October 22, 2024 10:15 AM UTC

UPDATE: Colorado Canvassing Company Screws Elon Musk And Trump?

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• by: Colorado Pols

TUESDAY UPDATE: Denver-based Blitz Canvassing sends the word out to their crew: DO NOT talk to the press about anybody scamming Elon Musk, claiming “disgruntled” former employees are “conspiring with reporters who want to elect Kamala Harris.”

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A story from the UK Guardian’s Hugo Lowell over the weekend could have serious implications for one of Colorado’s principal Republican political consultant groups, with allegations that canvassers employed by Denver-based Blitz Canvassing to work for gazillionaire Elon Musk’s America PAC cheated the billionaire by logging doors they’ve supposedly knocked on to deliver campaign materials that they never went near–a cardinal sin in field organizing that normally results in swift termination whenever it’s discovered:

Donald Trump’s campaign may be failing to reach thousands of voters they hope to turn out in Arizona and Nevada, with roughly a quarter of door-knocks done by America Pac flagged by its canvassing app as potentially fraudulent, according to leaked data and people familiar with the matter.

The potentially fake door-knocks – when canvassers falsely claim to have visited a home – could present a serious setback for Trump as he and Kamala Harris remain even in the polls with fewer than 20 days until an election.

The Trump campaign earlier this year outsourced the bulk of its ground game to America Pac, the political action committee founded by Elon Musk, betting that spending millions to turn out Trump supporters, especially those who don’t typically vote, would boost returns…

In short, the app used by paid canvassers working for America PAC tracked their location with the phone’s GPS, making it a relatively simple matter to verify if the canvasser is actually showing up at the addresses they’re supposed to and deliver the materials with a brief friendly interaction if the target voters are home. Analyzing this data, the Guardian determined that up to a quarter of the recorded contacts by Blitz Canvassing’s workers were fake:

The Arizona data, for example, shows that out of 35,692 doors hit by 442 canvassers working for Blitz Canvassing in the America Pac operation on Wednesday, 8,511 doors were flagged under the unusual survey logs.

The extent of the flagged doors in America Pac’s operation underscores the risk of outsourcing a ground-game program, where paid canvassers are typically not as invested in their candidate’s victory compared with volunteers or campaign staff​. [Pols emphasis]

It goes like this: the outraged client, in this case the world’s richest man with infamously little patience for being screwed by subordinates, calls America PAC after reading this story to scream at the boss there, who in turn calls the bosses of the contractor operations who actually hire the canvassers. Those companies are often fly-by-night shoestring operations that specialize in leaving no one important to hold accountable–but that’s not the case with Blitz Canvassing, one of a group of major Republican consultant operations founded by failed gubernatorial candidate Josh Penry along with Ascent Media and the former EIS Solutions, now known as the 76 Group. In recent years, Blitz Canvassing has expanded its national footprint with contracts from the well-funded No Labels astroturf organization and millions spent helping Ron DeSantis flop in the presidential race.

Republicans in Colorado have suffered the consequences of indifferently-managed field campaigns for years, with notable examples being the forgery scandal that helped derail 2016 Republican U.S. Senate candidate Jon Keyser and similar issues two years later with GOP gubernatorial loser Walker Stapleton. These outfits seem to have real trouble vetting their hires, even though the fraud committed by canvassers looking to get paid for work they didn’t do reflects directly on those organizations and in turn the candidates they work for. The low pay and temporary nature of the job make it hard to recruit quality help, and deadlines are deadlines.

It’s better when the fraud and forgery inevitably arise in a poorly-managed canvassing campaign for the blame to rest with a “burner” company without connections up the food chain to embarrass. After so many high-profile defeats for Josh Penry’s family of political services companies including Joe O’Dea’s crash-and-burn U.S. Senate run in 2022, maybe that’s the status they deserve.

Either way, the wrath of a ripped-off Elon Musk is not something we would wish on anyone.