Cliff Maloney
speaker
159 appearances
5 recordings
2 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard 4 Mar
Cliff Maloney’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Mar 2026 with 1.
Appearances
It's great to be here, Charlie. I love how fired up you were for that first half, man. We've got a lot going on. I feel like every hour we've got something new, but we've got our country back, which is great.
Yeah, so Pennsylvania, we had two special elections. The first was a state house special out in the Pittsburgh area. This is a Democrat seat, 75-25, no way to win that seat. And so obviously the Democrats kept that, which kept the majority in the House. But the major shocker, Charlie, was there was a special Senate election. This is Senate District 36. This is Lancaster, PA.
This is a district that Trump won by 15 percentage points. It's actually an R plus 23 when you look at Democrat to Republican registrations. Republicans are up by 23%. If you look on the screen here, you can see this was a shock result. Democrats ran up the score. You see there the mail-in voting. 8,000 mail-in votes to Republicans, 3,000. And we ended up losing the race by about 500 votes.
And Charlie, the most frustrating thing for me is we offered to run our PHA's program and we were told by the consultant class, hey, don't worry, it's a waste of money. We've got it. We're gonna get the mail ballots in. And now we're finding out they didn't chase one male in ballot with no paid ballot chasers. There was no program whatsoever.
And so it's just frustrating for us to lose a seat like this in a time where we're supposed to be mobilizing in the off year. I thought that 2024 was going to be the time when groups like Turning Point, groups like Citizens Alliance, we went out and proved to folks, listen, all you have to do is take these Trump supporters and make them Trump voters. That's a great line of yours that's true.
But the consultant class has yet to figure it out, Charlie. I'll take the blame for this. You know, I believe them that it was going to be a cakewalk, that it was going to be some sort of just easy win. And because we rested on our laurels, the Democrats have now shifted a Senate seat And we cannot let that happen again.
So I'm committing on your show that no more will I listen to the consultant class and these corrupt folks in Harrisburg. We're just going to go do our program. And we cannot listen to these people who don't understand the power of chasing ballots.
Well, look, I actually think it's a little worse than that. I think we were pushed out because, you know, people want to be able to take full credit. The nice thing about 2024 is we all work together. Right. We all say, look, we don't care who gets credit. We just want to win. And so we took the different tactics.
We took the different assignments for certain states and certain ways that we were going to reach voters. And we all just owned it. And so what I find is, yeah, Charlie, I'm looking at the reports here. These folks are lining their pockets. They're not understanding how to communicate with voters.
And it's every single excuse that we hear from the Ronna McDaniel types, from the previous GOP leaders, it's candidate quality. It's too extreme of a message. They're too MAGA. They're too America First. This is all the Monday morning quarterbacking you're hearing now because the consultants just don't get it. So yes, they're lining their pockets.
But I also think they just don't understand we're not the party of Karl Rove anymore. The rules don't allow us to just spend millions on TV ads and then wonder why we didn't win. It's an election month. It is not an election week. It is not an election day in Pennsylvania. And it's time we actually adapt. I think the silver lining here, Charlie, is that these consultants have been so embarrassed.
That even the most, you know, I would call them establishment type voters are like, how in the world did you lose a Trump plus 15 seat? Maybe this chasing of ballots is what we should focus on. So I'm hoping this is the wake up call for all of the patriots across PA to say we cannot miss an election. We have to chase ballots in every election in Pennsylvania.
Yeah, well, I'm with you. I think if it gets to be pretty close, you know, we like Elise, but I think the power of having the majority is extremely important. So I would double down on that. But I think, Charlie, it's what we preached for the last year and a half, which is look in a lot of these areas. Look at Randy Fine's district. You know, look at Jimmy Petronas in this district, Florida one.
They have the voters. OK, we're not talking about swing districts where, hey, you know, maybe we have to work on registration or maybe we have to do persuasion or maybe we have to message correctly. No, we just have to do the ground game to turn out our voters. So, yes, do they need to run traditional advertising? Sure.
But I think the shift in mindset, the shift in the culture within Republican strategic circles has to be taking the model from 2024 and making it permanent infrastructure. Right. I mean, that's what we're doing in PA. We're doing 500000 doors every year.
And I think the folks in Florida and the folks in New York, if it does come up for an election, we have to understand if you have the voters and you said this, you're the first person I heard ever say this. Take Trump supporters and make them Trump voters, meaning we have the people, we have the energy, but we need to double down on the ground game the same way the Democrats do.
And by the way, this race in PA, Josh Shapiro had 105 full-time people on the ground. He gets it. They might be in disarray nationally. They might not have a leader, but politics is business to them, and they take it seriously.
We as Republicans have to start understanding and taking it serious that we are going to double down, work the doors, chase the ballots, and exploit the rules legally the way the Democrats do.
Yeah, and I think the message at the door, I'm sure you guys are getting the same feedback that we get in PA, is we have to figure out a way to tie this to something that is, if you want to continue the Trump agenda. And Charlie, the best part is, I mean, look at the approval ratings, right?
If we can tie these candidates to Trump, that's a huge net positive, despite what the Rove and the Romney type folks are going to tell you. People want the message. They want MAGA. They want America first. They want the golden age. And I think you're right. It's an institutional, it's a cultural shift. But I think the nice thing is we still have Trump to at least to try to attach on to.
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