The Jenny Beth Show

Making Sure Registered Republicans Go Vote | Matthew Martinez, Turning Point Action

Episode Summary

Jenny Beth sits down with Matt Martinez of Turning Point Action at the Restoring National Confidence Summit in Las Vegas, Nevada. Matt discusses Turning Point Action's plan to get low propensity Republican voters out to vote in 2024.

Episode Notes

Jenny Beth sits down with Matt Martinez of Turning Point Action at the Restoring National Confidence Summit in Las Vegas, Nevada. Matt discusses Turning Point Action's plan to get low propensity Republican voters out to vote in 2024.

Twitter/X: @mcmartinezaz | @TPAction_ | @jennybethm

Website: www.tpaction.com/chasethevote

Episode Transcription

Matt Martinez (00:00):

Ballot chasing is so critical in these battleground states. If we had just 10 more ballots, 10 Republicans just cast their ballots in every precinct in Arizona, we would definitely have a attorney general a ho right now, and most definitely a governor Carey Lake.

Narrator (00:15):

Keeping our republic is on the line and it requires Patriots with great passion, dedication, and eternal vigilance to preserve our freedoms. Jenny Beth Martin is the co-founder of Tea Party Patriots. She's an author, a filmmaker, and one of time magazine's most influential people in the world, but the title she's most proud of is Mom to Her Boy, girl Twins. She has been at the forefront fighting to protect America's core principles for more than a decade. Welcome to the Jenny Beth Show.

Jenny Beth Martin (00:47):

This episode of the Jenny Beth Show was recorded on Radio Row at Turning Point Actions Restoring National Confidence Summit in Las Vegas. Matthew Martinez is heading up the ballot chasing initiative for Turning Point Action. He joins me now to discuss his plan to turn out low propensity Republican voters in the 2024 elections. What in the world is chasing the

Matt Martinez (01:10):

Votes? I'm glad you asked. And Jenny Beth, thank you very much for being here in Las Vegas. We just wrapped up a huge event. We had about 70 county chairman from across the country, actually across our 10 battleground states, come in and listen and learn about chase the vote and learn about how they could get active and chase ballots this next cycle. But most importantly, and I want to preface this, it was so heartwarming and humbling to hear how excited people were to just obtain these analyses, right, of not only their state, but their county and even broken down precinct by precinct. But do you answer your question, Jenny Beth ballot Chases are a strategic initiative to locate and target low propensity Republican voters in key states. What we're seeing is that there are a huge number of Republicans in Arizona, Georgia named the state, who are just not voting. So I created a methodology. It's all public. I want everybody to know this of how we're identifying these low propensity Republicans. What we're going to do next is hire staff to build relationships, these low propensity Republicans, to ensure that they make a plan to vote this next cycle,

Jenny Beth Martin (02:30):

And then once they make the plan to vote, you will be chasing the vote

Matt Martinez (02:34):

You'll be chasing.

Jenny Beth Martin (02:34):

Explain what that means also.

Matt Martinez (02:36):

Yeah, so you may hear people say, well, what is ballot harvesting? What is ballot chasing? This is something we hear a lot. So for instance, I'm from Arizona. I have my Arizona pin on, well, fourth generation Arizona. I'm very proud to be from Arizona, but in Arizona it is illegal to ballot harvest. I can't go to you and say, miss Jenny Beth, I need to take your ballot. I fill it out right there. Let me go mail it in. Let me go take an, I cannot do that. I cannot touch orain or confiscate your ballot. However, in states like Wisconsin or in Michigan, ballot harvesting or is illegal, I could go around with a pillow sack and collect ballots all day. I could do that, right? So this initiative has studied each state law, and we're going to follow each state law prescribed by each state, but this is our initiative again, to make sure that their ballots or voters ballots are not left on the kitchen counter, but are in the ballot box.

Jenny Beth Martin (03:37):

I think it is wonderful that you're working so hard to make sure that people return their ballots, whether it's chasing and they have to turn it in themself or harvesting where somebody can collect the ballot and go turn it into the,

Matt Martinez (03:49):

I want to make clear that we are not harvesting. We are not harvesting any ballots. We're chasing,

Jenny Beth Martin (03:53):

Even if it's legal,

Matt Martinez (03:54):

We're not harvesting ballots. We're making sure that we build relationships with these voters and ensure that they make a plan to vote. Okay? So for instance, ballot chasing is so critical in these battleground states. If we had just, and I'm going to throw an Arizona example, if we had just 10 more ballots, 10 Republicans just cast their ballots in every precinct in Arizona, we would definitely have a attorney general, a ho right now, and most definitely a governor, Kerry Lake, and that's just 10 ballots in every precinct, right? That's how close our elections are. President Trump in Arizona lost the election by just 10,000 votes. If we had just a fraction of ballot chasing in these states, we would see Republican victories across the country

Jenny Beth Martin (04:42):

In Georgia, I think it was for the Trump Biden margin of vote difference, which is the way I refer the official one. It was four and a half votes per precinct. I think it isn't very many at all. It was 11,779.

Matt Martinez (04:57):

That's what we're seeing across the country, right? And there's also another aspect of our ballot chase and operation that really surprised me. What we're seeing is that a lot of these low propensity Republican areas are actually where we think it's safe, right? For instance, in Arizona, this is for our Arizona audience there. If you're a political in Arizona, you don't think that we need to be ballot chasing or chasing Republicans in any bigs district in East Mesa, Santa Queen Creek, nor do you think that we need to chase ballots in the West Valley, in Paul Gosar district. But that's exactly where Republicans are not voting. It's because this equation does two things. One, we've discovered that hey, Republicans in battleground areas and battleground districts are actually performing pretty well. Our messaging is working, our initiatives canvassing is working. Two, this equation and our methodology also subtracts areas where Republicans are not really there.

Matt Martinez (05:57):

So for instance, in let's throw Wisconsin or Wisconsin, there are parts of Milwaukee, downtown Milwaukee, where we're probably not going to be ballot chasing. Well, I know that we're not going to be ballot chasing there because there's not enough Republicans or a mission example in Wayne County. There's not enough Republican clusters to even chase where we should actually chase in Michigan when we do, and if we do is to be in Oakland County or McComb or in Arizona, it's all Maricopa County. And you hear a lot of people say, well then Maricopa County, then it's Pima County. No, no, no, it's Pinal County, right? It's these areas where you think it's super safe is not competitive. It's actually where Republicans are disengaged. It makes perfect sense. If you spend some millions of dollars in battleground areas in Scottsdale and P, you neglect East Mesa, Buckeye, sun City, right? Or even in Panow County of Apache Junction and Queen Creek. That is what we're seeing, and it's so surprising and it makes perfect sense. So we're going to making sure that we chase those Republican ballots and Republican voters to make sure that they have every opportunity, every information that they need to make their voting process easier.

Jenny Beth Martin (07:20):

That is amazing, and I'm so glad that you're doing it, but it seems like it's going to take a lot of people to get that done.

Matt Martinez (07:26):

Yes. How are

Jenny Beth Martin (07:27):

You going to be working on

Matt Martinez (07:29):

That? Thank you for asking. Yeah. In Arizona, it's about a quarter of a million Chase Bowl Republican ballots. Out of our 10 battleground states, it's 4.6 million Chase Bowl Republicans. That means we know that there's going to be 4.6 million Republicans who are projected not to vote in 2024. We can't do that. Turning point action, can't chase all those ballots. That's why it's so critical for us to build alliances like with your organization or in what we're doing right now is hiring massive waves of people to help us out in Arizona. Right now we are looking for managers in Maricopa County, and then from there, we're going to be hiring about 130 full-time staffers to help us out in Maricopa County. We want to hire full-time staffers so they could build relationships with these voters. I don't want to hire anybody who's not from the area. For instance, if we were to do a ballot chasing operation in Georgia, I'm not going to hire anybody from New York because there's no ethos.

Matt Martinez (08:33):

I want to hire Arizonans to talk to Arizonans. I want to hire Wisconsinites to talk to Wisconsinites, and I want to hire Georgians to talk to Georgians, and frankly, I want to hire people who are from Mesa to talk to you, Mesa people from Mesa. I want people to talk to people in their neighborhoods because that's being neighborly and that's how we build relationships. If you were to send me to go talk to people in Buckeye, and for the record, I'm from Mesa, Arizona. I don't know anything about Buckeye. I really don't go there. I'm not going to build relationships with people there because I don't know the culture. I don't know the lifestyle of Buckeye, Arizona. Where you should actually send me is East Mesa, because I went to school there. I grew up in East Mesa. I know the community, I know my neighbors. So if I were to knock on their door and say, Ms. Johnson, I know your ballot is on your kitchen count. I see it right there, Ms. Johnson, let me help you out. Let's fill it out and let's go walk it in right now or drive you to a polling location right now or day of the election. I just want to make sure you have every opportunity to make your voice heard in 2024. That is our solution to be neighborly, hire people from the same areas, same regions, to talk to their community members.

Jenny Beth Martin (09:47):

That is excellent. What if somebody is listening to this and they want to apply for a management position or one of the full-time positions you mentioned?

Matt Martinez (09:53):

Yes, ma'am. So I would go to Turning Point Action or TP Action slash Chase the vote on there. You will see a sign up to get involved and to put your application in if you want to be a manager or help us out with our ballot Chase and operations. We are also going to be hiring in Wisconsin and in Georgia, so stay tuned for those applications. But applications are live right now for Maricopa County, Arizona.

Jenny Beth Martin (10:21):

That is terrific. And if you are active, but maybe you can't, you already have a job and you work full-time and you don't need a job to do this, what are things that people like that in the audience could do to help out

Matt Martinez (10:37):

Your efforts? Excellent question. So we're also having, alongside with our full-time ballot, chasers ballot or Super Chase events, these are essentially our super Saturdays, but we want to have super chase events every day. We don't want to just wait until one weekend and one Saturday to reach out to all these Republicans. We want to do this as much as possible. So we have staff in 10 states, that's Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Iowa, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. We have staffers in all 10 states right now who could help you out and make sure that you get involved with our super Chase events, which are going to be coming out very, very soon. But we want to make sure that we build these relationships, remind these low propensity voters that their ballots will be coming and that they need to fill that out.

Jenny Beth Martin (11:30):

This is such great information, ma'am. Turning point action and turning point USA do amazing work. Thank you. And I really appreciate,

Matt Martinez (11:37):

Well, same team, same fight, and we're passionate about this Jenny Beth, and for me, I am a four generation Arizonan. I just want to buy a home in my state. I want to raise a family in my home state, but unfortunately I can't do that right now. There are so many Gen Zs, millennials who can't buy homes who are struggling in this economy, and I want to do everything I can to help out my generation so that we're not screwed at the end, right? Right. We want to make sure that we build families. That's the American dream. But right now, this is my focus. I want to win back Arizona. I want to win back Georgia. I want to win back the United States and the White House and every candidate up and down the ballot across the United States.

Jenny Beth Martin (12:22):

And we have to do that because if you want to be able to change the legislation to solve the problems that you were just mentioning with being able to buy your house, being able to take care of the economy and feel like you can thrive and flourish and not just struggle from paycheck to paycheck, that takes legislative change, which means you have to have a majority in legislative bodies and somebody to sign legislation into law. So that is a lot of hard work. You bring this up too. You can't do it if you don't have the votes and those bodies, which means we have to win elections, ma'am, and to win elections, we also have to secure elections. All of it is important. And after November in 2024, if we are successful, then the hard work really get, we

Matt Martinez (13:05):

Win, we're successful.

Jenny Beth Martin (13:06):

This is going to be the hard work really begins because all of this is hard work, but it is nothing compared to the difficulty that will come once we actually have to legislate.

Matt Martinez (13:16):

Yes, ma'am. And I want to preface this is that the Democrats are doing this right now. They're ballot chasing their ballot harvesting in several states. They're doing it dirty folks. They're really doing it dirty, but we're much better than the Democrats. We're better looking, we have better policies and we're going to be much better at ballot chasing than them this next cycle because we are going to be building relationships with these voters, and this is not going to just end after 2024. This is going to carry on to 2026 into 2028 and so on to all sorts of local elections, mayor elections, legislative elections, any kind of elections that we could help out when we're going to produce analyses to help county chairs, help legislative bodies win their areas. And frankly, what that comes down to is, one, we need your help. We need you to apply. And two, we want to make sure that we are well funded to support full-time staffers to build relationships. That's a huge, huge tenet to making sure that these operations are valuable and they have success.

Jenny Beth Martin (14:22):

Excellent. So again, give the website one last time,

Matt Martinez (14:26):

Turning point action. So that's tp action.com/chase the vote.

Jenny Beth Martin (14:32):

Very good. Thank you so much for being today

Matt Martinez (14:33):

With this today. Beth, thank you very much.

Jenny Beth Martin (14:34):

Thank you very much. I'm Jenny Beth Martin. This is a Jenny Best show. And remember, you are hearing us from being recorded at Turning Point Actions, restoring National Confidence Summit in Las Vegas. There's a lot of background noise, but it's good background noise because all of the people that you hear in the background are working to save America.

Narrator (14:53):

The Jenny Beth Show is hosted by Jenny Beth Martin, produced by Kevin Mohan and directed by Luke Livingston. The Jenny Beth Show is a production of Tea Party Patriots action. For more information, visit tea party patriots org.

Jenny Beth Martin (15:13):

If you like this episode, let me know by hitting the light button or leaving a comment or a five star review. And if you want to be the first to know every time we drop a new episode, be sure to subscribe and turn on notifications for whichever platform you're listening on. If you do these simple things, it will help the podcast grow and I'd really appreciate it. Thank you so much.