Ep.69 Knocking for Victory: Pennsylvania Game-Changer w/ Cliff Maloney

Pennsylvania turned RED this election with the help of door knocking efforts by PA Chase. Programming Lions hears the insider scoop from founder, Cliff Maloney, on the strategy and process of helping secure the win and what do ‘we the people’ have left to restore. 

Links:

X: @Maloney

FB: RealCliffMaloney

IG: @realcliffmaloney

YT: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKFRrwHjtr94xfE

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cliff-maloney/

TIMELINE

00:00 Intro

00:53 PA Strategy

06:55 Day in the life

09:52 DOGE vs swamp

16:41 Kids in politics

18:29 Rapid Fire

Transcript

0:00

Welcome to the Programming Lions podcast. Cliff Maloney is with us, the door knocking guru and grassroots strategist. Maloney's door knocking deployments have knocked on over 8 million doors and brought 400 plus victories nationwide. Cliff reigns from Philadelphia, and it's hard to miss because he's usually got his Eagles ball cap on. He's also the CEO of Citizens Alliance and founder of the Pennsylvania Chase. So we're going to talk a lot about knocking on doors, tactics, delivering results in 2024. So pivotal to so many elections, most notably the presidential election. So let's get into it yeah.

CLIFF_MALONEY-Matt-webcam-00h_00m_00s_335ms-StreamYard: 0:41

cliff Maloney, welcome to the Programming Lions Podcast. It's great to be here. You may be one of the most instrumental people in this recent election, Door knocking in Pennsylvania, the biggest swing state of all of them. Was your major inspiration to become a changemaker with door knocking? So 2016 I worked for Rand Paul in Kentucky. So Rand was running for president. And I had always kind of gotten involved in organizing and trying to recruit people. But what I realized was the left had volunteers and paid ground game. The right We only had volunteers. So, hold on. There's a whole missing piece here, right? Why are we not trying to match their tactics? And so, after that cycle, I had always just been kind of an organizer. I used to be a math teacher back in the day, 5th and 7th grade. You guys might know something about that. When I got into politics, you know, I never fundraised. I never figured it out. But I said, there's something with this door knocking. There is something here that the left understands and we don't. And so pretty much since 2016, if you look at 18, 20, 22 and now 24 we've knocked eight million doors through the programs that I've run. That's a lot of doors. We've won 400 races, a lot of them state level, some now at the White House presidential level. And then races all in between. And so that's just what what I've been focused on. And then obviously in 2024 the Pennsylvania Chase, we kind of went from Just do it being this kind of under the radar group doing doors to spring you onto the national scene. Wow Eight million is a large number Eight million is a large number That's a giant number when you started doing so you taught math before this Okay, and so similar, grades that these young gentlemen are in now but when you got into door knocking I imagine that there's Like a fear of like you walk up to somebody's door not knowing how they're going to react and all of that What's that like and any advice so, it's a horrible job. Okay, and I was hoping to tell you that. I didn't want to say it, but I'm like I mean, look, you guys But it's a necessary job. Exactly. And this is, this is what I found. I found that people will slam their door in your face. They'll say, get off my lawn. Right. You know, but the left pushes through it. The right, for years, has made excuses. Well, that's the working class. We'd rather just, you know, You know, let's say you have an organization or a campaign and you will buy the media ads, right? So you edit the tv ad and you buy it you guys both spend 10 million you cash in 1. 5 million with your commission It's much easier to do that then go out and hire 120. We hired 120 full time people Yeah, we had 10 airbnbs throughout pennsylvania And we set out with a goal of knocking 500 000 doors But that's the action. Okay, Charlie, when I did his show earlier, I was telling people, Charlie always says this best, Action just for action's sake means nothing. You could be spinning your wheels. How are you measuring results? So we said we were gonna knock 500, 000 doors to help Trump win PA. But then we also said, We're gonna measure our results, Based, you're a math guy? You like math? Yeah, I hate it. The Republicans in Pennsylvania have averaged 20 percent of just the mail in vote. So if you look at the mail in vote before you get to election day, right, there's 50 days of voting in Pennsylvania, which is wild. Wow. Trump and the other Republicans averaged 20%, meaning when you go into election now, you're down 20 to 80. Okay, I'll give you the actual numbers, it's easier to understand. Biden had 2 million mail in votes to Trump's 600, 000. So he went into election day down 1. 4 million votes. And so our whole public goal was to go from that 20 percent to 33%. And I'll say here on your show, we knocked 510, 000 doors and we got 34. 5 percent of the mail in vote. And we knew if we hit that 33, we couldn't lose. But the reason it was important is we knew that would carry McCormick over the finish line as well. So we really pushed to get to that 33%. So, and when you, when you go to these doors, what are the tactics? You want to get them out to vote, obviously, but are these largely just disenchanted Republican voters? Is that kind of how you prioritize them? So there are two phases, and I, if you want me to go into the weeds, I will, feel free to pull me out of them. Not too deep, There's two phases. The first phase is you're trying to get people to request a mail in ballot. So in certain states, everybody gets sent a ballot. Right? All registered voters in Pennsylvania. You still have to request it. You have to request it. So you have to manually send in a form that says, Hey, you don't have to have a reason. It's not an absentee. We have to be military. Here's my request for him. So what we did was the first phase. Is we went to Trump supporters that were unlikely to be Trump voters, meaning they weren't going to vote, but they were with us. And we said, hey, here's this request form, we've already pre filled it out, just sign it, we'll send it in, and you can get your request sent in. And then a ballot will be sent to you, much easier to vote. So that's phase one, is you hit these what we call low propensity voters that are aligned and get them to request a ballot. Phase two, this is September 1 through October 5th was phase 1. The final 30 days is phase 2 of the PHAs, where we flip everything over to go talk to the person that has a ballot sitting at their door. Right? So it's on their dining room table. And we know that because we have all that data. Yeah, right. And so the conversation goes like this. Bob, I know you're a Trump guy. I know you're going to vote Republican up and down the ballot. Yeah. You got your ballot sitting over there on your dining room table. Can you commit to sending it in today? And Bob would say, Oh gosh, yes, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to get it filled out. That's great. Bob, I'm going to come back in four days. We're checking with the clerk. And if you don't have it in, don't worry, we'll come back and remind you in a friendly way. We're not threatening. But we'll come back and remind you. He's like, oh gosh, really? Yeah, how do I get you guys to stop coming back? Just vote. Just do it. Yeah, just do it. The democrats, We got a hold of their training slides. Yeah. And they call it the power of annoying the voter. Right. Which sounds horrible. So they actually publicly call it a reminder campaign. Right. But that's the strategy that you have to match to be able to win. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. That's really cool. So what was your most, like, memorable person that you You know, there's so many great stories about some of the doorknockers. These Airbnbs. It really is a nice culture and environment. You guys are too young for me to make a fraternity reference, and I know that comes with negative connotations, but you're living in community. You know, you're there, there's 10, maybe 15 or 20 people in some of these Airbnbs. Yeah. This is what a day looks like for a doorknocker, okay? If you guys ever come to work with us, this You get up, 9. 30, 9. 15, we have our morning meeting. They get assigned their walkbook for the day, and it's all on their phone. So you know, it's all GPS, it looks like Google Maps. Yeah. And it tells you where you're going and who you're talking to at the door. They take a lunch break at 1 o'clock. So they're knocking their first door by 10, they have a lunch break at 1. They knock their final door at 7 o'clock. Usually you knock about 100 to 140 doors, depending on how dense the universe is. You go back to the house, you have dinner with the team. And Maybe you know have a couple drinks or a cup of coffee. You're sharing war stories, right? Yeah, when you ask me the most memorable thing, I mean you hear some stories, you know You have some crazy things some people pull a gun on you. Sometimes the dog is chasing you out of the yard yeah, but like, you know when you have 120 people in the field Full time you're gonna have some stories and by the way This is I like to be transparent because everybody thinks this is all unicorns and it's this great thing And yeah, no, it's tough work to have a hundred and twenty and business owners understand this to have a hundred and twenty full time people That lasted the whole time. Yeah, we had to interview about 700 people. We had 1, 100 people apply We interviewed 700 people. We sent offers in total about 400 people Now obviously you don't send them all at once, right? You send them and somebody says, Hey, we'd love to, but I got another job, or this came up. We had to send 400 offers. We locked in 180 people with signed contracts. 20 of them never showed up. 20 of them showed up and lasted a day, and they're like, this isn't for me. Yeah. And then the rest of them dwindled down until we were left with about 124 was our final number. Yeah, of had to hire with attrition expectations. Really? Yeah. And when you do programs like this, and you, you just have the experience of knowing it's going to happen, it's, it doesn't mean we're failing. The left has worse attrition than us. Yeah. But you just have to account for that. These consultants are like, we've got 120 people that are coming. I'm like, alright, well you're going to end up with 80. Like, what are you talking about? Have you ever run a program before? It's also such a difficult job, I imagine. And it's not for everybody. It's like, like some people want to get into sales, because sales makes money, when they do it, they realize they're not, it's not like a good match for them. So I imagine door knocking can be similar. Yeah. And the elements, you know, depending on where you are, I mean, Pennsylvania was pretty beautiful this time of year. We've done a door knocking in December and May. We've done door knocking here in Arizona in, August. It's brutal. Yeah. We talked to some neighbors in September, October here, and it was, It was hot, yeah. It was pretty hot here in Phoenix. It is hot here until the end of October. Who do you think is going to stand in the way of Doge and InterSuccess? Well, you know what? Maybe first of all, you're a fan of Doge, right? Die hard. I think Doge is the greatest opportunity. I'm 33 years old. I think Doge is probably the greatest opportunity in my life. In terms of actually reforming government. Yeah, you have a president who was shot in the face. So he's motivated Yeah, you have Elon Musk who is the richest man in the world? Who wants and I was gonna say I'm a bake who's I would argue one of the smartest and they are coming in and I? Just think there is this opportunity like nothing we've ever had before for us to truly make some reforms There are two people have a choice Right now Mike johnson and john thune the speaker and the majority leader, okay They have an opportunity here There is going to be a battle between doge And the swamp. Yeah. Yeah, and right now you've got elon musk. You've got trump. You've got bavek You've got ron paul a lot of these other people on the side of doge the freedom caucus. Yeah But then you have the Swamp over here. Yeah. And the Swamp is not going to want these Doge reforms to happen. Yeah. It doesn't align with their personal best interests in a lot of cases. So the option for Johnson and Thune is do you become some of the most prolific, memorable, historic speakers and majority leaders? Or do you side with the Swamp? Yeah. And I'm here to tell you guys, because I like to be a realist. Yeah. Don't get your hopes up. it's the most pressure and it's the closest we've ever been, but look what happened yesterday. I mean, it was good that we stopped the CR, but the fact that Mike Johnson put the CR forward. Yes. Hello. Boys, do you know what was in that? You know more about this than I do, but they basically wanted to give themselves raises and better health care. So they put together a spending package that had, like, that had hidden in it raises and health care benefits for politicians. Yeah, and they made themselves immune to J6 committee. They were giving them like an immunity pass. But, this is what they do though. They, the trick is, and you guys, let's say dad runs for Congress one day, right? Mm hmm. Let's say he's in D. C. and they're gonna shut down the government on December 20th. Well, all of a sudden, or December 24th, right? Well, you guys are sitting at home. You want dad to come home for Christmas. Yeah. Right? So you, your mom, calling dad, you know, when are you coming home? And they just, they run this psyop, it's almost dystopian, where they get these people to pretty much cave to anything. And there are these huge spending bills that are all corrupt, carve outs, people's buddies own companies and they give them money. And they never stop it because there's not enough time to read the bill and they want to go home. Yeah. Well, Grok has changed that. The AI system on Twitter on X. Yeah. Because it allows you to read the bill. If I went on Grok right now and I typed in, give me the basic egregious parts of this spending bill, it would give you some pretty crazy stuff. Yeah. And that's all new. That's, we've never been able to have a defense against their playbook. pages. Like you can't, you can't realistically read. Something like that and understand it in a couple of days. I would never want to read, like, that many, that much just to like pass a freaking bill. Yeah. And then there might be something in it that you like and then there might be something you don't like. And you're like, well, I really want to vote for this, but I don't want to vote for that. Imagine having two days to read 1, 500 pages. That's insane. I can't read a 60 page newsletter or book in a week. I'm a math guy. I struggle. Ha ha ha. You know, I I had a conversation. We had a doorknocker come by, and it was a he was pushing for a Democratic candidate in Arizona, and he, I went back and forth with this guy so long that he actually got the candidate on the phone with me, and I said, look, if you go to Washington, we all want, like, basic things from you guys. I want you to represent us. Here's what we want. We want term limits for all of you. We want balanced budget, or you can't run again. We want single bill legislation, and we want understandable legislation. If you guys can just do that So you guys dad should run for Congress, believe me. There's only like five people in D. C. to understand this. Correct. You're trying to, like, trick us into what we're gonna get. And so, nonetheless, none of them vote for those things because it's against their own self interests. However, they We're hired by us to represent us. And so that's the, that's the big hypocrisy that goes on with most politicians. And I, I say Republican politicians just about as bad. So I just did a Jack Pasovic show and that was the biggest applause I got from the crowd. I said, right now the enemy's not Democrats, folks, it's the rhinos and the Republican party. Yeah. Let me just segue real quick. So I typed in the grok, what's the craziest part of the current spending bill? And literally, disasterAid, which is what they're using, they dangle these things. You're against DisasterAid? You know, you're a monster. You can't not vote for DisasterAid. And then the second one, obviously the pay raise. Right, so the pay raise, it's like you, you guys really tried to ram through a pay raise? Yeah. After the mandate that we want to reform D. C.? Tone deaf. It's kind of like the, we studied the Inflation Reduction Act, which is really a climate bill. It doesn't have anything to do with inflation. It actually increases inflation. So we, we've talked about that before on a podcast, so. Bill naming is probably one of the most corrupt things in that town. It's unbelievable. It's like you have a bill to, to, you know, defund I don't know. You have a bill to fund all the stadiums, right? And these corporate crony handouts. Yeah. And they call it the defund the stadium bill. It's like, wait a second. You're literally funding them all. Yeah. But it's like the Patriot Act, right? It was tough to vote against the Patriot Act after 9 11. But we pretty much gave up all of our rights to privacy, our Fourth Amendment. The government can spy on us, unilaterally without a warrant. But you gotta vote against the Patriot Act? You know, it's tough to do. It takes courage. Can't do that. What else you got? He basically answered the last two with Doge. We could probably go on with you for hours about all the challenges of everything going on in Washington. Doge, I am really hopeful. I agree with you. This is why I applied and we can connect offline about this. I think we have this narrow window of opportunity to really, really make change. And And I look at these two guys and I don't want them to be in a more difficult spot than we already know that they're on in terms of how affordable a house is going to be, a car. Can they have a family where not both, like both parents aren't required to work just to survive. And so essentially we're concerned about getting Gen Alpha back on track and Max are getting more and more into politics and stuff. So, what's your take with kids being, or starting to join politics? I think it's great. I think people should get involved. I, I was not politically minded until probably I was 19 years old. So you guys are way ahead of me. So I've only been in this game about 14 years. I'm 33 now. But I think the number one piece of advice, cause I get parents that come to me all the time and, you know, young people are like, hey, my son or daughter is interested. Never be interested because of the power. The interest and that's good. You guys react that way, but you'll I'm not talking to you as much as you'll see other people. Yeah, they're in it for the wrong reasons, right? If you're in it, because you are an ideologue, you believe in a core set of principles, right? And you believe the Constitution and these other things deserve to be protected. Right. If you are in it for that reason, I think it's great. But there are honestly the vast majority of people, if you guys, you know, go to school and some of these student governments. And if you go look at who interns on Capitol Hill, there's some of the crappiest people in the world, just to put it lightly. We call them process people, right? They are proud to be part of the process. It's like, no, I want to do things. I want to create, I want to reform. I don't want to be part of the process. And then you get your little promotion. Oh, I was a legislative assistant. Now I'm a legislative aid. Now I'm a legislative director. And it just, it becomes this self fulfilling prophecy. So I love seeing young people get involved if they get involved for the right reasons, which is have a set of ideas. You want to advance those principles because you believe in them and you feel like the public policy arena is the way to do it. That will be my advice. Thank you. I love that. So that's good advice. Do you have time for a fun section The rules are that you have to answer them as fast as possible with no explaining. The rules are fair. 3, 2, 1, go. Okay, what is the coolest invention in your lifetime? Bunch of balloons. Nice. Oh, yeah, yeah. We've used those. Alright. Yeah. Those are fun. So, what's your favorite president of all time? Calvin Coolidge. What is the favorite book you've ever read? Good to Great by Jim Collins. If you had one executive order as president, what would it be? To ban all executive orders. Oh, wow. I mean, really? Okay. Excluding us, us three, who's your idol? Probably my mom. That's a, that's a safe option. Alright, and then this is our Don't tell my dad I said that. Have you ever been stuck in a bathroom stall without toilet paper? Yes, many a times. Same here, same here. Many a times, hopefully not in public, but Yes, when I did 300 days on the road this year, at the Pennsylvania Chase. So I spent many a days in hotels, restaurants, gas stations, So, yes, when you have to go to the bathroom on the road that much, you find yourself in situations you don't control. So, yes, I'm not proud of it, but yes. Let me end with one fun fact, because I'm talking to young people. I don't ever tell people this. This is the first time I'm admitting this in a few years. I paid for my books when I was in college. By dressing up as Buzz Lightyear for kids birthday parties. Oh really? I've got the chin. I can see it. I can see it. If I put the helmet on. I like it. I'm a little too tall. Like Woody is supposed to be like a foot taller than Buzz, but I'm six foot five. So it makes it a little difficult. Wow. Does the job pay well? Oh it was, I had the suit. Thank the Lord. For Toy Story 3 coming out, I had another round of work. Okay. But yeah, what it would is you'd wear the suit, you'd show up you'd bring a couple books that are Toy Story books. Yeah. You'd read the story to the whosoever birthday it is, all the kids. Yeah. You open the presents, they do cake, and then you vote. Usually it'd be about, you know, 40, 45 minutes, and they'd typically pay about 200 bucks. Okay. That's a good, that's a good job. It's a pretty good gig. Cliff, it was great to have you on the show. We appreciate you coming by and spending some time with us. Yeah, thank you. The work you have done is unbelievable. It may have been, like, the turning point of the election. And so we really appreciate what a patriot you are and everything that you've done. At any rate thanks again. Yeah, thanks for coming on. Honored to be a part of it. Love the show. Thanks for having me guys. Yeah.