Republican Strategist Says GOP Needs to Attract Young Urban Voters

Steve Adubato goes one-on-one with Evan Siegfried, Republican Strategist and Author of “GOP GPS: How to Find the Millennials and Urban Voters the Republican Party Needs to Survive,” to discuss the challenges facing the GOP under President Trump come 2020.

3/28/18 #2123

Excerpt:

"Hi, I'm Steve Adubato. This is the Tisch WNET Studio here in Lincoln Center, New York City. It is our pleasure to welcome Evan Siegfried, who is a Republican strategist and the author of a compelling new book, it is called GOP GPS: How to Find the Millennials and Urban Voters the Republican Party Needs to Survive. How you doing? I'm great, how about you? Good, we met each other in a different network in a different time over at MSNBC, and we were doing a show and I thought, "This guy is innovative, he sees things differently than some other folks in his party," or any party, but I kept asking myself, "What does he think the Republican Party needs to do to attract younger voters and minority voters in urban areas?" Well I think the Republican Party hasn't figured out that it has a demographic crisis, at least the leadership hasn't. We have relied on rural voters and Baby Boomers to sustain us as a party for decades, and now those populations are shrinking because of natural attrition. At the same time, Millennials, my generation, which is the largest generation in the United States and the largest sector of the workforce, we are now outnumbering Baby Boomers, and only one in five identify with the Republican Party, and that's a historic low. And everybody says, "Well they'll just get more conservative and vote Republican as they get older," but that is not happening. We're seeing older Millennials still say, "I don't want to be a part of this, we don't like what the Republican Party stands for." But why are you? Why am I? Yeah. Because I believe in the values of freedom and individual liberty and fiscal conservatism, and when there were certain wings of the party who you could absolutely say are pushing racist policies or racist statements, I don't want to walk away from the party and surrender it to them if they want it, they're gonna have to fight it from me. Is Donald Trump, President Trump, is he part of the, quote, "Republican Party" that you just described? No he's not, Donald Trump is not healthy for the Republican Party, but this problem really began long before Trump. We were seen as the party of the crusty old white guy who only favored the rich and didn't care about minorities or women. We have this accusation against us that we have a war on women. We don't. If we did, it would certainly be an incompetent war, because look at how we've been able to legislate with both chambers of Congress and with the Executive. We can't do anything, but..."