Joining us. I want to thank everyone joining us. This is part two of our chats with the chairs. Democratic party leader and tonight we will with thethe discussion Republican Party chair. We are looking forward to the next time being on campus as well. We are going to talk about where the Campaign Stands but primarily against the backdrop of the Global Pandemic we are all struggling to deal with. Heres how the conversation will go. If you participated in other events, this will be familiar to you. We will start with the first part of the evening with the chair and i having a conversation. About halfway through, we will invite students to join into that conversation with their questions. For those who are participating via zoom, you will see at the bottom of your screen, the q a button, click on that, not the chat button, to leave your question. Someone from our team will get back to you and thats where you should look at your chat. They will get back to you to let you know when your time is up when your turn is up, and then we will invite you to ask your question, so make sure at that point that you are camera friendly, camera ready. We will make you famous. Feel free to begin to populate your questions now. With that, lets get the conversation started. Thanks for coming back to gu politics. Thanks for having me and thank you for that nice introduction and i wish i were there with you in person and hopefully, we can do that next year. We will look forward to it. The last time we chatted in one of these discussions was, i believe, it was early in the administration, very early into your tenure as chair and a lot has changed and a lot has happened since then, obviously. Now, a lot of what we talked about then was how you are all preparing for the president s reelection. We are in the middle of a campaign now and now you know who your opponent is. Could you take a couple of minutes to help frame the race for us from your perspective . Where does the race stand . How are you guys looking at it . Obviously, weve been preparing since we met last time. From a party perspective, so much of what we do is raising the money in advance, putting the ground game in place, registering voters, getting staff on the ground and getting ready for the ultimate voter turnout on election day. Clearly, weve had a head start, we raised record money, we had the ability to work with the Trump Campaign and we are in 23 states already and we have about 800 staff on the ground and we have about one million volunteers. We are in a good position. I describe it this way, with the bandwidth we have and things we can do with data and Voter Registration and digital in the fundraising limits we have, we build the road for the candidate to drive on it. We build the road so the candidates that road takes years and years to build. We are in the best place we have ever been heading into this election. Now we have our candidate. In the middle of this virus, its hard to run a campaign. I think most americans are just trying to see us get through this crisis. As we come out of this, you will see more and more how the campaign shapes up. The other night with chairman perez, he laid out the choice as the dnc saw it between the president and the former vice president. What is that choice as you see it . The president built an economy that was in such great shape as we headed into this unforeseen crisis. 7 million new jobs, 500 thousand manufacturing jobs, this is a president that immediately understood as a candidate the threat that china posed in terms of taking on our supply chain. So much of our manufacturing has left the country. He said early on, its National Security issue that we no longer have manufacturing in this country. What happens if something happens if we cannot manufacture in this country . Many americans see that with the ventilators we had to call on the private sector to build these things. There is the importance and vitality of our manufacturing being strong and recognizing we cannot just offload everything to china. Than the president has the case, i built a great economy, i took us out of a tough spot, and i can do it again. I will be the best one to get us to that. I think thats a real contrast with biden. His stance with china and some of the economic policies that put us in a tough place that the president had to dig us out of. Among the many things that the pandemic has forced political operations to deal with and adjust is sitting. You look at the fact that you is messaging. You look at the fact that you and the Trump Campaign have been very aggressive, promoting his economic record and there is some evidence in polling that the American People gave him a net positive Approval Rating on the handling of the economy. Now, you have seen all the economic gains, not just of his administration, but the obama administration, pretty much wiped out. And a lot of anxiety around Public Health, as well as where the economy is. You began to allude to it a little bit. Im wondering what the message is, particularly as we start to see in polling, as we start to see trust in the president s approach on this stuff on a downward trajectory. How do you address that, how do you get them to see him as the leader you want them to see him as . The polling we are seeing, even against joe biden head to head, trusting the president on the economy and build back the economy at a higher level. They recognize we were in strong shape and they recognize this crisis and pandemic was something the president had no control over and we have literally had to shutter our whole economy for the safety and health of our fellow americans. There is a lot of understanding. Its not like there was mismanagement that led to this. It was a pandemic that hit the whole globe, all 50 states declaring an emergency at one time, we have never seen anything like this. We get to go to the American People and say not only did he build it up once through deregulation, cutting taxes, recognizing what would stimulate the economy, energy independence, the things he has done, tariffs on china, being tough on them and say we will not have these trade deficits, better trade deals those are things that made a robust economy and he will be better suited to bring his back when we bring us back when we come out of this. When it comes to the virus, i think the polling has been all over the place. We have seen high approval for him through this crisis. We get to go in put the pieces together of the steps he took and talking about the fact that as it hit our shores, he was able to harness the private sector in a way that has allowed us to surpass every other country in testing, thats allowed us to make sure that not one person who needed a ventilator has not been able to have one in this country. You are seeing a flattening of the curve because it took a whole of america. He has done it with governors. Democrat governors, republican governors across the board and that kind of bipartisanship you see in a crisis is something the American People want to see from their leader. For the audience, full disclosure, i think most of them know im a former spokesman for a National Party committee on the other side. The dnc, yeah. I fully understand that trying to get everyone in your party on the same message is like herding cats. Its not easy thing to do. In the context of this, i want to move past message, but particular on the issue of reopening, youve got some republican governors pumping the brakes a little bit more aggressively than the president is in terms of wanting the messaging around reopening the economy. I am wondering, as the rnc chair, how does that impact your job . Maybe there is a little bit of division in the ranks there. I think it aligns with what our party stands for which is states rights and the 10th amendment and the president recognizing that there isnt a onesizefitsall solution to this. When he laid out the three phases to opening, he said it will be different not just statebystate, but county by county. I live in wayne county in michigan, which is one of the hardest hit counties but thats different than Ottawa County or others on the western side of my state. Having the ability to work with state and local leaders and saying, you will make the determination based on what you are seeing on the ground, what you see in terms of new cases, flattening the curve, we trust you to implement these guidelines that we are setting forward at the federal government, but you are closer to the problem. You will be the ones to ultimately determine how to open this up. I think you are seeing a wide variety of responses to that of different governors but they are all in different situations and we will have a chance of the country seeing whats working and whats not. There may be places where we have to pull back or states can say, ok, we are ready to open. I think the president recognizes there is no onesizefitsall and it will be done statebystate is in line with what our party stands for. Lets move to some of the more mechanics of your job. Politics is a people business. Knocking on doors, talking face to face, gathering in large rallies or big phone bank rooms, and all of that had to shut down. But the campaign does not. How do you, as a National Party, how have you adjusted to sort of trying to maintain the sense of community and personal connection in a socially isolated world . Different people within the rnc adjust differently. I am a social person, i love people and i love campaigning. Its been hard to be so isolated and some of our folks at the rnc love it. They are like, this is great, i dont have to interact with people. We quickly recognized we had to shift our strategy. So much of what we built was based on doorknocking and the recognition that the way you change a voters mind most often is most affected by talking to them facetoface and having that conversation with your neighbor or friend or somebody you go to church with or to school with. Having to shut that down, we looked into a virtual operation within 24 hours. I talked to our political director and we mapped that out and we had a day of action plan planned to knock doors across the country. When states compete its fun and we had a virtual day of action and we reached one million voters on that first day, so that is exceptionally successful. We have added 300,000 new volunteers. Everything we are doing is through zoom or microsoft meetings or skype. We are just connecting all over the place. I think its important that we have those connections. You know what . Everyone is home, so they are responding and they want to talk more. Its an interesting change and a shift that i dont feel we lost any ground. But i am looking forward to getting back to knocking doors. I hope we get to that place where we can interact with each other socially. For someone not as familiar with some of this as you and i are, they can wrap their heads around knocking on the door. What is a me too transition to digital . What is the equivalent to knocking on a door in the neighborhood . Because of the rallies and how much data we gather at the rallies and much data we have, we knew where our nonregistered voters were and swing voters where, so im knocking on your zoom instead of your door. I am knocking on your email. Im saying, hey initially the messaging was all about coronavirus. We wanted to ask if they were doing ok because thats where the whole country was. We wanted to make it more of a check in. Not really a political message. It really wasnt political. One of our volunteers in florida i have shared this a couple of times hooked up with a woman who could not leave her home. She was elderly and her husband was a veteran with parkinsons. He ended up finding out she needed groceries and he ended up getting the groceries and those of things one of the volunteers would make a call and he would bow long for people. Would mow lawns for people. Those of the types of things we have seen through these connections and more relationships being built. With people answering their phones, before we were so busy, now people are connecting in a different way than the door knock. It is very impactful. All of my former colleagues in politics, as we were making this transition to digital, we were like, i would hate to be a fundraiser in this environment. Thats the last thing on peoples minds. Everyone is worried about their health, their livelihood, the stock market is taking a hit, who will write these big checks . Apparently, a lot of your donors are because you just had a record month. Talk about how you are doing that. A lot of our months started off early really well because we shut down i remember because it was like march 12 the whole world changed. I was sick but i was getting a test march 14. It luckily turned out negative. That helps fuel our march. On the major fundraising side, we dont have events right now, the president is not interested in in that. He is focused it on the country and not talking about how to fund raise and it would not be appropriate to talk about that anyway. Neither is the family, neither is the first lady. Except for kimberly, who is doing the smaller dollar fundraising for the campaign. We have we had to have a strong digital operation. When i became chair, we had 11 million emails. We made a tough decision that we would spend millions of dollars expanding our email list so we took it from 11 to 30. It took 30 million, i think we are almost 40 million now between emails and sms and that has become a fuel for engine and that has been incredibly strong throughout this, as well as our mail fundraising. Really, my calls on the major side are just check in calls. I have not been asking for donations at this point because so many people are laying off employees are losing their company or they have loved ones were sick and its just not the right time for me. So much of the political mystique around this president are his rallies. The guy lives for them. Anyone on the political spectrum would tell you, thats evident. The chances of there being that sort of level of in person gathering anytime soon is pretty remote. What i found interesting as a political operative is those rallies are important, not just because of the messaging, not just because of the energy but its a great place to get a lot of data. You dont have any of that now. How is that impacting the campaign or making you think differently about what you do next . Clearly, we have had a lot of rallies. We have been collecting a lot of data. That is one advantage we have over joe biden. He just got the nomination and is prevented from getting that data and having those rallies so that headstart is helping us. I hope we get to a place where we can have rallies again. But these virtual zoom meetings, we will get to virtual fundraising, those are ways to connect and we will do whats right for the times. I think, as we are opening up, we will also see more and more tests, more innovation, we will get to a better place. We are already seeing more testing at 5 million. I have talked to people that said, in a couple of months, i will have a huge amount of tests available. There are things happening simultaneously as we open up on the medical front, so i think it will put us in a better place, but we will see. This is all wait and see because we dont know so we will adjust accordingly. Which brings us to the ultimate rally, the convention at the end of august. We have seen how it impacted the dnc. They were supposed to go five or six weeks before the rnc in mid july and now they have pushed it back to late august, so its the week right before yours is scheduled. Talk about what you are thinking right now around a convention and what you do if you cannot move forward with what we have always known them to look like. We are full steam ahead planning a traditional convention. Our convention is at the end of august. It would be way too early to make a determination to cancel. We will see where we are. By the end of june early july, we will make a determination if there is something that has changed on the ground. We are hoping to be fully ready to hold that convention in august. Its critical to nominate our candidate. Actually, its hard to run a convention. The staging, the money you have to raise, the accommodations of people coming into the city of charlotte, which has been a great city to work with. We are so excited to host this. If we have to switch to a different kind convention, it would be easier. The buildout doesnt begin until july anyway, so we will be looking at the circumstances at the end of june and july. Right now, full steam ahead. Thats when you expect to make a determination. It is not like you can wait until the first week of august and say, we will see where things stand in the middle of august. We have may and july and we can see how we come out. We have states that are starting to open. I think we will have a lot of information than we do now and there is no need to make a decision right now. We have to have an inperson convention based on our bylaws so we will not have a virtual convention. There will be an in person convention. Have you given thought to what that looks like under different scenarios . I havent because in june, if we come to that place, we will be fine and have enough time to shift that if we need to. One last question on this, there is a scenario where the state of North Carolina says its not ready to have largescale gatherings and if they say that about the but the president believes otherwise, how do you navigate that . Why would you ask me a question like that . [laughter] im not even thinking about that. People want to know. First of all, it needs to be a partnership and if the state of North Carolina is in the position that says we cannot all the convention, that means they are canceling every other convention in Downtown Charlotte and thats coming to the state. They want to open as much as we do. So we are confident and feel good that we will all be in unison as this decision is made. I totally agree. I would think North Carolina would want more than just more than two host then to host the convention. Theyve lost a lot of revenue, these cities, so they want to have it open. Just trying to make news here. [laughter] we are forging ahead, no canceling of the convention, thats the news. We will move soon to the student questions themselves. Students, this is a good time, if you have not, submit your question in the bottom in the q a tab. Before we do that, one of the big issues that has come up in recent weeks as to how the crisis is affecting politics is how its affecting voting, not just the campaigns, but how people are voting, and no better example than the wisconsin primary a couple weeks ago. There was a big fight over whether or not the inperson primary should move forward. Both the rnc and dnc have been equally aggressive in their positions on how to move forward with voting and the role of vote by mail. Both parties have been using the same phrase Election Integrity, which i find fascinating because you are in different places on this. I am wondering if you can share your position. Absolutely. Every state has accommodations for absentee voting, for military personnel, people who are elderly, people who cannot make it to the ballot, every single state has that. What we have challenged and the dnc went into wisconsin and started a lawsuit, we came in and joined that lawsuit, when they said we want to take away the safeguard of voter identification, part of wisconsin law. Thats what got us engaged. When the court said, we will leave the election open for six days, we pushed back on that. As governors change election dates, we dont get involved with that. We dont subscribe to pulling off safeguards or things that maintain Election Integrity like the id portion of the wisconsin law. Thats where we got involved. All mailing voting this is what you hear about. You hear nancy pelosi and Many Democrats say we should nationalize mail voting and make it across the country. I really think that would leave a lot of problems. A lot of states have put mechanisms in place to safeguard their elections. Look at hickenlooper and colorado. They have ballot tracing and audit their voter rules and they have signature requirements, theyve thought about it and put it together in a way that works for the state and took years and years to implement. I dont think you can nationalize mail in voting with states that have different ways of ensuring Election Integrity in five or six months. Mo some of the arguments on the other side include, number one, especially in this moment, we should not be putting states in a position or our citizens in a position where they have to choose between Public Health and their constitutional right to vote. We need to make it easier, we need to expand the number of opportunities and mechanisms that people have. Tom perez was saying is not about pushing for 100 mail voting. It could just be one of the options every voter has available to them. Whats your response to that . There are real differences. Many of the lawsuits in new mexico, they wanted to just send ballots, not absentee request forms. I struggle with just sending ballots to voters, for example, in california, they had 112 registration, 1. 5 million more people registered to vote than they had in the state because they had not cleaned up their voter role. What does that mean . It is not mean purging, it is saying, if you have moved out of the state, if this person passes away. I do not like the idea of 1. 5 million ballots out there, not knowing its going to the person intended and that they live in the state. In nevada, they do something called inactive voters. How do you become an inactive voter . You become an inactive voter when the post office says to the state that the person has moved away and they mail that person if they still live there, we will label you an inactive voter and they dont get a response. There are 250,000 of those voters in nevada. The dnc or the Democratic Party said we want to mail ballots to all the inactive voters. I dont think ballots should just go out. Absentee request forms are different actual ballots. That is where the difference in language is. I have a concern about Election Integrity when there are 1. 5 extraxtra voters balance in california and in californiats and nevada. Mo i think i just read but as we got ready to log onto this, down in south florida, a number of counties decided they will send absentee ballots to their voters to give them that opportunity. Ballots or ballot requests . Thats a good question. If you listen to the news, they do not make the distinction, and i think thats where a lot the differences are. I dont mind people being sent absentee ballot request forms. Thats ok, give them the opportunity to vote by mail. We are not fighting those and we are not in lawsuits with those. I am struggling with just sending out ballots, especially in states who have not audited their voter rolls. Make sure people who have moved away arent getting a ballot and just taking that extra step. I think thats a reasonable stance. I would say most americans want that, and if you look at colorado and washington, they do exactly that. These are states that are mail in voting and they have said, we audited and we make sure we have ballot tracing, signature matching, they have put a lot of safeguards in place and they have done it at the state level. I dont think a nationally imposed mail in process is something that will cause its going to cause a lot of angst for a lot of voters across the country. Mo a lot of republicans, including the president , have raised concerns or have alleged that there is widespread voter fraud associated with mailin voting. A few, not everyone, but a few have made a more political argument that it is bad for republicans. Democrats pushed back and says there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud. Talk about that a little bit. I do think there is an opportunity for voter fraud if you have 1. 5 million ballots being sent in california to voters who no longer live there. Thats a concern. The president obviously wants everybody who is able to vote to vote and anybody who should not be able to vote should not vote. We got to balance the safeguards which is part of Election Integrity. The president has not said lets get rid of the absentee ballot. He has saying, we dont want a National Mail program one by the federal government. Lets keep it at the state level. Every state has the absentee ability and let them keep the safeguards in place and let the that they put in place voters have confidence in the process. Its uncertain right now, why would we want to dismantle our confidence in the election process heading into this important election . Mo i have more questions for you and i may sprinkle them throughout, but lets get to the students. As i call on each of you, tell us who you are, where you are zooming in from and what school you are and class on that good what class, all that good stuff, and try to keep your questions in the form of a question. With that, first up is daniel. Are you with us . Daniel im here. Mo great. Daniel thank you for being here and speaking to us. My name is daniel and i am from new york city and im a freshman in college. My question to you is what do you think will be the largest change in the president s reelection strategy due to the pandemic . Ronna we have seen a lot of that with the rallies not happening. The president is focused on how we get the country working again and keep people safe and healthy, he is not thinking about the campaign. We are dealing with not really having a candidate right now in some ways. Joe biden is campaigning. He is Holding Virtual fundraisers. Thats a little bit of a difference. Now we have a president versus a candidate, so it limits the time and changes the message. The one benefit we have, we get to say, these are the things the president ran on and these are the things he did, like better trade deals, we had a robust economy, recognizing we need to bring manufacturing back to this country. On many of the issues he ran on, he delivered, so we can take that to the public during this crisis. But it is a little bit of a challenge not to have a candidate right now out campaigning. Im glad, i think he shouldnt be campaigning, but it does change the landscape. Thank you for the question. Mo what is your surrogate operation like now . Do you have folks trying to step up in his absence or is everybody pulling back . We are also abiding by the guidelines. We are transitioning to our new normal. We have been holding training. Kimberly and don jr. Have done a lot of that. That has been going on, but not the level it would be in a fullfledged campaign. Passed may 1, we will get more that way. The first two weeks, it was shellshock for everybody. Now, we are starting to see hope and hopefully we get to a place where the curve is flattening so we can campaign. Isnt that a said thing we want to campaign . That will mean that our country is healing and it will be good in the long term. The election is not going away. We have will have to inevitably get to that point. Mo next up, grace. Grace thank you for taking the time to speak with us. My question is two part and you can take it in whatever direction you want. Looking back in the past four years, what are the most significant ways that President Trump has shaped the Republican Party, and what do you think the republican primary field will look like . Ronna those are really great questions. I was chair of the michigan Republican Party before i became chair of the rnc. The one thing that President Trump did for our party that i had not seen, he brought in a whole new constituency into our party. Workingclass americans, especially in Macomb County in my state, who felt Like Washington didnt care about them and politicians didnt care about them, their wages had stagnated and they were hardworking americans and before, they would have been labeled the reagan democrats. They really flipped for President Trump. On top of the traditional republicans he had, he brought out a whole slew of people who had previously been democrats. It changed us into a party that is more in line with working class. Before, it wasnt that way, so he brought in our party significantly on that front. Going forward, i think there is a whole host of people running in 2024 for president on the republican side. There its starting to shape up now for seven you start to really feel that but everything is in midnovember. I think we will have a great field of candidates when we get to that point. You referenced your time as chair of the Michigan State party. How are state parties faring these days . They have a different job than the National Party and different challenges. I am wondering how the pandemic is affecting them. Ronna i have a passion for state parties, being a former state party chair. Its good because i can know if that state party is doing their job. We started a Growth Program for state parties focused on fundraising. We have seen that ramp up. They are doing very well. We are transferring money to our battleground state parties to keep those operations up and running. They have been instrumental. A lot of the news we get in battleground states are through our regional communication people and their state parties and their partnerships. I feel the state parties are as robust as ever and if they are not, i will call up and say, how can i help . Mo im sure you will not have to wait to get a call. Next up and remember, students, tell us who you are, your school your year, your , major, and where you are zooming in from. Matt. Matt thank you for taking the time to speak with us. Im a grad student studying with a masters in public policy. I am currently in arlington. My question is similar to the one before but focused on policies. President trump introduced a lot of policy changes that are departures from traditional gop stances, like changes to the freetrade policies and increases in deficit spending. Im curious how you think changes like these cap influenced the longterm policy beyond this presidency. I get asked that question a lot, which is, has the president fundamentally transformed the Republican Party on a policy standpoint . I disagree with that in a lot of ways, because if you look at the judges, they have been in line. I think that was one of the things people were concerned about, who is he going to a point to the supreme court. They have been rule of law judges, conservative on the second amendment, prolife, on deregulation, energy independence. On issue after issue, he is in line with republicans. Where you see the difference is trade. You did see some departure within our party on that. The president in hindsight, people look back and say, boy, was he right to be tough on china. We hadnt been tough on china. We had this 500 billion deficit and allowing our country to engage in trade deals that are not beneficial, that have not been renegotiated like nafta for decades and decades that clearly needed to be revamped. He was not necessarily against trade. He said we should have fair trade. I think that is part of freetrade, is that we should be fair and should not have this imbalance. We pulled out of the multilateral trade deals and went into more of a bilateral situation like ppp. I think it benefited our country overall, and i think it will be something you will see a difference in our party. We have two parties in this country, we have independents as well as green party and libertarian, for the most part, two parties. I think it is good to have diversity within your party. It is good to have a discussion on certain issues. You can agree and disagree and have departures, but as reagan said, if you agree with me 80 of the time, you are my friend, not my enemy. I agree with that. You dont have to be with me 100 . If you see things that you want to change, help us become a better party. I think that is one of the things the president has done, help us expand into different areas where our party has not before. I hope that answers your question. Mo sorry. Thanks for the question, matt. Next is brady. Ronna hi, brady. Brady good evening. Thank you so much for speaking with us. Im a sophomore at new york state. My question is, as a republican, what steps do you see in the future for the Republican Party and what options do you see for them to become more competitive . Ronna thank you so much, and thank you for being a republican in new york. Yay. Im passionate about this. I was passionate when i was the michigan chair. Our party for too long has not gone into communities that has not heard our message. With this president , what he has done is loan forgiveness, what he has done with criminal Justice Reform and the first steps act. There are so many things we can count. On top of the Latino Community and africanamerican community, there are so many things we can talk about. You cannot talk if you dont show up. When i was chair in michigan, we had an office in detroit, we were there all yearround. Its not like we set up before an election and say shell out before the election. That is not how it works. Being part of the community and having job fairs and having breakfast with the pastors and being part of the community longterm, after three years of being in detroit, it was a different circumstance. People said, there are the republicans or there is the it makes us a better party. It makes us a better party when we are representing when we are in the communities, hearing from the people that we dont always represent. Because of redistricting, we dont represent many of these communities. It is up to the party to be in these communities longterm. I will give one story. We talk about skilled trade all the time. Everyone talks about this. We have to ramp it up. I did an event in detroit and one woman raised her hand and said, we talk about skilled trades. We cant get to the jobs because getting a drivers license in michigan and insurance in michigan and a drivers training in michigan is too expensive. And you dont talk about how we will get to the job because we dont have public transport. I talked to the governor at the time, have you heard anyone say this . He said, no, i havent. That is how we become a better party. It is not just about saying, how do we get your vote . It is about saying, how do we represent you better . We opened urban offices for the first time, and we will continue to expand our footprint in every community longterm. We may not win these communities, but we are showing up. We will not just keep feeding ground and say we do not care because we do care. We are a party that represents everybody. Sorry, i had to rant. Mo thank you, brady. We have just about 10 minutes left, so i know you have a hard stop, so i want to make sure we get in a couple more. Ryan, you are up next. Ronna hi, ryan. Ryan good evening, chairwoman. Georgetown. Ore at thank you for speaking with us today. My question actually builds off of the story you just told. Given the 11 different gubernatorial races going on in 2020 and the other situations governors are dealing with across the nation, how do you, the president , and rnc expect to support those races, going forward, with the pandemic . Ronna that is a great question. You have different committees, Republican Governors Association that deals with governors, and the nrc see that deals with the senate races, and the rnc is allencompassing, so when we support these, we fill out the ground game, we are the tactical arm of the party. We are figuring out how to get registered voters, and turning out voters for the whole ballot up and down the ticket. We hope those governors. We may not be in every single one of those races, but we are there in conjunction with the president , senate race, or house races, working together to turn out the vote. That is how we will support these governors. Governors are critical. We are seeing that now. I see it in my state. We have differences of opinions, but it is so critical that we have republican governors, and that is something that we will be focusing on. As well as keeping the senate. We have many races that are competitive on the republican side. We have a goal to win back the house. It will take 18 seats to win back the house. Those are things that we will be focusing on in tandem with our sister committee. Mo i am hearing concern on both sides of the aisle from some of the down ballot races. Particularly further down the ballot. Congressional candidates state , legislative candidates, there is no oxygen right now for their message to get out. Even given everything that is happening. How much does that concern you . Ronna i have not from joe biden. [laughter] just kidding. I had to do that. Im sorry. It is hard for these down ballot candidates to raise money. One of the things coming out of 2018 where we had a huge differential with democrats, which has been a juggernaut of small dollar fundraising for democrats at the state level where they can conduit with other candidates, we have created winrad. It has been impactful and expanded to the state level. It will allow candidates a platform to create a conduit page with maybe their senator or their congressional delegation, or other candidates so that they can piggyback off of each other and raise more money. It has been hard for these candidates. I think incumbents are being favored because they are able to get on tv and they are dealing with the issue and have an opportunity to speak whether voters is challenging them are having a harder time getting that same airtime. Mo ok, alexander. Alexander thank you for having me. My question is, do you see more states being in play this election cycle, and if so, which states . I know you are from michigan, so you are part of what used to be the blue wall. Ronna i do. From my standpoint, because of the early fundraising we have had, we have had record fundraising. We rate 24 million in march, we reported 212 million in the First Quarter and over 200 million cash on hand. That has given us an advantage. Plus, we are already in 23 states with 800 staff on the ground. That has given us an advantage to expand the map, but not in a superficial way. In a meaningful way. States like minnesota where the president lost, New Hampshire by 3000 votes, there are states that are in play that werent. We will compete there, and if we expand the map, if our opponent does not have the same time to build their infrastructure you cannot just build a volunteer base and staff in a day. These are things that take months and months and time interviewing, putting the ground game together, getting the right people who can deal with the county chairs and get the vote and understand the differences. These are things instrumental in turning out the vote. If you are losing by 10 points, i dont care what infrastructure you are putting in place, there is something wrong with the candidate or message. In the states where we lost by the margins, we are going to put these states in play. Nevada would be another one. Mo so democrats think their best shot at flipping trump states their direction are pennsylvania, michigan, wisconsin, they add arizona. Ronna yes. Mo you are looking at nevada, New Hampshire, and you said minnesota . Ronna yes. I would agree. There are a lot of battleground states. There will be a lot. Mo i suspected, given what is happening in the world, the dynamics will continue to shift. Javon, welcome back. Javon hello. Hi, chairwoman. Really quickly, i wanted to ask, ive been noticing i watch the president s task force, the daily briefings with him and his staff. The biggest question i have is, has that served as kind of a substitute for maybe has his rallies . I think the president has performed well and i think a lot of republicans can agree he has done well for the American People. I wonder if there is any success correlated with press briefings and information and the job he is doing for the American People . Ronna i hear that, is this the new rally . I dont view it that way. I like the rally because we are talking about the campaign. This is the president trying to give information to people in realtime to the American People who are afraid. We have a country that is suffering right now. Ive had friends who have passed away from this virus, friends who have lost their jobs, friends who will lose their businesses. It is a frightening time for our country. To have the president stand up with the scientists and say, here is where we are on antibody testing, here we are on ppe, here we are on ventilators. I think it is critical. The q a after the fact doesnt turn political, and that is because you have the media and their and it will get that way. The president is willing to take questions, but in terms of what our commander is doing in a time of crisis when people need to be calmed and reassured, and have the facts, i think it is so important he is getting on tv every day. But they are not rallies. These are ways we can cope through a really difficult time our country is facing. And really, we all come together. I want the president to be successful, and i want my governor to be successful. She is not a republican. I want her to succeed more than anybody. I want every state to open and be healthy. I am not looking for anyone to fail based on partisanship. This is a time where we should all be rooting for every politician and leader and hope they have the best resources and information as they are navigating this totally difficult time for our country. Mo we are just about out of time, so i want to wrap up with one last question, the same last question i asked tom perez the other night. This is the time of year when College Students feel a lot of anxiety. What is my summer internship going to be, if im graduating, what is my first job . Most years, my office hours are full of students that want to work on a campaign and dont know how to do it. This year, the anxiety level for those wanting to get involved in politics is much higher. Students who come in and say, i want to get involved but dont know how. What would you say to those young people that want to get involved in a Republican Campaign this year, wherever it is on the ticket, as to how they can get involved and how they can have an impact in politics against this backdrop. Ronna i think that is a great question, and i feel for your angst, because my brother, who is in college, much younger than me, just lost his internship, and i have a junior in high school who is thinking, how is this going to affect my College Applications when the standardized tests are gone . There is a lot of angst for you guys. Thank you for what you do. I also want to give a shout out to the teachers. I think about my kids teachers who are with their own kids, dealing with them at home, trying to navigate that, and teaching my kids at home, because i do not have the capacity. Although i may seem brilliant, im still appreciative of the teachers and Virtual School going on. I would recommend, find a candidate you believe in. I always say this, no matter what level it is, find a candidate you believe in, and figure out a way to get involved with them in the virtual way. On the gop website, there is a volunteer tab. We have added 300,000 new round tears. New volunteers. I just did a tvlt, a Trump Victory leadership training in New Hampshire. We had a zoom call with hundreds of individuals. We teach them how to get engaged, but learn the mechanics, get involved, and get passionate. There are a lot of ways to get involved right now virtually, and you will learn skills that maybe you would not have expected but will be beneficial along the way, because i think most of us i didnt know about zoom before all this. I got in politics really young. My mom was taking me to campaigns, but i first worked on a Senate Campaign as her driver. The experience i had being involved in that campaign and sharing the strategy firsthand, and dealing with all of the things a candidate has to deal with, and seeing the emotion of her team as she did not win that race, but we became a family. When you believe in a candidate, it can change your world. These people make a difference, they impact our lives with the decisions they are making right now. Learn about it, get involved, and you know what . Run for office, because we need good people to run for office. Mo amen to that. We have bipartisan agreement on that point. Thanks so much for coming back to the institute of politics and public service. We will look forward to the next time being in person. Ronna yes. Mo to all of you that tuned in, thank you for spending part of your evening with us. We have one more event this semester before finals. With someone that the chair knows very well. Next tuesday, we will host a conversation with senator mitt romney. Ronna no way. Mo about American Leadership during a time of crisis. Thatll be the last event of the semester, but given that we will all be living on zoom anyway, i once you are done with finals, stay tuned. We will be back with a full summer of programming as well. On behalf of the institute of politics of public service, georgetown, thank you, madam chair, and thanks to all of you. Ronna thank you. Cspan his roundtheclock coverage of the room response to the pandemic and it is all available on demand at cspan. Org coronavirus. Watch white house briefings, track spread throughout the u. S. And the world with interactive , anytime,h ondemand unfiltered at cspan. Org coronavirus. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] washington journal primetime on the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic. The guest is dr. David weiner, director of the vaccine and Immunotherapy Center in philadelphia. He talks about ongoing efforts to develop a vaccine that protects against the coronavirus. And greg for are a, president and ceo of the National Grocers association i how the nations Food Retailers are coping with the huge surge in demand and increasingly strict social distancing. Join the conversation monday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on cspan. Do it. Host thanks for the call. Caller joint host joining us from rome is the former speaker of the house, newt gingrich. Guest it is great to be back with you and it makes me feel like i am back at home when i can be on washington journal with you. Host you are in italy, your wife serving as the ambassador to the vatican. Are there lessons from italy we can apply to the u. S. As we begin the process of restarting our economy . Guest the italian expense was unusual in that there are one how