely. So basically, you know, I guess the Florida story for how 2022 ended really begins at the end of the 2012 election for us when Mitt Romney lost the state to Barack Obama. And I think in the aftermath of that election, we really learned some lessons about the

the fundamentals of blocking and tackling that we were not doing. I mean, as we all know, that campaign was a TV campaign. It was a media-driven campaign. And by just observation, as I did my own autopsy on that, bottom line is we went back to the basics and remembered that telemedicine

Campaigns are one on spreadsheets, guys. It's really that simple. You have to build successful vote math. We here in Florida, we are a closed primary state. We have party registration. So our file is very healthy, very rich in data. You can do a lot with it if you spend the time and put the energy into it.

So we started to, beginning in the 14 election, we started trying some strategies to actually have a sophisticated ground game that drives us to an actual vote goal that assures us a victory. Baby steps in 14? No.

Little better in 16, much better in 18. You guys were a big part of all of that. 2020, it started to go on steroids, and that's how we were able to build that 3.7 win for the president in Florida. And then 2022, your 19.4% win for the governor is that program on steroids,

as well as throwing all of the new registrants that we're enjoying in the state since 2018, and especially since 2020 in response to the governor's handling of the pandemic. So my point is, and I tell everybody, you know, the definition of success when you get into a campaign needs to be a turnout goal.

And if your state doesn't have party registration or you don't have the ability to understand what your vote goals can be, that's problematic. You have to get creative. But the definition of success can no longer be the number of rallies and however many broadcast points we have. The definition of success has got to be

reaching vote goals. They have to go back to winning campaigns on spreadsheets. Ryan, I want to back up there right there for a second, because when you talk about winning on spreadsheets, you're not talking about just having the data. You're talking about employing it intelligently in the field, registering voters first, informing them, turning them out, actually making those personal contacts. Yeah.

Yes. Now, here in Florida, we actually have kind of hit a breaking point, I'm afraid, with voter registration because Chuck was involved in this, and we did some back-of-the-envelope math and

I think of our census population of 22 million, 21 and a half million, there's probably only 1.3 million unregistered eligible adults in this state. That's not a lot. I think it says a lot about those folks.

We really are pretty much saturated in terms of registration, and you also have the ability in Florida to register as soon as you get a driver's license and in a multitude of other different ways when you're signing up for, you know, whether it be licenses or, you know, things of that nature. So hunting licenses, fishing licenses, etc.,

So, but yes, it does start with, with voter registration. Obviously, as we know, we know that McCain-Feingold makes that immensely difficult to do with how, with, with how those regulations go. So that's an off your thing. But as our state shifted and the voter registration became more organic, it really became vote map. We put a number on the board and everything that we do drives that turnout. That's,

pretty much what it is. We knew heading into this cycle based on my polling that we had a really good shot to win Miami-Dade. That had been getting better for us over the past two elections, counting 2010-2022.

So that one we knew. But in the governor's overwhelming success with mainly independent and female voters, voters that are moving on the education issue, we were able to dramatically overperform and take Palm Beach County. That's the first Republican to win Palm Beach County since 1988. Lots of good statistics like that that occurred in Florida. Olympus fell, if you would, here in Florida on election night.

We're with Ryan Tyson, founder, president of the Tyson Group. He is the poster for Ron DeSantis and senior advisor. He's also worked for Marco Rubio. You can find Ryan. I suggest you follow him on Twitter at Ryan underscore Tyson. And if you're running for office in Florida, if you're not contacting Ryan, well, you're stupid. So, Ryan, let's go to this next point here. Yeah.

You won independents. You won Hispanics. You won females. You won Miami-Dade and Palm Beach. What demographic...

that Governor DeSantis won surprises you the most, at least, let me say at least by the margin, what surprised you the most? So we're not going to be able to prove the metric that I'm about to tell you for a couple of months. Okay. However, we started noticing in our data that African Americans were disproportionately trending to us towards something we'd ever seen before. Okay.

We did not win African-Americans at all, not even close. However, we did immensely better in Gadsden County, which is the state's only majority black county here in Florida. My tracking data started to suggest as we were closing that we potentially were getting in the 20s.

Preliminary results are going to, you know, that we're just, we don't have voter IDs of who voted on election day yet here in Florida. But that's the group that shocked me. I do believe that Ron DeSantis took a historic share of the African-American vote in Florida. Just letting you know, I mean, historic share for a Republican when Florida would be anything over 12, you know,

And there's a decent shot that he doubled that number. Yeah, there's a decent shot he doubled President Trump's ballot share with African-Americans in 2020. In the 2020 election, President Trump got the highest share of the non-white vote ever of a Florida Republican. And in 22, Ron DeSantis shattered those numbers. But the president. Yeah.

But I want to point out something. You talked about this earlier. Each cycle, you built little by little. So this didn't happen magically with the share. And again, you didn't get a majority, nor did you get close to a majority on it. But you started focusing with the Trump campaign on the black vote in 2020. I remember that. You made an investment. Yeah.

Yeah, the president had a very strong commitment to the African-American community. I will tell you, and we did, we had a ground game there and all, and it was difficult. But I have to say, the difference in this election and that one, when you would talk to African-American voters, the profile of the African-American voter that was voting for the governor was actually under the age of 50.

Interesting. It was not – I mean because the African-American electorate is predominantly over the age of 50 and female, right? That's the AFAM voter, the matriarch if you would. But we were doing so much better with voters under the age of 50. I would see it when I would do field research today.

And you would ask them, I wouldn't even be working on anything political. It'd be like an issue campaign or something I was working on. And we would ask them, well, why are you voting for Ron DeSantis? And they would always say, and this is fundamentally what reelects are about, right? They would always say, they've done a good job. That was it. That's all it's about. And if you really...

And if you really dig into that, if you really roll up your sleeves and dig into what that means for many African-American voters that did vote with the governor this cycle, it comes down to opening schools, plain and simple. When he got kids back in schools as quickly as he did, the governor took a tremendous amount of flack for that, a tremendous amount of flack for that.

But it's the reason that many of these African-American voters that are not typical in our group would would that went with him. In fact, they were the ticket splitter, if you would.

They'd vote for the governor, but they would vote for Val Demings against Rubio, and then they would vote straight Democrat the rest of the way. It's fascinating. I mean it's what made up the two-point differential, two-and-a-half, three-point differential. So it's not a ton of people, but I do believe preliminarily that African-American turnout was historically bad.

in Florida. That's pretty crazy thinking that there was an African-American congresswoman, former police chief Val Demings, at the top of their ticket. She came out the gate trying to be a cop and just didn't work. And the African-American electorate just was not energized remotely by Val Demings or Charlie Crist. And it is what it is.

The governor is, I'll say this, I polled a lot of states this cycle, polled you guys out in Arizona, did Pennsylvania, did Georgia, because I was really curious how far to the right our electorate had shifted. We won education voters in Florida. That's something that Republicans typically do not do, and I think it was because of the predominantly getting kids in school and then to a lesser extent no mandate.

Ryan, we have just about a minute and a half here before we have to go to break. I think we're bringing you back here for the next segment. But if you were advising other states, when we come back, I really want to focus on this. If you were advising other states what to do, because we talked about this back in 2015, 2016, when this plan was coming together. Where do they start? Because it seems like a lot of Republican states are.

Their leadership, whether it's the party leadership or the elected leadership, doesn't have a coordinated plan like Florida has to really go after trying to build their electorate.

Yeah. Well, I mean, the caucuses in Florida, as you both know, are very strong. The Florida Republican Senate and the Florida Republican House is what I feel like just kind of has always been around here, keeping strength as top ticket campaigns come in and out, if you would. But I do believe that caucuses have to drive this. I do. I do.

I do. I mean, I think the days of the party, the parties are, we probably shouldn't do this on the other side, but it's difficult. The party infrastructure has been dramatically neutered as McCain-Feingold and Thea Windows and whatnot come into play, and you've got to have these caucuses that are strong, that can really build infrastructure within themselves, and then the state-wide can help fund that, and then you can fuel the machine that you need to turn your papers out.

Yeah, fantastic. Ryan Tyson coming right back with him. If you want to follow him, folks, Ryan underscore Tyson on Twitter. Breaking Battlegrounds back in just a moment.

Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. I'm your host, Chuck Horne, with Sam Stone. And today, our first guest is Ryan Tyson. He is the founder and president of the Tyson Group. You can find him on Twitter at Ryan underscore Tyson. He is the pollster for Ron DeSantis and a senior advisor. He's also been a key advisor to Senator Rubio, Senator Rick Scott, the Florida Republican Party. It was a great time.

If you want to know what to do in Florida, you need to give Ryan a call, and I'm sure he'll return your call if you want. So, Ryan, thanks for joining us for the second segment here. I want to get back to Sam's question here. All right. Brian, all these states that are the Nevadas of the world, the Arizonas of the world. Colorado is Massachusetts now, so we're not going to say Colorado. But anyway, states like that, what do they do? Tell them, where would they start? What would be the game plan?

Well, I think the first thing you got to do is start processing your vote by mail ballots a hell of a lot earlier. Yeah, no debate there. No debate there. There's a unanimous decision on that.

That's the first thing I would tell you to start doing. When I say this, when I was doing data out in Arizona specifically, I think we were winning Hispanics out there. I think there's something that's a little off with whites. I'm very concerned that turnout was not as strong as it needed to be on election day. Would you guys disagree with that? Not at all. No.

And I would offer, you know, there seemed to be, and it just seems as an observation that nationally we did not have a turnout apparatus in play that we needed to build on this sentiment that was here. The only reason Florida's an outlier on that is when we found that there was no infrastructure to do turnout, the governor had the resources to fund it.

and he did. And we did the doors. We believe in all of the above voter contact for GoTV. We believe in all of it. It's not just one. It's all of it working together to get people to go to the polls. I would also argue that you really got to push people to early vote in person. And for folks, for low prop voters who are not voting in person, you have a very small chance that they're actually going to do some...

something on election day that their vote history says that they're not typically do, they typically don't do, which is actually vote. So with that said, I would say you got to take voter contact into your own hands. Secondly, you should not rely on out of state people to run your data. You should hold your file within your own state and you should build your vote math yourself. Don't wait on the, you know, the big help to come from the sky or from Washington, D.C. Your destiny is your own. Strong legislative caucuses.

They're here. They're the ones that can raise money efficiently. They are the backbone. Those swing seats for those ledge districts are going to be where the statewides need the most help, right? So you should have strong caucuses that are funded, and they're funded to do the persuasion techniques that they need to do, and then they work in tandem with the statewide candidates who build vote math. Right, right. It's our market.

One thing I want to interject right now, because you're not saying this, and I think this is an important lesson for voters here more in Arizona than in Florida. But with those key swings, swing legislative seats, the party needs to get behind them and put 100 percent of the effort in, regardless of how the leadership of the party or the elected leadership feels about that candidate, whether they align. Yeah, yeah.

About winning. Right. And that's actually a big lesson, Chuck, that I think Arizona, the Republican Party in Arizona continually gets caught up in party infighting. And we direct resources to people who are. Well, and that makes me point. That's the one thing. I'm sure it happens in Florida. But I never got the sense that the Jeb Bush wing, and that's long ago, but I didn't feel like they weren't team players in this process going on in Florida. Is that a bad perception on my part?

No, it's just the party – he was definitely in charge, really, of all of it, you know, earlier in the century, 2002 through 2006. But now the legislative caucuses in Florida, they're very unique. That's why it's hard to really make a comparison with them anywhere in the country. Just as an example, the Florida Senate probably raises twice the amount of money as neighboring state statewide candidates do.

uh... they're very strong very powerful in terms of the sophistication of their political machinery they do their own thing and there is no in fighting from any other parts of the republican party because the senate is the senate the house is the house so that's kinda unique to this state because we've had the majority consistently uh... since i think nineteen ninety eight and haven't looked back

and by the way i mean that the florida legislative caucuses have now survived to redistricting cycles with the so-called fair districts amendment uh... so that takes uh... partisan gerrymandering out of the consider uh... out of uh... out of the map drawing process and

We just got super majorities elected for the first time in both chambers, highest majorities we've ever had. So it's kind of comical. I mean, it's just – that's why I keep saying I know every state's got a nuance, but these caucuses are so strong. And when those caucuses are running good campaigns and they're putting winners across the finish line, it really helps everybody.

That's my opinion. Because, you know, you've got term limits in some states and whatnot. These statewide candidates come and go. The brains and the political machinery of a ledge caucus is here to stay as long as you're going to be competitive in a state. I hope that makes sense. It does make sense. Another group that Governor DeSantis seemed to perform well with was the Puerto Rican vote. Everybody talks about Miami-Dade, Cuban vote, Venezuelan.

Were you surprised by the reception he received from the Puerto Rican community and their vote for him? Actually, I think he did better with Puerto Ricans. We'll know when the final election day comes through. I do believe we lost Puerto Ricans. The Puerto Rican vote, we did win Osceola County, but there's more whites that vote in Osceola County than white.

Hispanics, believe it or not. It's not a majority Hispanic county. I don't believe by the electorate that is yet. But just because we won Osceola is not a sign that we won Puerto Ricans. I'm pretty confident because that we did a lot better with them, though. And I'm not shocked by that at all. And the reason I'm not shocked by that is because your I for Puerto Ricans, they wanted to get back to work in 2020. That's it. They wanted to get back to work in 2020.

They wanted to get back to work. So in a state like Florida, the economic voter, there were more of them, and they were more committed to the Republican ticket, regardless of all of the noise of the press, because they got back to work. I mean, that's probably the thing that Ron DeSantis can hang on to, and that's what he's the champion of, that few governors in the country can do. Right.

Right. Well, Ryan, we appreciate you joining us today. Folks, if you want to know anything about Florida or you have a client nationwide, visit Ryan Tyson, president of the Tyson Group. You can find him on Twitter, Ryan underscore Tyson. Ryan, do you have a website they can go to if they have questions? We do. I don't remember it. Just type in Tyson Group, Ryan Tyson. Google will help you out. Ryan, thanks a million for joining us, buddy. Thanks. Have a good day. Bye now. Bye.

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Sam, great episode. Great episode. Ryan is one of the smartest guys in politics. He has developed a data system. Well, he's different. He's different than these other people. He's different than these other people in the fact that you always see these newspapers quote some idiot professor from political science department, right? Right. So Ryan goes and has the data, but he has the practical experience what it takes to win. So Ryan says, all right, look, this is the vote you need to win from these groups. Now let's get there. And he measures that daily. I don't see that happening of a lot of people doing this races. Nope.

Breaking Battlegrounds, back in just a moment. Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. Thank you to Ryan Tyson for joining us. Great insights about Florida that hopefully spread across the country right now. Florida finished counting their votes, Chuck. What was it, like 7.2 million votes they finished counting five hours after the polls closed? Arizona is going to be counting through this weekend.

They will probably be counting into next week. Maricopa County is dropping 60, 80,000 ballots a day from the 400,000 plus that remain. Pima County magically keeps coming up with new ballots that they're finding.

Arizona, I don't care what anyone says. And, you know, we've had Stephen Richer on here a few times. He's a friend of the program. I don't care what he or anyone says. Our system is broken. Oh, it's a horrible system. You know, first thing we got to do is just say, look, you're not going to drop off ballots. You have to have a mail postmarked by Wednesday or Thursday. And that's just it. And, you know, if you can't find time to vote within two and a half weeks, I just don't really care. Right. I mean, it's not...

You have to meet deadlines to go to your bank to get a mortgage. You have a time to go pick up your car. I mean, come on. It's two and a half weeks. It's just sitting there. It doesn't take rocket science. And this is probably a course America is taking that just we're trying to make everything as easy as possible. Having a ballot for two and a half weeks is not a hard lift. No, it is not. And so that's a part of it. And so when you have 275,000 people drop off, you have people mainly Monday or coming through the weekend.

It's a mess. And we're like the largest voting jurisdiction county in the country. Second largest. Second largest voting jurisdiction. I mean, it's not like you just turn around. Yeah, you just turn around. And of course, you have Pima playing their crap games that they do all the time down there, hiding the votes. So, folks, before we get into Arizona a little bit more, just a little bit about Nevada. Nevada is facing the same thing. They keep finding ballots everywhere.

If I was a betting man today, I think Laxalt does not win that Senate race. He's probably going to lose it by 5,000, 8,000 votes.

but Sheriff Joe Lombardo is probably gonna win that race. They've already announced the Republican Lieutenant Governor won, the controller won, they're waiting on the AG. So mixed bag of things there. They thought they were gonna pick up two or three house seats in Nevada. They didn't, but they're gonna pick up a governor seat, Lieutenant Governor, and that's really important in a state like Nevada. And so as we talked to Ryan earlier, you gotta build on those things. - Right. - Right, you gotta go build on it. So now hopefully the sheriff for 24 is gonna go and put together, work with the caucuses,

pick up some seats in the Senate and the legislature and build. And that's how you do these things. When he talks about the caucuses, that is a real key because while the membership of those caucuses changes, the caucus is always there. Right. So you may not always have the governor. Right. You may not always have, but you're always going to have some people in the House and Senate. Right. And so you have a vehicle. And that is a really important vehicle that, frankly, Arizona, there is that. They put some money in.

into some of their races. But frankly, their spending was ineffective and it tends to be based on favoritism, not data. So Sam, talk to our guests. What...

We have a lot of ballots out there still. Talk to our guests in Florida and Nevada what we have here in Arizona. We have how many outstanding? How are they going to drip it through the next several days? We have about 690, as we know, because Pima County, again, keeps finding new batches of ballots. But...

We have about 690,000 ballots statewide still out there, maybe a little less, maybe 600,000, about 400,000 in Maricopa County alone, about 100,000 in Pima County. Maybe that's down to 80,000 now. So the rest are in rural Arizona? Yeah.

But they're spread out in dribs and drabs, right? You saw that yesterday with a lot of the rurals reporting batches of 8,000 votes and things like that. If I got to make a prediction about Arizona, unfortunately, I don't think Blake Masters, you're going to be listening to this here on Saturday.

when we'll know some results from Friday night that will really tell us what's going to happen with Kerry Lake and Abe Homaday. And unfortunately, I think Masters and Fincham are too far out of it at this point. Do you think David Schweikert wins?

That's a really interesting one. I think he does. I think the votes coming in probably benefit him. I mean, that's one reason the votes come in probably benefit him. I think they will. I think he does. But if I'm David Schweikert, and I like David Schweikert personally, you know. He's a friend of the show. Friend of the show. It's time for him to either reconsider how he's presenting himself and how he's operating as a congressman or pick a...

pick a different career after this election because I think the electorate's just kind of done. Yeah, I agree completely. So...

Right now, folks, you have really still in the game, and this could change dramatically. Carrie Lake still, there is a real path where she can win this. Absolutely. Same thing for Abe. Abe Homaday, yes. Tom Horn for supervisor. Superintendent, yeah. Superintendent. I don't see a path for Finchman. I think he's with the Blake party. No, I think those two, you know, they've trailed in every batch. They've trailed Lake and Homaday by about 3% to 4%.

And that's just too much. That's just too much. It really is. Well, folks, OK, Sam, we're going to be coming back with one more segment here in just a moment, folks. Breaking battlegrounds. We've got a lot of work on elections to do here in Arizona. It's been a mess. We'll be right back.

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Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host, Chuck Warren. I am Sam Stone. On the line with us, a guest Chuck and I are both very excited to speak with, Rich Lowry, editor-in-chief of the National Review. He is also the author of a book that has just come out, The Case for Nationalism. It just went on sale. And Rich, we'd love to have you back on the program in the future to talk about your book, because that's obviously something I think is a really important read for folks right now.

But right now we want to talk about these elections and some pretty darn surprising results. Yeah, absolutely. I was a believer in the Republican wave. It obviously did not come about. I mean, there's some chance Democrats could hold the House, unlikely, but that it's still possible here on a couple days after the election is astonishing enough, and it

in fact the other against republican independent but we still have counting to do which is a at their own problem which maybe we could address the truth is that there is a some sort of blue wave at the end you know uh... by the approval rating and the final n_b_c_ poll with twenty eight that among intended which should not be survivable three days before

a midterm election but democrats somehow uh... pulled up a few being like a state and separate themselves from biden just enough and apparently according to exit polls one

Independence. One, independence, when the president of their party is totally in the toilet among independents, and key states like Pennsylvania and Arizona apparently won them handily by double digits. So I think Democrats succeeded in making the election less of a pure referendum on the incumbent, which it usually is, in the midterm, and instead made it more of a choice between

Yeah, I was going to say it was in many ways a referendum between the current president and the last president. Because if you look at Republicans who weren't Trump affiliated, they did very well, even in states where Trump Republicans did not. Yeah.

Yeah, I think that's right. But, you know, it was all up and down the ballot. You know, everywhere, state legislative races, Republicans fared poorly. But I think more than any single person, Trump has responsibility. I would not blame him for everything that happened, but...

Four candidate choices, not keeping a low profile, teasing his prospective presidential run right before the election. None of that was helpful. And you can go, I think, almost state by state and come up with a plausible Republican nominee in the Senate races who would have won. Instead, Republicans tended to choose the weaker candidate.

candidate, and unfortunately, from my perspective, paid the price. How much do you think Donald Trump popped in his head up the last two weeks when it seemed like there was this red tsunami coming, and obviously wanted to take part of the glory, the aura from it? How much do you think that played a role in hurting some of these candidates, sort of like Dr. Oz in Pennsylvania, or Black Salt in Nevada, things of that nature? I think that hurt at the margins, but I think the Trumps

more important than one was picking, for instance, Oz in the first place, right? Oz won his primary by 0.1% against, you know, not the most exciting guy, you know, a hedge fund guy, David McCormick, who is just like a conventional Republican, like almost from central casting. But he would have won. He would have beaten a radical progressive who had just had a stroke, John Fetterman, where Oz couldn't pull it off. So I think that's more the problem with Trump. And then also just creating...

a general environment in the Republican Party that has favored strange, underprepared, conspiratorial-thinking Republican candidates. Because there are a number of really poor choices that happened that didn't have Trump's fingerprints on them directly. Trump came and endorsed at the end when it was clear the candidate was going to win anyway. Mastriano, the gubernatorial candidate in Pennsylvania, the example of that candidate.

And Bulldog in New Hampshire is another example of that. But there's kind of been this sort of feverish feeling in the Republican Party that's been stoked by Trump and that hasn't allowed the party to see clearly its interest. And when you do have that, DeSantis, Kemp, some others...

you can win and win convincingly. And you don't have to be a squish. You don't have to be a wimp. You can be combative as the Santa shows. You can push back hard against major league baseball and corporations mirroring this voting bill as Brian Kemp did, but you have to be competent and appealing to people. And, and that's, that's what I think the GOP has kind of missed. And that's,

Those are key ingredients to success. Exactly. Well, being in politics and writing about it as you are, you're also probably an amateur psychologist. What do you make of the Trump attacks on DeSantis and Yunkin the last 48 hours? I mean, I have friends who are just rabid Trump supporters, and they're just like, I'm done. I mean, what the hell?

Yeah, I'm hearing that everywhere. You know, you don't need to engage in Freudian or Jungian analysis. It's not really complicated. You know, he is angry, and I think he feels weak and kind of threatened,

So he's lashing out. And the post last night about DeSantis was just lunatic. And, you know, it's a threat to DeSantis and a warning. You get in, this is what you're going to deal with every single day of your life. Get used to it, and it's going to get worse. But then also, in a weird way, kind of invitation, because it shows that Trump fears them. So, you know, there are people desperately trying to get Trump around Trump, who want him to do well, trying to get him to put off his announcement next week,

If the Georgia runoff is going to stop control of the Senate, we don't know that yet. Give Herschel Walker your email list. Raise $10 or $15 million for Herschel Walker. Stay out of the way otherwise.

And then if Herschel pulls it off, then you can say, look, I helped this. We actually won the Senate. It wasn't bad as people thought. And then maybe you have a little – you've changed the momentum of the story a little bit. But at the moment, he's in a terrible box. Rich, I thought this criticism by Trump was different than his past criticisms because I think – and this isn't 100 percent. I haven't done the research on this. But going back –

It seemed like when he was attacking someone, it was over some difference that they had. It was a race where that person had criticized him and he was going after them or tearing them down. Whereas the DeSantis and now Youngkin attacks really kind of came out of left field. Neither of those people has has been critical at all of Trump. Neither of them has said anything to thwart him. And now you drop those. To me, that's different.

Yeah, that's a great point. Usually it's someone that has criticized Trump. During the campaign when he went after Joe O'Day in Colorado, Senate candidate, I think O'Day had said something critical about Trump. And he still should be able to let it go, right? Right. But he can't. But this is different. This is affirmative criticism.

I must destroy you and or scare you guys out of the race because I think you could be a big problem for me. And that it is different. And, you know, it feels...

It's the one amazing thing about Trump, and I'm not a fan of his, but I admire his skills and capabilities in many ways. But every other day while he was president, there was some thermonuclear controversy, right? Or he was supposed to be done, or the wall was supposed to be closing in. He never blinked once. He never showed the slightest...

that he'd lost sleep at night or he was worried or that he was going to back down. Never. And this just speaks, these posts, of certain desperation we've not seen before. There's a weakness in them we haven't seen before. Yeah, exactly. And DeSantis not replying, just getting rent-free in his head. He just doesn't reply to them. He ignores them. And the worst thing you can do to people, especially with an ego, is just ignore them.

Yeah, you know, I got to remind myself on Twitter this all the time. I don't pay a lot of attention to my Twitter mentions, but I had some notifications come up naturally. I see them pop up on my screen, and someone said them.

that I'm an idiot or whatever or something worse. I got this killer response. And then I realized, no, you just let it go. You know, that makes you bigger than the other person. And, you know, that's what both DeSantis and Youngkin are going to be able to do here. And I would have thought, you know,

A week ago, Trump getting in before DeSantis would be bad for DeSantis, right? DeSantis would have won a big victory and then wouldn't be able to take immediate advantage of it, and Trump would step all over it. Now I think Trump getting in is bad for Trump and good for DeSantis because DeSantis would be able to wait, say, you know what, we have a session in the legislature coming up, here are my 10 initiatives, I'm going to pass them. It just underlines a key source of his strength.

to be able to do things and get things done and move the ball. And I think one of the lessons of the election is people appreciate that, and that's really important, and he can do it, and Trump can't. So let's go back to the elections real quick. So let's say Republicans take majority in the House, and it's probably not going to be more than four or five. Is that correct? Maybe seven?

Yeah, I think high watermark now, I think of someone like 223 or something. And the latest count I saw was like 11 true toss-ups. Democrats would need to win nine to hold on. So...

But anyway, it's a real narrow majority. So what can Republicans do to work with the president to get anything done? Or is it simply they're the Congress of no? I mean, what do they do? I mean, there's not really much margin for error. Yeah.

they're going to be the Congress of no. I mean, especially if they don't take the Senate. I mean, everything they do in the House is... Anything they do in the House is just going to die. Not even going to make it to the President's desk, which is usually what you want when you're a congressional majority and there's a president of an opposite party. At least make them veto some popular stuff. They wouldn't be able to do that even... I think the possible cooperation would be on permitting reform. You know, Republicans...

Partly for political reasons, partly for substance reasons. Didn't like this Manchin version of permanent reform. I think there's a chance of bipartisan consensus there. They'll have to agree on spending bills. You know, there'll be big fights over them with Biden. But, you know, there'll be some sort of half-love compromise for both sides.

And then there'll be investigations. And I think there are important things to investigate. But otherwise, you know, if they'd taken both houses, maybe they still will. You know, they definitely would have passed some sort of police bill. They definitely would have passed some sort of fossil fuels drilling bill and make Biden veto them or hope Biden would come around, which would be unlikely. But, you know, I think very little except for investigations will happen in the House. Just what the American people want.

Well, but I do think the Hunter Biden laptop investigation. No, I mean, I'm not saying it needs to happen, but you need to be able to chew gum and walk at the same time. Right. And so that's the dilemma. How do you go as a party and start pushing some sort of agenda that is receptive to people, to these independent voters in 2024? Because in 2024, there is a real ability.

but because they are Republicans, they can take that from, you know, jaws of victory to pick up the Senate and probably get 54, 55 seats. Am I incorrect on that? Yeah. No. Yeah, 24 on the map is really, looks really good. And, you know, this is why if Republicans have been able to,

pull off all these close races in the Senate, you know, you can get to 54. You can even imagine, like, 60 and 24, which is, again, why this night was such a terrible shame. This is one thing, you know, there's a fight now over recriminations, obviously, and MAGA types want to blame Mitch McConnell. And McConnell, you know, he made misjudgments the way anyone did. But I think what

One of his worst tendencies is never wanting to have an agenda in an election because he thinks he gives the other side something to shoot at. But I just think, and McCarthy had the right impulse to want to have an agenda, but it was incredibly vague and no one heard about it or knew anything about it. But it would help to have some ideas, some policy ideas, to show people, well, this is how we're going to combat inflation. And then you have it on the shelf, and if you get a two-seat majority, at least you know, okay, we're going to at least pass these five things that we said we would.

Rich, I think that's a fantastic point. We're going to have to end it there. We're coming to the end of our program right now, but I want to thank you for joining us. How do folks follow you and your work?

Well, thank you. The most important way is to go to nationalreview.com, where we have brilliant and insightful people writing every single day, every single hour. And we keep up with everything. And then you can find me on Twitter at Rich Lowry. Fantastic. Rich Lowry, Editor-in-Chief of National Review. Thank you so much for joining us today. Folks...

Boy, it has been a crazy couple of weeks in this country. Just the beginning. Just the beginning. And one of the things that's been happening, if you've been watching, the stock market has been going up and down like a rocket ship. The volatility is off the freaking charts, Chuck. And if you're concerned about that, especially with Joe Biden going to be in office and now looks like he's going to be running again, you need a portfolio. You need some investments in your portfolio that are reliable, that can generate the return you need year after year.

And that is investyrefi.com, folks. You can earn up to a 10.25% return on your money, guaranteed. You know what you're going to get each month. You're getting more than inflation. This is a really good deal. I highly encourage people to go to investyrefi.com. That's invest, the letter Y, R-E-F-Y.com, or call them at 844-204-7756. Tell them Chuck and Sam sent you. Protect your wallet.

Join us on Breaking Battlegrounds next week. Be sure to download our podcast segment also. Folks, thank you for tuning in. Have a great weekend. Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. This is your podcast segment. Bonus, overtime, all the information you need to go into the next week. So, Sam, something interesting happened this election. It looks like if we had our pre-election bingo card, if you had roughly...

Turn out plus four Republicans in the House vote and the House vote is still not callable by now that we still don't know if we have a majority or not. You would have lost bingo. Yeah, you would have. I mean, I you know, you go. And what's interesting about that, that brings me to President Biden, President Biden nationwide.

It was a plus four Republican. It may get down to plus two at the end. But nonetheless, Republicans won the majority. And I only bring this up, not that it matters, because we do this on state by state and midterms and congressional districts. But Democrats love to bring up the majority of people support them. Right. Based on that, a majority of people, 50 percent plus.

supported Republicans' visions for America. But what Democrats are going to take from this is that Biden had a tremendous midterm election. Well, and as he should. I mean, it defied all historical expectations. Now, you have to go and take that we picked up 13 seats we weren't supposed to when he was elected in 2020. Right. And that has to be part of this equation. So no matter what you do now, say they just pick up seven or eight, it's close to 20. So you got to view this a little bit differently. But the thing about it is,

We always talk about Donald Trump's a bit tone deaf. OK, tone deaf. Biden is there. And one thing I've never understood is how the press does not see how both these men are the same in many ways. Personality wise, Biden was asked this week if he would change anything. He said, no, we just gave you the results at the very at the very minimum. A humble leader would say, look, we are split as a country.

my party did not get the majority vote nationwide. We probably need to rethink some things and find some things we can work on together. He has no desire to do that because he's an arrogant jerk. Well, frankly, both sides need to be doing that. Neither side will. No, no. I mean, on the Republican side, there needs to be some introspection about some of what we're pushing for. Abortion, obviously, I think was probably a big driver in this election. Trump is a big driver in this election. And when he came out

you know, 48 hours before the vote and basically announced he's running for president. I really think you had a lot and there's data now starting to show you had a lot of late breaking voters who said, heck no, and then turned away from Trump endorsed candidates. Look at the margin difference, even in states where you had one non-Trump Republican, New Hampshire, right? Sununu versus Baldock. Sununu wins very easily. Baldock loses pretty badly.

What's going on there? That's Trump. Well, we talked about this before. For example, in a state like Arizona, to win as a republic comfortable margins, you have to have those Ducey-Romney-McCain voters. It's just part of the equation. Let's talk about the congressional real quick here. So for the House to flip – for the Democrats to keep the House, they have to win Arizona 1. Yep.

They have to win Arizona six, which I think we just won. I think so. Yeah, that's one. Is that one? That's one. So one, one. They declared it last night. So we've won that. They have to win California 13, California 22, California 27, California 41 and Washington three. My understanding this morning is Kent and Washington three is in trouble.

So, yeah. But that being said, you and I both think with the with the votes coming in from Maricopa, Schweikert wins that. I agree. I think Schweikert does pull that one off. Congressman David Schweikert has been in Congress a long time. So Arizona.

Which is not going to probably put Blake Masters in the Senate, provide two congressional seats the Democrats had to have. Right. And they're going to lose them. When you're going to have a partially thanks to redistricting, but you're going to have a pretty solid Republican majorities here. Three will be six. Three. I think it's going to be six. Three.

I think it's going to be six, three. And that's from a five, four down. It was a big deal. And it looks like for sure here in Arizona, we're going to keep the state Senate state in the state house. And they actually appear to be expanding our, our margins in both. We had a one, one vote margin, uh,

In each body, 16 and 31, that looks like it's going to get higher. Might be 17, 18, and 32, 33. You and I talked about this early when the Dobbs decision came out. We have a – folks, we have a text that a bunch of consultants do to work nationally. And Sam and I were the ones saying abortion is going to be a bigger issue than you think. And we have some of our friends who are just –

were naysayers about it. Just thought you and I were being crazy and whiny. Yeah, no. I mean, look, Chuck. We're not crazy. I tell this story all the time. I tell this to every candidate I've worked with.

The story of a girl I knew in high school, and I'm going to change her name here or just leave her name out of it, but she was from a very religious family. Father was a Baptist preacher. They did those summer bus tours, anti-abortion bus tours and abstinence bus tours and all this stuff. The problem with that was their daughter was a 15-year-old with hormones who wasn't exactly abstinent.

And so, you know, she got pregnant in her sophomore year in high school at 15. And what happened? Mom waited for dad to go off to a Baptist conference and hustled her to the abortion clinic. Now, do you think that girl and her mom, who I know are still in Arizona and are Republican, do you think they voted for candidates who were willing to totally ban abortion? I do not.

No, because it's very personal. At the end of the day, voters are voting for their self-interest. Right. Right. So for them, that's an experience is very personal to them. Again, this does not suggest Sam and I are not pro-life. We just knew there was a problem here. I'm pro-life, but I recognize this is not a majority winning, you know, banning abortions is not a majority winning issue.

No, it is not. You know, an interesting comment as well from Joe Pollack is Republicans at this margin, it's the same margin they won nationwide in 2010. Right. And there was this massive turnover. But because of redistricting, gerrymandering, you just don't get the same votes you used to get. Well, you know what? The other thing, too, is and I think Republicans need to start keeping this in mind going forward with the pandemic in 2020 and the changes in voting.

What Democrats have done is build a nationwide early absentee, whatever you want to call it, ballot turnout machine that there is no such thing as depressed Democrat turnout anymore because they have figured out how to generate that turnout under any circumstance whatsoever. And so anytime Republicans let off the gas, any area they let off the gas where we do not turn out big on our side, we're going to lose.

And that machine is going to be it's going to be a fact of life for 20 plus years. Absolutely. And as we continue as a Republican Party and candidates complain, moan and put distrust in the election system.

You know, Ryan said earlier with Florida, we get our low propensity voters out early to vote early. There is no some may complain, but they have no proof to back them up. There is no effort here in Arizona. Here in Arizona, what they need to know, there was no effort at that at all. I mean, they were telling everyone, go to the polls and drop your ballot at the poll, which is part of the reason we're having such a slow count. But but the other thing is, look, if you're if you're a red state and you have any issues or questions with your elections at all.

Just flip and copy Florida. Just go down to send a delegation down there. Go figure it out. Match them up. Mirror it and do exactly what they do. Exactly. Because it works. No one's contesting it. No one's arguing that it's stolen or not stolen. And their results were in five hours after they finished. I mean, you know, after polls closed. That is a model for the entire country for how to run elections. Free, fair, open, totally secure. So.

As our show airs, we're going to still be up to debate if Republicans take control of the House. Yes. Do you think we take control of the House? I think we do, but it's very slim. We're talking two or three. Two or three votes, yeah. I mean, someone mentioned on Twitter, a renowned reporter, saying this could be like the Nesset in Israel. Right. You know, when you only have one, two, three margins, someone dies.

Someone gets ill. No, I mean, you know, you need every vote in house, right? I mean, one of the things Nancy Pelosi has benefited from the last few years is being able to excuse a handful of her members from any vote. So that allows people to do things like go on vacation. No more. No more. No more.

Well, folks, we hope you enjoyed our guest this week. And remember to visit us on BreakingBattlegrounds.vote or on social media or on Twitter, Breaking underscore Battle. And share it with your friends. Listen to the podcast. Share wide and far. We hope you have a great week. Absolutely. Enjoy.

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