Recently I had the pleasure of speaking with lobbyist, political consultant, and founder of The Da Vinci Group, Mark Smith, Mr. Smith has over twenty years of experience in government relations and in the private sector. He has extensive experience in telecommunications, information technology, law enforcement, intellectual property, health care, and privatization issues. Mr. Smith also specializes in areas of congressional relations, appropriations, and policy development.
I hope you enjoy listening in to the conversation!
Byron:
So let’s get started with a question I had about the reporting I am hearing that the Democrats did not win any state legislators across the country during this election. Is this correct?
Mark:
That is correct. So, in that regard, Republicans held all their state legislative bodies and they picked up Alaska and New Hampshire. They are all Republican with Republican governors. And then the statehouse speaker in Rhode Island flipped to Republican that has not happened in a hundred years in the ocean state and the same also in the state of Vermont and New England. So certain pockets of New England have a definitive red hue to them.
Byron:
That is incredible. Because when I was watching the election night coverage and over the course of the last week and such, I felt like this election felt so weird and so strange because it was the GOP holding the Senate and Trump gaining 10 million votes, which is probably going to be closer to 15, once it’s all over. So, the Dems not taking any legislative bodies and with the GOP`s gains in the house, it does not feel balanced and Biden is the only standout basically. Otherwise, this seems like a decent win for the GOP across the country.
Mark:
I do not want to leave out one of my favorite legislative bodies on the planet, which is the House of Representatives right now with Michelle Steele and the pickup of California district 48 which is my hometown of Laguna Beach, California. It consists of Laguna, Dana Point, Newport Beach, and Huntington Beach that are on the coast in Orange County, California. That brings us up to eight pickups and we are looking at potentially 11 to 12 pickups in addition to only losing one house seat, which would be Rob Whitman’s open Republican seat in Georgia.
So, Mrs. Pelosi will have a much narrower majority. Republicans are projected to pick up between 210 total or be at 210 to 212, which would leave somewhere between a four and a six-seat majority on the Democrat side. This would require that they adjust their legislative agenda to be more center, right, to pass through a Senate and potentially back through a second Trump administration or if vice-president Biden were to prevail, he would have to be much more centrist and moderate in his approach.
And you have seen a number of Democrat members of the house, in particular, come out immediately and say that they can no longer campaign on defunding the police, no longer campaign on socialism. And that is in Virginia, those are members from Virginia, South Carolina, Louisiana, and New York state, as well, they really got hammered. When you look at the exit polls, boy, I’ll tell you those exit polls are a resounding victory, not only for the strategy of the President’s campaign but also the issues that he ran on and the contrasts relative to what the Biden campaign either ran on or avoided trying to talk about.
Byron:
That is very true. I was chatting with a friend before the election and she said it was funny because she said, Oh, I can’t really exactly say what Biden stands for because I don’t remember him ever talking about it. And I thought you know that’s one way to run a strategy, I guess.
Mark:
Well, Naomi Wolf, who was an advisor to Al Gore for many years, and board Democrat for many years said that if she knew that Biden was going to come out in the campaign on a couple of items that she didn’t care about, she would never have voted for him. So, there is some buyer’s remorse out there. There is an interesting Rasmussen poll that came out this morning talking about the fact that only 56% of the people that voted for Biden actually voted for him. The other 44% voted against the president
Byron:
That is not good, going back briefly to Speaker Pelosi with the shellacking so to say that they got in the house.
Mark:
Well, you know what as I refer to it Byron, I refer to it as the red wave that produced a blue dot.
Byron:
Do you think that Pelosi is going to be able to hang on to her position as speaker? Or do you think that they are going to try and put someone else in there?
Mark:
Well, Senate Democrats just got behind Chuck Schumer to give him another shot as minority leader. As for Mrs. Pelosi, that is up in the air right now. If I were betting someone else’s money I would bet that she gets another shot at it at this point in time, but there are definitive deep fractures in the Democrat caucus that they are going to have to mend. Also, you have to look at the number of votes that the President was able to elicit as well, growing from 2016. So, I believe he was at 64 million, I think Mrs. Clinton had 66 million.
Byron:
I believe you are correct.
Mark:
And he is in the 71 million range now so that is a large number of voters that were brought out to vote, to reelect the president. And you’re going to have to spend a heck of a lot of time in the middle of America fanning outward in all directions, convincing people that you should be reelected or that in the midterms in 22, when there also happens to be 36 governor’s races up that year and between, I think somewhere between EIGHT and 11 open seats all combined on both sides. A Biden agenda is not a threat to the livelihood of these men and women in their jobs and the country at large. I think we have a very good chance on the GOP side of actually picking up the house in 2022.
Byron:
I definitely agree, because especially with the narrow margin that was pushed this time. Having anywhere from six to 10 seats only to pick up is not an impossible task by any means. I remember when I was watching the election, and I was seeing that Trump was looking really good in the earlier hours with a lot of those States, do you think that some of the mail-in voting made some things a little uneven with how the votes came in with the States? Because there was Pennsylvania for example. Trump was ahead by 18 points or something like that. And then it just drained down very quickly. And so, I was wondering what your opinion was on that.
Mark:
Well, I think that the mail-in voting did help the Democrats at the beginning of the process relative to when our early voting started, and then you have absentees and you have provisional and you have the day of voting. So, when you look at those four individual buckets, the Democrats place most of their chips on those early voting opportunities. What that, unfortunately, did in terms of the alleged illegal activity is they were able to slow the count with the help of the network, and then there was a coordinated effort when they needed to come up with 50 or a hundred thousand extra ballots, they magically came out of nowhere.
This is allegedly according to the President’s legal team. There’s going to be some serious problems because whether it is Justice Alito talking about ordering the state to segregate these ballots that came in after eight o’clock, or the backdating that we saw or the video we have of individuals in subsequent affidavit’s in different States that were simply creating ballot entries.
I mean I will put it to you this way. I have never seen or heard of anyone voting just for the presidency and nothing down-ballot all the way to the initiatives or referendum or the bonding questions at the bottom of the ballot at the local level. And so, you have a large number of that occurring in multiple States, notwithstanding dead people, notwithstanding people that don’t live in the state anymore, or those that voted twice, or those who don’t actually exist. And so, to get a legal count and then count every illegal vote is absolutely critical because it will continue to support our democracy and our voting systems so that people can have faith in it.
Byron:
Exactly. Because even if Biden does win it is important to have transparency because there is nothing more damaging than to possibly have 70 million people who don’t believe that the election was all on the up and up. I mean, that is terrible.
Mark:
If he wins it is fair and square, so be it. If the President wins it is fair square. Fantastic. You know, and the people feel very confident. Colleagues of mine that are senior members of that legal team; they know what they are doing, and they know how to look for what they need to look for to point out an infraction and illegal activity. Also, you have different individuals who have signed affidavits, and legal documents saying that they saw this occur.
And as the justice department stated on Monday they are going to allow their teams to go and investigate these men and women who, whether they’re postal workers, or whether they’re ballot workers, to be interviewed and if they lie to a federal official that’s five years in prison.
Byron:
Andrew Yang said in an interview that he felt that the democratic party was becoming the party of the coastal elites. I wanted to ask you what your opinion was on that, what you thought.
Mark:
Well, my view on the Democrat party today is, it is a contrast issue. The GOP by expanding the base of voters significantly has become the party of the blue-collar worker as well as the middle-class where the Democrats have become the party of big tech, big media, wall street, and billionaire donors on both coasts, gee, what a shocker. Right. Also, how are you going to go to Iowa? How are you going to go to Kansas? How are you going to go to, uh, Texas, you know, and turn that around and get voters to vote all the way down-ballot, not just the top of the ticket. When you, in fact, are on videotape saying you are for fracking and free college and Medicare for all, and amnesty and things of that nature, or defunding the police or abolishing ice.
Byron:
So, what do you think of, I want to say because I know timeframes are liquid, but with the litigation and everything going on with the election, do you think it’s going to continue past a certain point, or do you think it’s going to be wrapped up within a certain amount of time?
Mark:
I think that this effort to litigate the existing outcome and the activities around the outcome of the election will at a minimum, continue to move forward for at least another three weeks, possibly four weeks. So today is the 10th of November and the electors are not set to convene until December 14. So in this four week period, the legal team for the Trump campaign is going to have to get all of their data, evidence, affidavits, et cetera, together, all in the next week two weeks, submit it and let the courts review it.
Byron:
Going into my last question here, we covered a little bit of it before in the beginning. With these run-off elections in Georgia for the two Senate seats and such, do you personally feel that if they continue and if the recounts don’t change anything, do you think that they’re going to end up being similar to what they are now, or do you think there could be any, any dramatic plot twists so to speak with them?
Mark:
I think that in both Senate runoffs, presuming that they both still continue forward, if there isn’t a change in Georgia’s tabulation after the ballots are hand-counted you will see again, let’s go back to the 56% voted for Biden 44 against Trump, right? So, a number of those people that voted against Trump, if he is not going to be there, they are not going to be motivated to show up in the numbers that they did before. You know, Metro Atlanta is going to see a 20, 25% drop, the suburbs, rural areas, and of course, of Georgia.
That may be sprinkled blue, uh, like a Robin’s egg, are also going to be affected that way, but you will also see a president out there quite visible. And you saw Senator Schumer without his mask. And then he quickly popped his mask on over the weekend, saying first it is Georgia, then the next is we change the world. Well, that is a Republican commercial right there. Our folks on the Republican side are going to be highly motivated to turn out. I think that’s ultimately what’s going to happen and help both senators Leffler and Purdue prevail with a 52, 48 Senate with Mitch McConnell remaining as majority leader in the hundred and 17th Congress next year.
Bryon:
Yes, that would be very awesome. I definitely hope that turns out and I think with what you were saying, I think that’s going to be accurate. I really appreciate your time and your insight into the election. It is very interesting. I hope we get to chat again because I think there is definitely going to be more to chat about in the next coming months.
Mark:
And it is my pleasure, anytime. I am certainly available.
Check out the full audio interview here!
