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PART I
Trump and the Electorate
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CHAPTER 1
The Disruptive Campaign of Donald J. Trump
Chapman Rackaway
In the world of business, the term âdisruptionâ has become a common buzzword. Disruptive innovators in business take well-established and stable companies or processes and succeed by beating those powerful forces at their own game (Bower and Christensen 1995). Thirty years ago, the idea of retail giant Sears having its dominant market share eaten away by Wal-Mart and online retailers to the point that the company declared bankruptcy and became functionally extinct would have been a shocking assertion. But Wal-Mart (and later Amazon) did disrupt Searsâs business model, the old giant did not or would not adapt, and the new upstart took its place as a dominant player. Disruption as a tactic is well-established in the realm of private business, and the paradigm of disruptive innovation has spread to other areas. Southern New Hampshire University, the University of Phoenix, and other online educators, for example, have disrupted higher education.1
The realm of American presidential politics is no more insulated from the potential for disruptive innovation than any other industry. Perhaps it is appropriate that the most disruptive force in politics in decades entered with no political experience at all and a background in the private business sectorâreal estate, specificallyâwhere disruption is a regular occurrence. Donald J. Trump was the most disruptive candidate to successfully pursue the presidency since Franklin Roosevelt argued for significant federal spending and regulatory intervention as a solution to the economic crisis of the late 1920s. Roosevelt changed the political game significantly, not just in policy but in his use of new media as well. In 2016, Donald Trump comprehensively challenged established political strategies and tactics.
When disruptors enter a new environment, they either succeed or fail. In retrospect, Trump appeared to be a candidate who would fail in his efforts to disrupt decades of best practices in presidential campaigning. However, as unlikely a rise to success as he had, Trump did indeed successfully bring disruption to politics through his 2016 campaign. And if the history of disruptive innovation suggests anything for the future, it is that Trumpâs disruption will significantly shift the strategies and practices of campaigns for some time.
THE ENVIRONMENT OF DISRUPTION
Donald Trump had long been considered a potential candidate for president. As early as 1988, Trumpâs name was referenced in news accounts and opinion polls to determine his viability compared with other prospective entrants to the race. In 1999, Trump publicly declared himself a candidate for the Reform Partyâs 2000 presidential nomination but never filed the paperwork or developed a campaign organization to pursue the office (Edsall 1999). Trump made his pronouncement on the Larry King Live interview program at a time when presidential candidates would announce their intention at dedicated press conferences. Donald Trumpâs public persona, as a real estate investor and later as a candidate, would be built using media to promote his brand and interests. Commentators at the time openly questioned whether Trump was a serious candidate or simply engaging in a publicity stunt in the interest of self-promotion (Neal 1999).
The Barack Obama presidency would see Trump pivot to more seriously considering a run for the Republican nomination. Early on in the Obama presidency, Trump openly declared himself a âbirther,â that is, someone who was skeptical that the presidentâs birth certificate was legitimate (Blow 2016). Trump then changed his voter registration to Republican, and in 2011, he was invited to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), at the time one of the springboards for Republican presidential hopefulsâ campaigns (Milbank 2011). Trump quickly became the front-running Republican in the 2012 nomination pre-polls, but he eventually opted out of pursuing the GOPâs nomination that year (Schoen 2011). Trump became progressively more serious about running, including letting his contract for televisionâs The Apprentice lapse in 2015 and making a return engagement to CPAC that year (Moody 2013). Despite continued insinuations that Trump was brand-building, he was increasingly serious in his desire to pursue the presidency.
The environment in which Trump ran in 2016 was much more favorable to his candidacy than 2012 was. Obama was a divisive president and not overwhelmingly popular, but he was popular enough to carry roughly 50 percent approval ratings in an improving economy. The eventual nominee, Mitt Romney, could not contest effectively and never came close to the incumbent. The economy was still solid, though not impressive, in 2016, which played more into a Republican nomineeâs hands. Further, the time-for-change model suggested that after two terms of a Democratic administration, voters were ready to elect the out-party into the White House (Abramowitz 2008b).
Trump also faced a better opportunity within the GOP structure. The Romney/Ryan loss in 2012 led conservatives to a significant period of soul-searching. Worried that the Republican Partyâs message was not resonating with voters, GOP insiders began discussing concerns that the George W. Bushâera rhetoric of low taxes and cultural conservatism was a losing strategy for elections to come and that a new message with new messengers was necessary to return the White House to Republican hands (Martin 2012). Even more importantly, after a chaotic 2012 primary and convention for the Republicans, national leaders made a number of changes to the nomination system that would unknowingly make Trumpâs path to the nomination easier. Eager to quell outsider uprisings that led to a strong showing for Ron Paulâs campaign for the nomination, the GOP limited the number of unpledged delegates, tightened rules on caucuses, reduced the number of caucus-state delegates, and made earlier states allocate their delegates on a proportional rather than a winner-take-all basis (Guilford 2016). Designed to encourage party mainliners to rally around a consensus candidate more quickly than the prolonged 2012 nomination contest, the rules changes actually made it easier for Trump to emerge as the presumptive nominee despite not being a consensus candidate.
DISRUPTING THE PREPRIMARY
The first phase of a presidential nomination process today is known as the preprimary. In the pre-primary phase, candidates typically seek endorsements from party insiders, demonstrate the ability to fundraise, and establish strong professional campaign organizations (Adkins and Dowdle 2002). The length, cost, and haphazard calendar that make up the primary election season (that time when caucuses and primaries are actually conducted) makes the pre-primary an important vetting process for hopeful candidates. Over the last twenty years, ever more candidates have entered the pre-primary presidential sweepstakes, but until 2012, most of them dropped out well before the primaries began. The Republicans faced a different pre-primary phase in 2012, where ten candidates remained during the primaries. The crowded field presented a problem, spreading support out and throttling the GOPâs attempt to find a consensus candidate. The 2012 GOP primary was expensive, long, and arduous and resulted in only a partial consensus nominee, Mitt Romney.
The GOPâs rules changes prior to 2016 were supposed to winnow the potential candidates down, but instead they had the opposite effect. A total of seventeen Republican candidates pursued the nomination, with twelve remaining at least into the beginning of primary season. Despite the GOPâs early proportionality rule designed to create a consensus candidate, it actually encouraged candidates to stay longer in the race than they would have in a winner-take-all primary system. The proportional allocation of early votes gave marginal candidates small victories they could use to fundraise and continue on with the campaign. The crowded field was thus a ripe opportunity for a candidate with name recognition to enter. Such a well-known candidate would only have to win approximately 30 percent of a given stateâs votes to have a strong showing and eventually capture the nomination.
Before Trumpâs entrance into the 2016 race, the field was reflecting a ânew generationâ of candidates, at least on the Republican side. A mixture of youth and experience, upstarts and mainstream insiders, and candidates with extensive name recognition constituted the field. The only holdovers from 2012 were former senator Rick Santorum and Texas governor Rick Perry. Other governors like Perry who had made national names for themselves by embracing the Tea Party style of conservatism, like Scott Walker and Bobby Jindal, entered the race, and more established mainline Republicans like Mike Huckabee and Chris Christie joined in as well. Longshot moderates George Pataki and John Kasich were outside the Republican primary base. Outsiders Carly Fiorina and Ben Carson added their names to the list. A new wave of US senators including Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, Rand Paul, and Marco Rubio also contested the primary. Of all the candidates, former Florida governor and political scion Jeb Bush was considered by most pundits to be the pre-election favorite. But the open seat and new rules meant that a multitude of candidates saw an opportunity to contend for the nomination despite the design of the new delegate allocation rules.
Trump chose to delay entry into the primary until June 2015 and was one of the latest candidates to include their name. Unlike other candidates, Trump had a built-in advantage of existing name recognition that would significantly disrupt the usual practices of politics. Since the 1980s, Donald Trump had curated a media profile that made his name ubiquitous and synonymous with success. Books on business negotiations, constant attention in the media, and since 2004 a prime-time television audience with his show The Apprentice (and its spinoff The Celebrity Apprentice) gave Trump name recognition that dwarfed that of the other candidates in the field. Trump did not need to run the fusillade of ads or have a hundreds-strong ground team in Iowa to push his name into peoplesâ minds.
Name recognition was a significant advantage, but it was also symbolic of the disruptive nature of the Trump candidacy. In the McGovern-Fraser era of functionally binding presidential primaries, candidates establish campaign operations nationwide to build up enough name recognition to register on polls and earn media attention. That name recognition is vital, because voters do strongly base their decisions about which candidates they support on name recognition (Kam and Zechmeister 2013). Since the general public does not pay sustained attention to politics, even candidates who are wellknown in political circles rarely have high name recognition. Traditionally, candidates have designed their media campaigns around building that familiarity with voters, but it is a difficult, costly, and time-consuming task. Decades in the public eye outside of politics gave Donald Trump a level of name recognition unheard of by political candidate standards. In a 2015 tracking poll, Trumpâs name recognition was 92 percent, twenty points higher than his next-closest rival, Jeb Bush, who himself benefited from his familyâs extensive political history (Dugan 2015).
Trump did not need to spend the millions of dollars that candidates typically do in pursuit of presidential nominations. The months of advertising runs with soft-focus biographies and lists of credible accomplish...
