Kimberly Guilfoyle under fire for Trump fundraising disarray

Source: Politico | July 23, 2020 | Alex Isenstadt

Interviews depict an operation beset by departures, staffers with no prior fundraising experience and accusations of irresponsible spending.

News that Kimberly Guilfoyle contracted the coronavirus had barely surfaced on July 3 before she hopped on a private flight from Mount Rushmore back to New York with her boyfriend, Donald Trump, Jr.

Left behind in her wake after President Donald Trump’s pre-Independence Day address were more than a half-dozen junior campaign staffers whom Guilfoyle oversees as the president’s national finance chair. The aides, who’d been in proximity to Guilfoyle, were forced to quarantine in their Rapid City, S.D., hotel rooms for three days and barred from face-to-face contact with colleagues as they pleaded with the campaign to get them home.

The campaign tried to reassure the staffers, checking in with them and stressing the need to wait a few days to take a coronavirus test. But the aides felt deserted and scared they’d get sick in a city they’d never set foot in before. They were so distraught that weeks later they sought out Stephanie Alexander, the campaign’s chief of staff, to vent about the experience, according to people familiar with the incident.

The episode was the latest example of upheaval within the fundraising unit that Guilfoyle oversees, which is primarily responsible for cultivating networks of donors who cut checks in increments up to $2,800. Interviews with nearly a dozen Republicans familiar with the campaign’s fundraising depict an operation beset by departures, staffers with no prior fundraising experience and accusations of irresponsible spending.

Trump is raking in big money online and has amassed an enormous war chest. But Joe Biden has outraised the president for two consecutive months, and there are growing concerns among senior Republicans about whether the dysfunction within Guilfoyle’s team is translating into money left on the table for what has become an uphill fight for a second term.

Her staff is in upheaval. Last week, several of them requested a meeting with then-campaign manager Brad Parscale to air their grievances. The sit-down never took place — Parscale lost his job before it could happen — but they did meet with Alexander. They described a feeling of confusion and said it felt like they were caught between the competing demands of longtime fundraiser Caroline Wren and Guilfoyle confidant Sergio Gor, who oversee the unit’s day-to-day operations.

Finance staffers privately complain about a pressure-cooker environment in which employees are berated when they’re perceived to not be measuring up. They compare working under Wren and Gor to living with two warring parents; some Republicans argue that staff discontent is less about Guilfoyle than about the pair working directly under her.

The team has seen three full-time staffers leave the past two months, including two with past fundraising experience. The most recent departure came earlier this month. Each transferred to different positions within the campaign after finding the culture of the finance operation untenable.

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