Jeff Roe, Ted Cruz’s campaign manager, tells ‘Off Message’ that Trump’s allergy to analytics could be fatal.
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Donald Trump plans to defeat Hillary Clinton through blustery force of will and word — but the architect of Ted Cruz’s efficient, numbers-focused campaign thinks Trump is making a huge mistake by burning the modern electoral playbook.
Jeff Roe, a burly and self-deprecating 43-year-old former baseball umpire and onetime howitzer-crew hand, estimates that the presumptive Republican nominee is costing himself from 2.5 to 5.5 percentage points nationally by refusing to invest more time, energy and cash in data, analytics and a first-rate ground operation.
By any calculation those are precious points that Trump, who faces an uphill climb against Hillary Clinton on the electoral map — and has trailed the Democratic nominee in most polls — can’t afford to lose.
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Over the next few weeks Cruz’s team, still largely intact, will conduct an autopsy of the campaign from a data and messaging standpoint and dial-test Cruz’s greatest hits and lowest moments with voter focus groups. The goal is to figure out a path forward, which quite possibly involves a second shot at the big prize in 2020, and Roe thinks Trump, win or lose in 2016, won’t be on the ballot four years from now.
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Cruz, conspicuously, remains the biggest GOP name not to endorse Trump. The reason, Roe said, is partly Trump’s decision to go “very personal” on the senator’s family, but also a professional calculation (with overtones of sweet revenge): Despite Trump’s claim that he’ll bring new independents into the process, 2016 promises to be the same-old base election and he’ll need the hard-core conservatives “Lyin’ Ted” was so good at galvanizing.
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Trump won, in part, because the pack was divided and because Cruz failed to move Marco Rubio and John Kasich aside quickly enough. “Yeah, we could take him [mano a mano], yeah, no doubt,” Roe told me.
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When Cruz finally got tough, Trump began dodging debates — and Roe predicted he’ll soon find an excuse to limit his onstage interactions with Clinton despite the widespread view that Trump’s attacks will make Clinton look weak and beatable.
“I don’t know that they’ll have one. … I bet if they do, they only have one,” he said of potential debates. “Everybody’s going to bake it into the cake that she’s going to win, and he’s going to look like a fool and say the same things over and over. She will have the apparatus to have the time to prepare. Trump’s his own guy. He’ll be tired.
“I’m sure he’s going to do one, and he’ll call it a draw. He’ll win the Drudge poll afterwards,” Roe added.
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Cruz CM @JeffRoe: Cruz decision not to endorse Trump both personal and professional; possible Cruz'll never endorse https://t.co/gew490LPLK
— Patrick Svitek (@PatrickSvitek) June 14, 2016
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