Burned by the Lincoln Project, exiled by the GOP. What’s next for this California Republican?

In November 2019, California GOP strategist Mike Madrid got the national opportunity he’d waited two decades to put on his résumé when he joined a group of anti-Trump Republicans known as the Lincoln Project.

A year later, Madrid would leave the political action committee amid harassment claims against another co-founder and infighting over finances.

The veteran Latino voting trends expert is now in the political wilderness, cast out by Trump-supporting California Republicans and shunned by the state party for his public castigation of the former president.

Madrid, 49, has no regrets. He was also well-paid from the Lincoln Project’s epic fundraising, meaning he has time to reflect on the last year.

Speaking to a Sacramento Bee reporter via a Zoom call from his second home in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, with a stone wall and stained glass windows as his background, Madrid said he’s still figuring out his next move.

He has no plans, however, to leave the national stage.

Despite the fractious outcome, Madrid said his time leading data strategy for the Lincoln Project during one of the most “consequential” campaigns in American history was the most “extraordinary” year of his life.

“Emotionally, it was every fulfilling,” he said. “There was this realization that everything that happened in my life, especially in the last few years, was happening for a reason.”

Data for the Lincoln Project

The Lincoln Project went viral with its ruthless anti-Trump ads.

The videos were crafted to antagonize Trump, who would respond on Twitter and inadvertently send donors to the Lincoln Project’s website. This strategy, dubbed “the audience of one,” was the most visible in a multi-pronged campaign.

Madrid’s 10-person data team worked behind the scenes to make the ads successful.

His primary goal was to peel off 4% of former Trump voters in key swing states and put them in Joe Biden’s column.

To do that, he targeted white, college-educated voters mostly in the South who had grown disgruntled with Trump’s handling of certain cultural issues, like George Floyd’s murder and far-right extremism.

The Lincoln Project aimed social media ads at those voters. Then Madrid’s department analyzed a series of metrics, reviewing the number of likes, shares and time spent watching the videos to determine which messages resonated.

It was a “pivotal strategy,” he said, that was particularly effective in Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin.

Leveraging federal and county coronavirus data, Madrid’s team also crafted a plan they called “buying into the spike,” which meant running ads in regions where COVID-19 numbers were high.

When cases would start to rise, Madrid knew hospitalizations and deaths would soon follow. During that weeks-long time span, the Lincoln Project moved in with ads targeting older voters – the Republican base and those most vulnerable to the virus – that blamed the numbers on Trump’s failed pandemic leadership.

The Lincoln Project declined to comment on Madrid’s role, but fellow co-founder Jennifer Horn said Madrid’s team was instrumental in making sure the ads reached the right people.

“That was all the data model, all what Mike and his team created,” said Horn, who is also the former chair of the New Hampshire Republican Party. “And it turned out to be extremely effective.”

The Lincoln Project – and Madrid – still have their critics. Many questioned whether the flashy ads were as effective as the group claimed, especially because they failed to oust other GOP targets like Senators Susan Collins of Maine, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and then-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

Stacey Abrams’ grassroots organizing in Georgia, for example, is often credited for helping the Democrats take back the Senate and sending Biden to the White House.

“Mocking Trump doesn’t make voters who voted for him in 2016 not vote for him in 2020,” said California GOP consultant and Lincoln Project critic Rob Stutzman. “There were other efforts out there that were much more effective.”

Madrid rejects this analysis.

“If Stacey Abrams did what she did — which was remarkable and commendable and never had been done before — but there wasn’t a Lincoln Project? Trump would have won Georgia,” he said. “Conversely, if the Lincoln Project did what it did and Stacey Abrams didn’t do what she did, Donald Trump would have won Georgia. Both had to happen.”

George Conway, another Lincoln Project co-founder, said Madrid always knew the ads weren’t enough to avoid a close race.

“He was saying Biden was going to win, but it wasn’t going to be a blowout,” Conway said. “And some states were going to be close and it would take a few days after Nov. 3 to see the votes counted. He was dead on more than anyone else I talked to.”

‘It became another animal’

Madrid initially imagined the Lincoln Project as a $10 million political action committee at best, with the co-founders operating in one or two states to help move the needle.

“Once the ads started rolling and social media started responding, the president started responding,” he added,

“it became another animal.”

According to Federal Election Commission reports, donations to the Lincoln Project swelled to a jaw-dropping $87 million by the end of 2020. The group started with eight co-founders, but would go on to hire dozens more employees.

Everything changed after the election.

Citing confidentiality agreements, Madrid declined to discuss details of why he left the Lincoln Project in December 2020 and what fractured the network of Republicans in the weeks following Biden’s victory.

But according to a March New York Times article, Madrid departed the group after a bitter month-long standoff over the group’s finances and how to handle recent sexual misconduct accusations against co-founder John Weaver. Madrid had not been made aware of the allegations against Weaver as early as other executives, according to a February report from The 19th.

The internal feud ended with a settlement, according to the Times, and Madrid parted ways with the Lincoln Project under a non-disclosure agreement.

By the time he left, according to federal financial records, Madrid’s firm was paid more than $2 million.

After the 2020 election

Four months after leaving the Lincoln Project, Madrid took a trip to Mexico to clear his head.

After working on a massive presidential campaign, much of it with the other co-founders in Park City, Utah, he didn’t want to be in Sacramento.

A Ventura County native and Georgetown graduate, he’d long ago traded his dream of working on a presidential campaign in Washington, D.C. for a career in Golden State politics.

He married in 1998, divorced 10 years later and had three kids in between. He co-founded his firm, GrassrootsLab, in 2008, and has spent the last 13 years working with his partner on local government races and statewide ballot initiatives.

“In many ways,” Madrid said, “the Lincoln Project was the shot I never got as a younger person.”

His tenure with the group cost him political friends and good standing with the state party, where he once served as political director.

Madrid doesn’t pay dues anyway, he said, and never attends party meetings.

For now, he is back in the state capital. With more time on his hands, he’s finishing a 20-foot wall painting of Michelangelo’s Last Judgment in his Midtown Victorian.

“It was a political ad,” Madrid said. “At a time when people were illiterate and couldn’t read and there were no movies, paintings were what the church used to show what right and wrong was, where you want to be on Judgment Day.”

Madrid is still a Republican, but doesn’t have “much of an appetite for partisan politics,” meaning he’ll support and work for any candidate “doing the right thing.”

He wants to work on national issues, though, like immigration and expanding access to the ballot box. He also wants to work abroad on strengthening democracy in less stable countries.

He’ll always consider himself a proud co-founder of the Lincoln Project.

“What side would you be on when things get difficult in history?” Madrid said. “I have the great blessing of knowing what I would do.

“Would I risk my business, would I risk my safety, threats to my family, (be) ostracized by a party that I built for 30 years to do the right thing for my country? I answered that question. The answer is yes, I did stand up.”

Former McClatchy reporter Kate Irby contributed to this report.