State GOP Network Launches GOTV Campaign To Turn Virginia, New Jersey ‘Red’ This November
With the 2024 presidential election in the rearview mirror, the battle to win the nation’s next major elections is on the horizon.
This November, voters in Virginia and New Jersey will head to the ballot box to elect their next respective governors. Seats for state legislative seats, other statewide executive offices, and local positions will also be on the ballot.
The outcome of these races will hold significant consequences for voters — especially for Virginians. While Democrats enjoy trifecta control of New Jersey state government, Virginia Republicans control the offices of governor, lieutenant governor, and attorney general. Should the Virginia GOP lose the gubernatorial race and state Democrats hold their House majority, it would give leftists the ability to enact far-left policies reminiscent of those implemented in California.
With so much at stake, Republican groups are seeking to get an early start on campaigning ahead of the two states’ November elections.
On Tuesday, the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC) and its affiliated political action committees (PACs) launched a get-out-the-vote initiative aimed at turning out prospective GOP voters in Virginia and New Jersey. Totaling more than $2 million, the investment represents “a key part of the RSLC’s strategy to spend early in 2025 in order to beat back an onslaught of funding from national liberal billionaires who hope” to replicate Democrats’ 2017 successes this fall, according to an RSLC press release.
The Strategy
Speaking to The Federalist, RSLC Communications Director Mason Di Palma said that the group’s 2025 strategy is to “hyper localize these elections” by zeroing in on the issues specific to voters’ districts. Unlike Democrats, who often seek ” to nationalize” down-ballot races, Di Palma said, the RSLC seeks to identify voters’ local concerns and relay such information back to the GOP candidates campaigning in their area.
RSLC seeks to achieve this goal by deploying its canvassing program, which will include paid RSLC activists going door to door to engage with voters and determine the issues most pertinent to them.
“We’re gonna be at your door and asking about you [and] these local issues. From there, [our members are] taking that information and making sure it gets back to the proper delegate and/or assembly member, and incorporat[ing] those results” in that candidate’s campaign messaging, Di Palma said. The goal “is to hyper localize these elections and bring the state representatives closer to the people of Virginia [and] New Jersey.”
Di Palma said that RSLC canvassers will follow up with engaged voters as the campaign season continues. He further noted that the group plans on tracking the information of prospective voters its canvassers interact with, such as their voter registration status and whether they’ve requested an absentee ballot or voted early.
The RSLC’s investment “also includes a range of digital ads, direct mail, and texting aimed at targeting swing and persuadable voters in select districts,” according to the group’s Tuesday press release.
Di Palma said this strategy will mirror RSLC’s efforts undertaken in Virginia and New Jersey‘s 2023 elections, in which it made a big push for voters to cast their ballots early. As The Federalist reported at the time, “While Virginia Republicans ultimately didn’t come out on top in [the state’s legislative] elections, their emphasis on absentee and in-person early voting (AB/EV) appears to have won them several pivotal races and limited what could have been much larger Democrat majorities in the General Assembly.”
“A big part of why we decided to launch this effort is to build off of the success that program had in both Virginia [and] New Jersey [in 2023] and even in 2024 in states like Pennsylvania and Michigan,” Di Palma said. “So, the educational component to what we’re doing here with the get-out-the-vote effort, in terms of paid canvassing, is very important to [our overall strategy this year].”
This action plan is also expected to include coordination with organizations already on the ground, specifically as it relates to Virginia.
According to Di Palma, RSLC PAC plans to collaborate with the House Republican Campaign Committee on its canvassing efforts for the Virginia contests. The RSLC communications director additionally left the door open to the group potentially working with grassroots organizations throughout the commonwealth and said that such a possibility “depend[s] on once we get this thing off the ground.”
He added that the RSLC “cannot have as much of a collaborative effort [in New Jersey] as we do in Virginia,” citing differences in how the states regulate coordination among political entities.
Challenges Ahead
Like any political campaign, the upcoming Virginia and New Jersey elections present their own sets of challenges for Republicans.
While Virginia currently boasts GOP statewide leaders and New Jersey Republicans have made notable voter registration gains in recent years, both states are considered to be friendlier political climates for Democrats. Former Vice President Kamala Harris, for example, carried both states during her 2024 presidential election loss.
Regarding Virginia, commonwealth Democrats have attempted to make the Trump administration’s efforts to shrink the size and increase the efficiency of the federal government a central theme of their party’s 2025 campaigns, as federal workers comprise a significant portion of the state’s population.
When pressed on how the RSLC’s strategy attempts to address Virginia Democrats’ messaging on the subject, Di Palma said that attempts to downsize the federal government have been “a Republican talking point for decades,” and that it’s “not a new thing, and in many cases Democrats in the past [such as] President Obama have actually supported” similar efforts to those of DOGE. He further argued that the Democrat Party today is in a much weaker position than it was in 2017 during Trump’s first presidency.
“Democrats are trying to make this comparison that this year is going to be like 2017 because it’s the return of Trump; it’s the same sort of situation that we saw coming after that historic Trump victory in 2016,” Di Palma said. “But there’s a lot of key differences as to why this year is not going to be 2017 and that starts really with where the Democrats are as a party. In 2017 … [their] favorability was OK, but now you’re taking a look in 2025, [and] the party stands at about a 20 percent approval rating. … They don’t have a substantive message; they don’t have a leader.”
Another issue at hand is the struggle Republican candidates have historically faced in elections without Trump at the top of the ticket. Earlier this year, for example, the GOP lost a pivotal state supreme court race in Wisconsin, which allowed leftists to hold their 4-3 majority on the Badger State’s highest court.
When pressed about what RSLC’s strategy is to avoid a repeat of that race in this year’s fall elections, Di Palma claimed that the Wisconsin contest is a “very specific situation” indicative of Republicans’ historically poor performance in state supreme court races. He acknowledged, however, the race’s low turnout when compared to the 2024 election and the challenge groups like the RSLC face in getting low-propensity GOP voters to the polls this fall.
“If anyone is out here saying on our side that it is going to be easy, that’s just incorrect. Democrats … especially after what they went through last year, are going to continue to work as hard as they can and invest and drop as much money as possible to make sure that they don’t have a repeat of what we saw in November 2024,” Di Palma said.
Further addressing the challenge of turning out Trump coalition voters, the RSLC communications director added that part of the group’s messaging is aimed at ensuring those electors understand “there are serious consequences if you do not come out and support Republicans” and Democrats win.
“Republicans have to grapple with the fact that we are now the party of low-propensity voters … So, what we’re doing as a committee to address that is [by] having a substantive policy message … [and] driving home those compare and contrast sort of items,” Di Palma said, referencing policy differences on issues such as immigration and taxes. “It’s taking these efforts and bringing it into this get-out-the-vote effort. We’re doing this canvassing program to not only highlight these differences, but [to] also remind folks and educat[e] them that … you can get out [and vote] early, and … these are the resources that are at your disposal to make that happen.”
Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
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