Lincoln Dinner: LaVerde, Pudner Debut Candidate Comparisons
I make over 200 presentations a year on how grassroots turnout can win elections. One of the most memorable presentations I ever made was to Elon Musk’s Silicon Valley peers at the Civic & Gov Tech Showcase on September 13, 2017. At the time, Elon’s $20 billion net worth didn’t even make him one of the 25 wealthiest people in the world. Since then, Elon Musk’s wealth and his interest in door-to-door canvassing have grown exponentially. That is because Elon discovered what you are about to see in this 20 minute presentation I made with Spencer LaVerde on Saturday, February 22nd. This is the most instructional presentation I have given on how to make massive conservative grassroots turnout happen. It is also the first time we have publicly posted this How-To method to turn out voters and win.
If you prefer to read along while watching, the highlights and prepared remarks are below. You may also want to view the Powerpoint presentation. And Wisconsin voters, please sign up to request door-hangers or print PDFs of the Supreme Court guides that Spencer and I discuss.
The Annual Lincoln Day Dinner began auspiciously when Wisconsin Faith and Freedom Coalition State Director Spencer LaVerde and President John Pudner parked next to a tank at the Oxford Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) hall. In their much anticipated presentation on turnout, they also debuted their 2025 Supreme Court candidate comparisons. This handout underscores the stark candidate contrasts and is a key element of the turnout strategy. Last year, they created a similar handout for Wisconsin voters that compared Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. One Congressman credited the handout as driving so much turnout that it was the reason Trump won the state.
The Lincoln Day speech was part of LaVerde’s broader weekend initiative. He delivered these handouts to 15 western Wisconsin counties as well as set up walk lists and delivered door hangers to Field Directors for their door-to-door teams in Green Bay, Waukesha, Milwaukee, and Kenosha.
Please note that the prepared remarks below vary slightly from the actual spoken words at the Annual Lincoln Day Dinner which you can watch in this 20 minute presentation.
Here are key highlights from the presentation.
- Voter Outreach Strategy: The importance of grassroots outreach in rural areas utilizing churches and community gatherings as key hubs for engagement
- Door-to-Door Efforts: Field Director-led efforts to canvass key cities like Green Bay, Waukesha, Kenosha and Milwaukee. The largest effort, in Milwaukee, is run by Alex Cucchiaro, the top Faith and Freedom Coalition canvasser in the country, who PERSONALLY knocked on over 20,000 doors in the closing months of the Presidential.
- Grassroots Spotlight: A massive door-to-door operation gets underway Tuesday in Wausau. Holly Klucarich heads the effort to hit 23,000 doors and duplicate her success for Senator Ron Johnson’s re-election campaign in northern Wisconsin. Bios for Spencer, Holly, Alex and the rest of the team are here.
- 2025 Candidate Comparison: LaVerde and Pudner’s handout is a side-by-side comparison of the two Supreme Court candidates. The stark differences provide voters clear insights into their choices.
- 2024 Success Story: The 2024 handout that compared Trump and Harris was credited with increasing voter turnout among faith-based conservatives. A late September bus tour using these handouts completely changed the dynamics on the ground. Wisconsin was the only battleground state where Catholics and Lutherans far outnumber Evangelical Christians, and Trump won the state with a record 59% of the Catholic vote.
Prepared Remarks at the Annual Lincoln Day Dinner, February 22, 2025
John Pudner:
I was the national guest on Fox News Radio two days ago, telling them I would be here today passing out the very first voter guides we’ve produced for the Supreme Court race. You may remember we did this for the presidential election last year, kicking off with a bus tour, which I’ll talk about later.
This piece you may have seen in the back or on the table is a comparison between the Supreme Court candidates on key issues. The back of it includes the voter ID question, which is an important turnout tool. It will help get people out to the polls, so these are here. We’ll talk more about distribution at the end, but there are stacks in the back—50 in each. If you just want one to look at for talking points, that’s fine. But if you know of a place where you could distribute some, they come in stacks of 50, rubber-banded together.
Photo: Jefferson Davis, who runs the Election Integrity for Wisconsin Ad-Hoc Committee, lined up distribution of 2,200 voter guides before even beginning his speech after Pudner and LaVerde.
The next speaker, Jefferson Davis, needs 2200 pieces of literature, so I gave him an entire box – so can anyone else get out 2,200 – no just kidding, Jefferson will be our high bid today with his incredible network. We kicked this off last year with a bus tour when we first printed a very similar piece comparing Trump and Harris on the issues. We distributed 402,000 of them in two months, which was really effective. I’ll explain why these are so important shortly.
We initially came up with this format for the 2000 presidential election, when Ralph Reed – who is the Chairman of the National Faith and Freedom Coalition while I am President of the Wisconsin Faith and Freedom Coalition, came up with a neat idea when he had me running the faith-based turnout effort for Bush against Gore in 16 states in 2000. Ralph decided to list 10 issue positions but did not reveal which were said by Bush or Gore until the reader picked which position they preferred. When they finished and flipped over the piece, they could add up their check marks and conclude, for example, “I agree with Bush on seven issues and with Gore on three.” This format has worked wonderfully over the years, and I believe it’s the most effective turnout tool.
One reason it’s so effective is that it’s 501(c)(3) compliant, in case there are any IRS agents in the back watching us (laughter in background), so it can be distributed in churches without concerns of violating IRS rules. We don’t tell people who to vote for; the issues speak for themselves. Many pastors are comfortable distributing these because they don’t endorse one candidate or the other. These guides are great for a wide variety of settings, like family restaurants, hardware stores, or churches.
I’m really excited to be handing these out today because I can tell you from having run Supreme Court races in Alabama for years – these are ideally suited for a Supreme Court race. I became very aware of how different judicial races are from Presidential or legislative races. Even in the conservative South, Alabama was known for the “jackpot justice” Supreme Court, where the courts handed out millions of dollars for cases as trivial as the “spilled coffee” cases. We managed to turn that state’s Supreme Court from being liberal to UNANIMOUS conservative over several years. These comparisons work well in judicial races because they focus on issues that can avoid the restrictions judges face in commenting on upcoming cases.
Judges cannot talk about upcoming cases – I wish they would all abide by that.
When we got these out last year, we did a big tour. After picking up the printing, I drove straight through the night from 3 PM to 7 AM the next morning to distribute them all over the state. It was a long haul, but we got them out.
One of the best things I’ve learned as I get older and am too tired to drive all night is the importance of hiring a good team. This weekend it is the much younger Spencer Laverde, our Wisconsin Faith and Freedom State Director, who is driving all over the state, not getting any sleep, to make sure these guides are distributed. Spencer has done an amazing job, on last year’s Presidential comparisons and kicking off this Supreme Court effort – and I’ll have him walk you through the second sheet of this guide.
Spencer LaVerde:
Well, good afternoon.
Good to be here. I’ve been driving all night, and I’m glad John finally got some sleep. I was not so lucky—John asked me to speak this morning around 9 AM, so this is a bit of a surprise.
First, I’ll go over some details. We have 20+ people across the state, from Lake Superior to Kenosha, who will now start distributing our voter guides door-to-door. I immediately hired the very best people we vetted during our last project where we distributed 402,000 pieces of comparison literature, and based on statistics from that effort, we know the faith-based vote definitely turned out last time, which was fantastic.
Yesterday, I delivered 22,000 pieces out to the Driftless area, where it is being delivered to 15 counties to get it to voters. Later today, I’ll be in the Fox Valley region, delivering another 20,000 pieces to our regional field director. We also have literature going to the Northwoods and Waukesha/Milwaukee areas this week. It’s an extensive operation, and I’m excited to get out there myself to knock on doors and help turn out conservative voters like we did in 2024.
John Pudner:
Some of you saw the bus tour last year, and I was hoping today would be a good day to bring it back with the same speakers. But, unfortunately, several of them couldn’t make it. You’ll see on slide three that I had several RSVPs from people who couldn’t attend today. Apparently some of them have new jobs.
I was hoping Kash Patel could come, but apparently he has a new job running the FBI, so he’s unavailable (laughter). After a few days on a bus with him I can assure you Kash Patel is one tough guy and right for the job.
I was hoping Kash Patel could come, but apparently he has a new job running the FBI, so he’s unavailable (laughter). After a few days on a bus with him I can assure you Kash Patel is one tough guy and right for the job.
I tried Lee Zeldin, but turns out he is now running the EPA, and Tulsi Gabbard turned us down too because apparently she had a new job on the Cabinet, so she couldn’t join us either.
Instead of Vivek Ramaswamy coming today, I am going to see him in Cincinnati Monday where he just made it official – he will be announcing for Governor. While the Wisconsin Faith and Freedom Coalition does not endorse candidates, I’m happy to go as an individual to show my personal support for someone for office in another state since our efforts are specific to Wisconsin.
For those of you who saw Vivek with us on the bus tour in late September he did give an interesting tidbit during his speech. He pointed out that his name is pronounced “Vivek,” which rhymes with “cake,” and “Ramaswamy” rhymes with “Ramaswamy.” So, keep that in mind if you ever meet him.
Why did all these important people who are now in the Cabinet believe being on a tour where the events started with me speaking and getting out these comparisons was so important? We were getting these materials out statewide in late September, when Harris was slightly ahead. At that time, 48% of conservative, faith-based voters weren’t planning to vote, which mirrored what happened in 2020. The key wasn’t necessarily persuading more people, but getting conservatives to turn out. This piece is valuable because it makes people focus on the issues, not just the personalities.
In fact, when I was at Mar-a-Lago a week after the election another person from the bus tour, Chad Wolf, and I agreed that we were sticking to our story that the Wisconsin bus tour turned the election. Chad was Trump’s head of Homeland Security and now oversees the same issues for the most influential conservative organization in the country – the America 1st Policy Foundation that included Pam Bondi and Linda McMahon.
As I mentioned, we footnote every position in our handout, so people can verify where candidates stand on each issue. I’ve sent questionnaires to both candidates, and we’ll publish their full responses online. We also invited both candidates to our Pastors’ luncheon Wednesday in Dane County – and I just received an acknowledgement today that Susan Crawford received our invitation.
The key takeaway here is that this tool is powerful in focusing people on the issues and encouraging informed voting.
On the next slide, you can see a picture from the end of the bus tour. One thing I want to clarify: Wisconsin Faith and Freedom Coalition, as a 501(c)(3),does not endorse candidates because we receive tax deductible contributions. However, we can encourage conservative voters to make informed, issue-based decisions, and we want to ensure that everyone understands the difference.
I was elected to the Milwaukee GOP two years ago, but I decided not to run again to focus on this effort instead. We are about informing voters, not about promoting any one candidate, but about advocating for conservative values and ensuring voters know where the candidates stand.
We’ve seen firsthand that even some liberal groups appreciate the issue-based approach. In Georgia, one liberal group ran out of literature and came by the Georgia Faith and Freedom Coalition and asked for some literature because they thought the answers on the left side would resonate with their audience. If someone supports men in women’s sports, and believes there are more than two genders, and doesn’t believe in Voter ID, our comparison will make it clear which candidate is closer to their position.
In my old political consulting days I likely would have wanted candidates I was trying to defeat to support things like men in women’s sports or the billion dollar sex change industry because it would make them easier to defeat. The difference is that as a conservative non-profit, we would prefer that in a couple of years BOTH parties reject these kinds of positions and the damage they can do to children using hypocritical terms like “gender affirming care.”
Now, let’s walk through the issues on the piece we are releasing today. There are five key issues we focus on. We only include what we can document. First: Voter ID. Brad Schimel is for it, Susan Crawford is against it. Second: Should voters be allowed to vote to stop late-term abortions? We haven’t received an answer from Crawford, but Schimel is in favor. Third: Public Union lobbying, especially using tax money to lobby for more tax money—Crawford has worked for this, Schimel is against it. Fourth: Immigration enforcement—Crawford didn’t respond to our question, Schimel favors enforcement. Fifth: The issue of gender. Crawford didn’t answer but was recently supposed to attend an event where 17 genders were listed as options, but she didn’t show up.
That might be progress – we’d like to point out to Democrats that even in a country where almost half are against anything President Trump says, the one breakthrough on his early actions was 63 percent of Americans supporting his executive order declaring the US recognizes only two genders. We would love to have a future election where neither side promotes the billion dollar sex change industry that pushes the multiple gender theories.
I encourage you to go through these issues with people and share the facts. We depend on your help to get these guides out. We distributed 402,000 last year, and we couldn’t have done it without your help.
We need you leading this activity here and in other rural counties. These activities are not as important in Wausau, where Holly Klucarich will make sure teams hit the doors of many of our 23,000 targeted homes. Holly ran the Northern part of the state in Senator Ron Johnson’s re-election campaign. (bios for Spencer, Holly, Alex and the rest of the team are here).
Holly does what I did for years when I would show up with my nine children to knock on doors and suddenly the candidate had a team of 10 canvassers from one family. However, Holly is a much better parent than me because her children are now in their 20s and still canvassing, whereas my children still hate me for telling them we were going on vacation and then stopping for two days to knock on doors.
If you plan to take a stack of guides (not just a couple), please let us know how many you’re taking. There’s a signup sheet to sign by the stacks in the back, or you can fill in your information on the last page of the Powerpoint handout.
Once again, thank you so much for your help in this critical effort. You’re the first to receive these guides, and your work will help ensure that voters are informed.
Does anyone have any questions?
Chairman Tom Wastart:
I guess you must have explained it very well!
John Pudner:
It looks like they’ve all been waiting for me to sit down, so Jefferson will speak next. Thank you all!
Click here to request literature or download the pdf.
