After Election Day exit polling suggested Trump made huge gains with minorities and with suburban women, a post-election New York Times story described how the now-famous “they/them” attack ads won over moderate voters who cast a ballot for Trump.
That post-election analysis was no surprise to Terry Schilling, president of the American Principles Project. He told Fox News his organization had the polling and voter data that showed the transgender issue was a winning one for Republicans, but nobody would listen.
“We spent over seven figures on polling and focus groups and message testing,” Schilling told Fox. “And we've been passing it out, beating our heads against the wall with candidates up and down the ballot.”
Then came a sit-down meeting with Trump himself.
In an interview with AFN, Schilling recalls he was given a 15-minute meeting with Trump. He used that time to first describe an APP research project that concluded the trans issue had become a money-making industry that is generating billions of dollars.
“But the other thing I gave him was the vote impact report,” Schilling recalls, “from our 2022 involvement running ads on women's sports and transgender procedures for minors."
That report, which analyzed the 2022 midterms, argued the failed “red wave” two years ago was caused by Republicans who ran from the culture war, in particular the transgender issue.
Trump listened, ad campaign began
How did Trump respond? He listened, and Schilling says he was “blown away” by how quickly Trump grasped the issue for his campaign and for the families being harmed.
In July, Schilling’s organization launched an $18 million ad campaign – the now-famous TV ads – that targeted Harris and her radical defense of prisoners undergoing sex-change surgeries at the expense of taxpayers.
And the ad campaign worked. Back in the New York Times story, it said former president Bill Clinton warned the Harris campaign the ads were swaying swing voters. The savvy politician was told, however, they weren’t making an impact.
A related AFN story, published Monday, reported how a homosexual rights group said it conducted its own polling that concluded the ads were not reaching voters. That polling was no doubt shared with Harris campaign staffers to lobby them to ignore the ad campaign that would ultimately help Trump win.
Stop indoctrinating the kids
Democrats and the Far Left insist the public should embrace the trans issue in the name of being inclusive, Schilling says, but he counters that inclusive doesn’t mean indoctrinating innocent elementary-school children who go home confused about their gender.
AFN readers are aware of that ongoing issue, such as Pastor John Amanchukwu confronting school boards and California parents suing to demand a notification policy.
"School should be a place of learning," said Schilling. "It should not be about indoctrinating and kids who are failing when it comes to reading and writing and arithmetic."
On the related issue of women’s sports, approximately half the U.S. states sued the U.S. Department of Education this year to block it from implementing a radical reimagining of Title IX, the 1970s law.
That non-discrimination law was passed to give women equal opportunities in high school and women's sports, but the trans-supporting Biden administration turned it on its head and found it also protects transgender women - meaning men - as well.
In states that did not sue to stop it, that new policy went into effect with the new school year - and right before Election Day.
"Everything that we've seen from the Left is they start very small,” Schilling observes. “It seems like it's not threatening, but then it grows into something bigger and bigger and bigger and worse for the country.”
