Lincoln Project

The Lincoln Project is a political action committee (PAC) that formed in the United States in 2019. Its creators were former and then-current members of the Republican Party who opposed the policies of President Donald Trump. The Lincoln Project utilized social media to defeat multiple Republican candidates running for national office during the 2020 US Presidential Election, spending more than 15 million dollars on advertising.

The founders of the Lincoln Project were former political operatives for the Republican Party and Republican candidates. Four of the founders wrote an op-ed that was published in The New York Times on December 17, 2019, announcing the formation of the super-PAC and its opposition to Trump and those whom they characterized as his enablers. They held that Trump did not represent Republican Party values or policies and his leadership threatened the rule of law, the Constitution, and democracy in the United States. In November 2020, Trump lost his bid for re-election, and the Republican Party lost its majority in the US Senate.

Background

American real estate investor and television personality Donald Trump announced his candidacy for US president in 2015, running as a Republican in the 2016 US Presidential Election. Many establishment Republican conservatives derided Trump initially, but fell silent as he won primary elections. He outlasted a number of political veterans during the primary season, nabbing the party nomination in mid-2016. Although he and his running mate, Mike Pence, did not win the popular vote in November 2016, taking just 46 percent of votes cast, the ticket gained enough electoral college votes to defeat Democratic Party candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, who earned 48 percent of the votes.

During the post-election transition period, media reports noted that Trump insiders were jockeying for positions inside his administration. He appointed his daughter and son-in-law to be advisers in the White House. He nominated Michael Flynn, retired US Army lieutenant general and conspiracy theorist, as his national security adviser; Flynn resigned three weeks into the new administration after he was caught lying to Vice President Pence about his work as a foreign agent and communications with Russian officials.

Washington insiders and career employees of the federal government were dismayed by the chaos of the new administration. They noted violations of the Hatch Act, which bars government employees from using their positions for political purposes; potential violations of the Emoluments Clause related to Trump’s lease of a government building housing his Washington hotel; and Trump’s weekly flights aboard Air Force One to his properties in Florida and New Jersey, where the US Secret Service was charged high fees for rooms and use of golf carts while protecting Trump and his four adult children. High-profile members of the Republican Party were dismayed by the direction in which Trump was leading the party, but many refused to speak against him for fear of being the target of a Twitter tirade.

Overview

The Lincoln Project launched in late 2019 with plans to devote the next eleven months to opposing Trump’s reelection in the 2020 US Presidential Election. The founders were identified as attorney George Conway, political strategist Reed Galen, former New Hampshire Republican Party chair Jennifer Horn, former California Republican Party political director Mike Madrid, political strategist Steve Schmidt, marketing strategist Ron Steslow, political strategist John Weaver, and Rick Wilson, author of Everything Trump Touches Dies. Senior advisers were Rachel Bitecofer, Sally Canfield, Susan Del Percio, Molly Jong-Fast, Sarah Lenti, Windsor Mann, Tom Nichols, Tara Setmayer, Stuart Stevens, Jeff Timmer, Chris Vance, and Fred Wellman. The group took the name of Abraham Lincoln, the president who had understood the necessity of keeping the nation together during the American Civil War.

The op-ed announcing the Lincoln Project’s objectives noted that the group was working to convince like-minded voters in swing states that were crucial to the Electoral College and thus a presidential win. They were also targeting elected officials who supported Trump’s agenda, whom they accused of following the president’s lead in embracing corruption and cruelty. The Lincoln Project cited Trump’s temperament and insufficient moral compass among the reasons that he was unfit to hold office and should not be re-elected.

The Lincoln Project focused its attention on irking Trump to keep him and his campaign off balance. To this end, it took some unorthodox approaches. For example, residents of Washington, DC, reliably vote Democratic, so presidential campaigns do not typically purchase television advertising time to target the District. However, Trump was a voracious consumer of cable news programs. Media reported that a four hundred thousand dollar ad buy in the District by his campaign was meant to assure Trump that his campaign was pulling out all the stops to reach voters. To needle Trump, the Lincoln Project also ran ads in the Washington, DC, television market, especially on the president’s favorite channel, Fox News, during his favorite shows.

As the November 2020 election neared, the Lincoln Project expanded its efforts in battleground states. It spent one million dollars on social media, direct email, and search engines in swings states, including Arizona, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin. It also aired ads supporting challengers to incumbent Republican senators representing Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Montana, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Texas.

Lincoln Project ads have focused on the people who supported Trump, his response to the COVID-19 global pandemic, and his policies. For example, post-election analysis revealed that Americans who voted for Trump in 2016 were predominantly white non-college educated males. Trump voters identified as conservative and 77 percent as white evangelical Christians. A January 2020 Lincoln Project ad called “The MAGA Church” targeted his supporters with a series of clips showing Trump calling people names, taking the Lord’s name in vain, and bragging interspersed with clips of evangelical leaders praising Trump and asking for donations. Wilson said much of the advertising was dedicated to psychological warfare against Trump and his administration, while other campaigns were designed to prevent Republicans who had already drifted away from Trump from returning and voting for him again. The super-PAC also produced some ads that showed former vice president Joseph Biden, the Democratic candidate in the 2020 election, in a positive light.

After the presidential election, in which Democrats Biden and Kamala Harris defeated the Republican ticket to take the White House, Wilson reported the super-PAC had data showing its effectiveness in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. He said the group’s work had persuaded former and current Republicans and some independents to vote against Trump. Wilson said that data showed between 9 and 13 percent of Republicans in those states had voted for Biden/Harris.

In early 2021, the Lincoln Project came under fire. The New York Times reported that twenty-one men accused cofounder Weaver of sending them unsolicited messages of a sexual nature. The youngest accuser had been fourteen years old. Other leaders of the Lincoln Project denied knowing about these messages before they were exposed by the press, and Weaver left the super-PAC after publicly apologizing for his actions. Cofounder Horn also left the Lincoln Project, reportedly over disagreements about its future, as did Schmidt. Media also reported that some founders profited by channeling Lincoln Project funds into their consulting firms.

Beginning in 2024, the Lincoln Project began preparations to contest the expected 2024 campaign of Donald Trump. The group continued to use anti-Trump imagery and rally points, particularly the January 6, 2021, ransacking of the Capitol Building by pro-Trump supporters. In late 2023, former President Donald Trump accused the Lincoln Project of employing Artificial Intelligence (AI) to fabricate news clips of him making stumbling political statements. Representatives of the Lincoln Project countered that the news clips were genuine and based on actual photographic or video footage.

Bibliography

Astor, Maggie, and Danny Hakim. “21 Men Accuse Lincoln Project Co-Founder of Online Harassment.” New York Times, 31 Jan. 2021, www.nytimes.com/2021/01/31/us/politics/john-weaver-lincoln-project-harassment.html . Accessed 6 Apr. 2021.

Conway, George I. III, Steve Schmidt, John Weaver, and Rick Wilson. “We Are Republicans, and We Want Trump Defeated.” New York Times, 17 Dec. 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/12/17/opinion/lincoln-project.html. Accessed 6 Apr. 2021.

Dumenco, Simon. “The Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson on the Ads That Actually Worked.” Ad Age, 9 Dec. 2020, adage.com/article/campaign-trail/lincoln-projects-rick-wilson-ads-actually-worked/2300051. Accessed 7 Apr. 2021.

Dumenco, Simon. “Watch: The Lincoln Project Declares War on Rupert Murdoch and Fox News in New Attack Ad.” Ad Age, 30 Mar. 2021, adage.com/article/campaign-trail/watch-lincoln-project-declares-war-rupert-murdoch-and-fox-news-new-attack-ad/2325036. Accessed 7 Apr. 2021.

“An Examination of the 2016 Electorate, Based on Validated Voters.” Pew Research Center, 9 Aug. 2018, www.pewresearch.org/politics/2018/08/09/an-examination-of-the-2016-electorate-based-on-validated-voters. Accessed 6 Apr. 2021.

Geraghty, Jim. “The Lincoln Project—Making Television for an Audience of One.” The Article, 8 July 2020, www.thearticle.com/the-lincoln-project-making-television-for-an-audience-of-one. Accessed 7 Apr. 2021.

Hakim, Danny, Maggie Astor, and Jo Becker. “Inside the Lincoln Project’s Secrets, Side Deals and Scandals.” New York Times, 8 Mar. 2021, www.nytimes.com/2021/03/08/us/politics/lincoln-project-weaver.html. Accessed 6 Apr. 2021.

“Lincoln Project.” Ballotpedia, 2020, ballotpedia.org/Lincoln‗Project. Accessed 6 Apr. 2021.

Rahman, Khaleda. “‘It’s America or Trump’: Lincoln Project Launches Fight against 2024 Bid.” Newsweek. Accessed 11 May 2024.

Steakin, Will. “Anti-Trump Republican Group Targets Evangelical Voters with New Ad.” ABC News, 10 Jan. 2020, abcnews.go.com/Politics/anti-trump-republican-group-targets-evangelical-voters-ad/story?id=68206138. Accessed 7 Apr. 2021.

Tuquero, Loreben. “Donald Trump Claimed the Lincoln Project Used AI to Make Him ‘Look Bad.’ But the Clips Are Real.” PolitiFact, 19 Dec. 2023, www.politifact.com/factchecks/2023/dec/19/donald-trump/donald-trump-claimed-the-lincoln-project-used-ai-t/. Accessed 11 May 2024.