Michael Straw, a senior at Penn State University, returned to campus this week, put on a crisp blue suit, and walked into a Trump buzzsaw.
The president of the school’s chapter of College Republicans had a sense of what he was in for. Less than two weeks before, the group had announced in a Facebook post that they would not endorse Donald Trump after holding an online vote — a move that sparked outrage, including a call from the chairman of the Pennsylvania Federation of College
So when Straw gaveled in the chapter’s first meeting of the school year on Monday, it wasn’t altogether surprising that he was confronted by angry college Trump supporters — some wearing the signature “Make America Great Again” hats — demanding a re-vote of the non-endorsement and chanting Trump’s name throughout the meeting.
Straw ultimately made it through the hostile meeting without budging on the endorsement, or his own tenure as president of the group. And he says the tensions that have bubbled up on his campus were inevitable.
“I don’t think it’s extraordinary because obviously young voters are having a hard time supporting Donald Trump,” Straw said about his chapter’s decision not to endorse Trump. “I think it was bound to happen.”
Still, Penn State’s chapter is wading into unprecedented territory of declining to endorse the party’s nominee for president, and they are joined by a growing number of College Republicans chapters nationwide that are steering clear of Trump.
As students head back to campus for the start of the new school year, College Republicans are going through the same soul-searching that Republicans across the country have been wrestling with for months over what the future of their party will look like and what lasting impact Trump’s unorthodox campaign will have on the GOP.
“Look at various different conservative activist groups, the conservative media, there’s been a fracturing in how to deal with Trump, with some sites getting on board, other sites being strongly against,” said Tim Miller, who served as the top spokesman for Jeb Bush’s campaign before becoming a leader of the Never Trump movement that failed to derail his nomination. “So absolutely, this is a reflection about what’s happening in the party at large.”
At Harvard University, the oldest College Republicans club in the nation did not endorse the party’s nominee for president for the first time in 128 years, and at Yale University, more than half of Yale College Republicans’ executive board left the club and created Yale New Republicans after their former organization endorsed Trump earlier this month.
Ben Rasmussen, a Yale junior who had served as the Yale College Republicans vice president, said the group had talked about how to handle Trump’s nomination after Harvard’s club decided not to endorse him. Rasmussen said he wanted to stay silent on the nomination, and the group initially agreed to do so.
Then, a fake Twitter account in the group’s name tweeted that the club was not endorsing Trump. Leaders quickly rebuked the tweet, but were split over how to proceed. Rasmussen was still in the camp of not making a statement in support or against Trump. Then, he boarded the train for work one morning and had no service for about an hour. When he got off, the club’s presidents decided to endorse Trump, posting a statement on Facebook.
“It came as a shock to me,” he said. “It all happened so fast.”
Rasmussen, who is now the co-director of Yale New Republicans, said he and others defected from the group because they felt the Trump endorsement marginalized conservative Yale students who do not support Trump, and he feels it’s a sentiment rippling across college campuses.
“What’s happening at Yale right now is the perfect foreshadowing of what we will see in the Republican Party in the years to come,” he said. “The Republican Party is at a point now where it needs to either adapt or it will die.”
Trump’s nomination has torn the Republican Party apart at its seams, alienating key parts of the base and threatening to fundamentally change the electoral map. Hillary Clinton has commanding leads in many of the swing states and she’s threatening to win historically red states, making strides that could result in a big win. Also alarming for Republicans: Trump’s outreach to young voters has been minimal at best.
The Trump children have tried to serve as their father’s surrogate to young voters — Ivanka Trump attempted to woo millennials in her speech at the Republican National Convention by characterizing herself as one — but Donald Trump’s inflammatory comments about minorities and repeated missteps have turned off many young voters who have ruled him out as a credible candidate.
Trump is not completely bereft of college supporters, however, as Students for Trump has dozens of chapters on campuses nationwide. Ryan Fournier, the group’s national chairman, said he’s confident Trump’s support among millennials is increasing, but said he is disappointed that some College Republicans chapters are not endorsing him.
“My word is to the College Republicans is that it’s time to unite,” said Fournier, a sophomore at Campbell University. “It is very upsetting to see that there are groups that are not endorsing the candidate.”
While the disarray on college campuses over Trump’s candidacy mirrors the Republican Party at large, the dearth of support among young voters is particularly problematic for a party that has long struggled to attract the voting bloc.
“You don’t have to show me a poll to tell me that we’re in trouble with young people,” said Alex Smith, the national chairman of the College Republican National Committee. “The bottom line is anyone who runs with a Republican label next to their name starts out at a deficit with young people and it’s incumbent upon those candidates to fix that deficit.”
Smith, the first woman elected to her position, is taking a diplomatic approach to the fractionalization threatening her organization. Although the national group cannot formally endorse candidates, it supports all Republican candidates up and down the ballot, and states and chapters are free to govern themselves. The lack of universal support for Trump, she said, shows the “party is big and diverse and there’s room for a lot of conversations.”
The GOP’s deficit with young voters, however, only seems to be growing with Trump. A poll from earlier this month found Trump polling at just 9 percent among Americans under 30 years old, behind Clinton and third-party candidates Jill Stein and Gary Johnson. For many Republicans, the lost opportunity to make progress among young voters is particularly startling.
The Growth and Opportunity Project report — dubbed the autopsy report — that was released after Mitt Romney lost the 2012 presidential election identified increasing the youth vote as a core way the Republican Party could make candidates more competitive in national elections. The College Republican National Committee agreed and redrew an electoral map of the 2012 election that showed Romney would have defeated Barack Obama if Republicans “hadn’t underperformed with young voters.”
It doesn’t seem the party’s nominee is slated to “perform” this time around, however.
The spat in Pennsylvania between a state leader and a chapter president continues, with little resolution in sight. Zachary Bartman, the chairman of the Pennsylvania Federation of College Republicans and a junior at Gettysburg College, said his organization is considering disciplinary actions against Penn State’s chapter for denouncing Trump’s candidacy.
He said the public announcement condemning Trump’s incendiary statements as contrary to “Republican, American or Penn State values” violated the federation’s constitution, which states all chapters will support Republicans up and down the ballot. The punishment could include removing the chapter from the federation, he said.
“By refusing to support the legitimately nominated candidate, we would be no better than the Democratic Party, of which their candidate is selected by a corrupt system of superdelegates, which fails to consider the will of the people,” Bartman wrote in a letter to Straw, the Penn State chapter president.
Straw defended the decision not to endorse Trump, saying an overwhelmingly majority of the group agreed with the decision. A survey conducted by email of the club’s members showed 72 percent of members who answered the survey — roughly 65 percent of the group’s total membership — were not in support of Trump.
At Yale, the dynamic between the Yale College Republicans and Yale New Republicans has yet to play out as students are just arriving on campus. Rasmussen, the co-director of Yale New Republicans, is confident his group will be successful given his assessment that most Yale students disapprove of Trump because of his “hateful and divisive rhetoric.” Still, the inherent competition between the groups for resources and members remains. Rasmussen said the groups have been cordial so far, but he has noticed a condescending undertone in their limited communication.
“Once the semester gets into full swing and we really see which group is pulling more new conservatives, I believe those hostilities will probably flare up more,” he said.
Karl Notturno, a Yale senior who is a registered independent, disagrees with Rasmussen’s assessment of Trump’s support among Yale students. The self-proclaimed most vocal Trump supporter on the New Haven campus, Notturno said many students have approached him about their support for Trump, but they are afraid of publicly endorsing the Republican nominee for fear of the backlash that would follow.
Notturno said he supports Trump because of his business record, his national security proposals including securing the border and his positive vision for the country. “(Trump) has shown throughout the entire process how effective of a politician he is,” he said. “He has dealt with the media almost perfectly and spoken directly to the people.”
The presidents of Yale College Republicans declined an interview request, but offered a clause of their group’s constitution to defend their endorsement of Trump. The constitution says the purpose of the group is “to aid in the election of Republican candidates at all levels of government,” and the presidents said the group always supports Republicans up and down the ballot.
Other chapters, meanwhile, are sticking their heads in the sand. At the University of Colorado Boulder, the College Republicans club decided to stay away from weighing in on the top of the ticket because the group is so divided. Some members support Trump or Johnson, but others, including Justine Sanders, the group’s vice president, are considering voting for Clinton.
“We’ve just decided to focus all of our efforts on down-ballot Republicans and just not touch the top of the ticket,” Sanders said. “We don’t want to alienate members of our club.”
Despite the turmoil in campus chapters, national GOP figures are quick to defend the work of College Republicans. Kristen Soltis Anderson, a Republican pollster and author of “The Selfie Vote: Where Millennials Are Leading America,” has worked with the College Republican National Committee and said Trump has made College Republicans’ task tougher than ever.
“Regardless of what they decide to do about the top of the ticket, even focusing efforts down ballot, the road is hard for College Republicans in this environment, in part because of the brand when people think about what is a Republican, there are a lot of negative stereotypes that I think sometimes Donald Trump reinforces,” she said.
Yet, Republican leaders say the conflicts brewing among College Republicans are no different than what conservative groups are dealing with throughout the country — it may just be more accentuated on college campuses because of Trump’s historic unpopularity with young voters and his lack of engagement with them.
“Look at pro-life organizations who are stuck with a nominee that has been lifetime pro-choice and does not really seem to care about that issue,” Miller, Jeb Bush’s former spokesman, said.
The lack of unity, though, is setting up a bruising fight for the future of the party — one that Miller predicts will follow a Trump loss in November.
“As leaders in Washington we’re going to have to fight for the soul of the party and hopefully we can win out and push for a more welcoming and inclusive party and one that does a better job of engaging the College Republicans,” he said. “The problem here is not with the College Republicans. They are defending their principles and wanting to be engaged by a national Republican Party that’s letting them down right now.”
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