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CNN Live Event/Special

Francisco Aguilar, (D), Nevada Secretary of State, Discusses The Presidential Race; Bryan Lanza, Senior Adviser To The Trump Campaign, Discusses the Presidential Race, Early Republican Voter Turnout; CNN Covers Election Day In America. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired November 05, 2024 - 13:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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[13:32:28]

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: Election Day in America. Millions of voters going to the polls. An army of election officials working overtime.

CNN's Stephanie Elam is in Las Vegas with one of them, Nevada's secretary of state, Francisco Aguilar.

Give us a sense of what's going on.

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Wolf, I am here with the secretary of state.

And, Secretary, how is it going? I know this is one of your brainchilds, having people vote inside of Allegiant Stadium. How is it going so far?

FRANCISCO AGUILAR, (D), NEVADA SECRETARY OF STATE: It's going well. We're very excited about it. We're excited to have people voting. This is our third poll location we've visited throughout the morning. And people are enthusiastic. And that's what we want to see.

We know Nevada is a battleground state. We know we will determine who the next president of the United States is, and it's great to see Nevadans take on that responsibility.

ELAM: How is Election Day going so far in Nevada?

AGUILAR: It's going well. There's a consistent line at most polling locations. We want to see that. We believe we're up to speed on mail ballots so we can get election results out tonight to Nevadans.

ELAM: All right, and here in Nevada, people have to be in line by 7:00. The polls close at 7:00, but that's not really the end, right?

AGUILAR: That is correct. Everybody who is in line at 7:00 p.m. tonight will have an opportunity to vote.

ELAM: OK, so they have to be in line. And what happens after that? Does someone stand in line? How do you make sure that nobody else get in line? AGUILAR: There's usually a poll worker at the end of the line to thank

those people who show up after 7:00 but allows everybody else who's in line. If it takes two hours, three hours, we will wait until every person has an opportunity to vote.

ELAM: Obviously, as you we're saying, this is a battleground state. You have these six electoral votes that are up for grabs here. Nevada traditionally takes a longer time to get it's votes tabulated. What is it looking like this time?

AGUILAR: Well, I can tell you, ever since I became secretary, we looked at Nevada law and we said, what are our opportunities to increase efficiency? How do we bring transparency into the process?

The amount of time we can decrease from waiting for results is less time we have to deal with dis- and misinformation.

ELAM: So how does curing the ballots, making sure the signatures matchup, who's voting, and what they previously sent in, that processed? It seems like a long one here.

AGUILAR: You know, it is. And we're experiencing a little bit of an issue with it now, because of the fact that we're seeing high engagement, high turnout amongst our youth.

I think our youth need to understand the points of a signature. And this is an opportunity, probably the first time they've really had to use an official signature.

And what's on their driver's license, what's on their voter registration form, and what's on their ballot is a little bit different, so we're trying to work Clark County and Washington County to drive up the curing process.

ELAM: All right, well, that's something for people to keep in mind. Obviously, you'll be out here.

Wolf, this is what's happening here in Nevada, as the Election Day is still just in the early start of the day out here, out west.

[13:35:00]

BLITZER: All right, Stephanie Elam, thanks very much for that update.

And thanks the secretary of state as well.

I want to turn to Bryan Lanza, who is a senior adviser to the Trump campaign.

Bryan, thanks so much for joining us.

What are you hearing, first of all, about the turnout from inside the campaign?

BRYAN LANZA, SENIOR ADVISER, TRUMP PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN: First of all, Wolf, thank you for having me. Listen, we don't have data from a lot of places, but we have a lot of

anecdotal evidence and we have voters. And what we do have is we have a lot of data from the early vote.

And we're very impressed and we're very satisfied with the early vote data that's come in. We're very confident that that trend is going to continue.

But what we've seen on Election Day is we've seen a lot of photos of a lot of lines, a lot of anecdotal evidence. And we encourage everyone to stay in line and to vote and to vote -- and bring your friends to vote. Because today is a critical day.

BLITZER: You know, Bryan, we're told that the Trump campaign's ground- game operation was largely outsourced to outside political organizations. What is your level of confidence in the ability of an outside group to deliver the turnout you need to win?

LANZA: We have supreme confidence. You know, it's important to remember that Donald Trump is a businessman, so he knows how to make things better and he knows how to make things efficient.

So he looked at this and saw how inefficient they are in running their get-out-the vote program and decided to instill efficiency and decided to instill priorities. And that's what you see.

And we can point to our early vote totals, where we -- let's look in Nevada. We just saw that being covered recently. For the first time in history, Republicans lead the early vote in Nevada. That's never happened since the early vote started in Nevada.

Let's look at Arizona, where we had a tremendous early vote lead in Maricopa County. We have a 22-point edge in Maricopa County, Republicans, with respect to their early vote.

Let's go to Pennsylvania. Republicans have made up a 20-vote gap on early vote against the Democrats from four years ago.

So when you look at the data, you know, we have confidence that the organization is winning, that the outsourcing was the right decision.

But they have to execute until 7:00 and we have to make sure those people that stay in line. Stay in line. That's the most critical thing. We just need to make sure everybody who votes, who has a plan to vote, stays in line and actually votes.

BLITZER: We'll see if that happens.

What's the mood like over at Trump team headquarters in Palm Beach, Florida?

LANZA: Listen, Wolf, I learned, in politics, there's only two ways to run a campaign. You're either running hard or you're running scared. We made the decision to run hard.

So the mood is that everyone is laser focused on doing what they need to do today to execute, execute and execute.

So President Trump was at the headquarters a couple of minutes ago. He brought a lot of energy to the place. You know, you saw energy along the streets. So there's positive energy going everywhere.

But we know our role today. Today, our job is to execute, execute, execute for the president. And make sure that people turn out and vote. And those that turn out and vote stay in line and actually cast their vote.

BLITZER: Do you have a sense, Bryan, of how the former president is feeling about their prospects as we await for the results to begin coming in later today?

LANZA: Yes, I mean, the president left it all on the table. You saw last week where he was crisscrossing the country doing rallies.

The only thing President Trump knows how to do is maximum effort going forward every time. And you know, that's how he is, that's how he was this morning, that's how he was the first time I met him in 2016 when he decided to run or in 2015.

So he feels good that he's left everything on the field. He obviously feels he can do more. But that's President Trump. He feels he can do more than the average person.

So that's more reason we need him as president. Because this is a man focused solely on one thing, and that's working for the American people.

BLITZER: Bryan Lanza, thanks very much for joining us.

LANZA: Thank you, Wolf.

BLITZER: All right, Erin, over to you.

ERIN BURNETT, CNN HOST: All right, Wolf, thank you.

So hearing Bryan Lanza, Governor Pawlenty, obviously, you have had -- feeling anecdotally perhaps a bit of concern for Republicans.

What do you hear when you hear Bryan Lanza? I was curious, when Wolf asked the question, how are you feeling about today? He said, we don't have data yet, but let me talk about the early vote.

What did you hear in that?

TIM PAWLENTY, (R), FORMER MINNESOTA GOVERNOR: Well, I think, first of all, all of these campaigns are all going to say it's going great, it's going our way. But eventually, over the course of the day, we get some numbers. And there's things you can rely on.

And I think the relative differential between women voting and men voting is something to keep an eye on, as CNN reported earlier.

BURNETT: Yes. PAWLENTY: But the other thing that's going to be really crucial tonight is this. Did the pollsters and all of these models get or not get the stealth Trump vote correct?

And all of these turnout models sort of presume it helps Democrats in certain areas, maybe Republicans in certain areas. But I still think it is very difficult to measure and predict the so-called stealth under-polling Trump vote.

BURNETT: You've worked on campaigns, obviously.

Many of you have been in campaigns ahead of Election Day.

But when you're on Election Day, you're kind of talking about a deluge of data that you're getting all day.

ASHLEY ALLISON, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Absolutely. You have someone from a field organizer, who has been recruiting volunteers in every neighborhood, all the way up to the campaign manager sitting in a boiler room.

And the information is going down from the top -- bottom to the top -- or down from the bottom and from the bottom up. And you're getting, how many people online when the polls open?

How many people are processing at a time? How many doors have you knocked? How many did you convert? How many volunteers are showing up?

[13:40:04]

Data is the one thing you have a surplus of. And you have a data team sitting in your headquarters, running through the role, all the time. OK, we banked this many voters, we banked this, we banked that.

We're going to move resources. We're going to shut down this staging location where canvases are coming, because we feel good about this and converted our voter. We're going to move them across town.

If you have an operation, that's what's happening today and you're getting data.

BURNETT: Of course, a lot of the on-the-ground operations for the Trump campaign, Matt, have come from super PACs, Elon Musk and others. But what do you hear? Because he is getting data. He chose not to discuss it here.

PHIL MOWERS, FORMER TRUMP ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: In some cases, it does present a challenge. Right? Even though the Federal Election Committees and outside groups can coordinate on field operations this year, I think there's still a lot of concerns about what type of information they can share and when.

So I think that's actually one of the challenges you have. You have a lot of groups with big investments in field operations right now that are actually doing a lot of the turnout work. Now, the challenge is, if it's a local Republican Party volunteer,

who's sitting there checking off voters as they come in, so you know who's coming and who's not, how quickly is that information getting to a place where it's operational for an outside organization?

So this is going to be the test case about whether you can actually rely --

(CROSSTALK)

MOWERS: -- on other groups to do it.

And we have seen some aspects of this in the past. The Democrats relied in 2004 on groups like MoveOn.org and others to do a lot of the ground operation. Well see if the Trump campaign can have more success with this.

BURNETT: Right. And whether that coordination is an issue.

Can I ask you, Congressman, about something else that was just said right before Bryan came on. The secretary of state of Nevada was on with Stephanie Elam.

And he was talking about high engagement in youth vote. Maybe people read about something about it and maybe that's good for Harris. We'll see.

But that that's what they we're seeing. And that basically, those young people, matching signatures is an issue.

ADAM KINZINGER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, yes.

BURNETT: Look, with nobody wants to be on a hanging chad in Nevada. I mean, we're all sitting here sort of listening to that going, oh, whoa, whoa, what did he just say there?

KINZINGER: Yes, I mean, look -- I mean we we're talking earlier, if this comes down to Nevada, you can see this being a hanging chad situation.

Look, I'm actually a supporter of Voter I.D., because I think it's so easy. I voted for it in Texas. With Voter I.D., literally, you are handing your I.D., you get your ballot.

BURNETT: Just like going to Costco?

KINZINGER: Yes, just like going to Costco.

And so, that aside, it does present the problem that, if it comes down to Nevada, you'll have every one of those ballots challenged, the signature doesn't match.

By the way, my signature does not match what my signature was five years ago.

BURNETT: Yes. KINZINGER: Because you just evolve over time.

But the interesting thing with the young people, specifically, is, I think there's a gender difference in the young people.

BURNETT: Right.

KINZINGER: Certainly, men under 25 are going Trump. Women under 25 aren't. We're in the middle of this political realignment. And I think the polls aren't capturing it.

BURNETT: You know what's funny, when I went to vote, they were showing me the signatures, but before they showed me my old one, I had to sign. And I said, you're matching this signature from so long ago that I don't remember.

So I stopped and went really slow and careful.

(LAUGHTER)

BURNETT: And I was surprised by how close it was. You know, it's the slash doesn't work, and that's the world we live in.

But, Bakari, what did you hear from Bryan Lanza?

BAKARI SELLERS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I love Bryan. I think that he fed us a bunch of, it's too early to call it what it is. But it's 1:42 p.m. If your campaign doesn't have any data at 1:42 p.m., when polls have been open since 7:00, then what are you running?

I think that the biggest faux pas -- because I've been somebody who's come on this air and just heaped praise on Chris (INAUDIBLE) and Susie Wiles (ph) and Jason Miller for the campaign they ran with the candidate that they have.

And the biggest mistake they made was outsourcing this to Charlie Kirk and Elon Musk. And you're seeing that.

I mean, we know what's happening in University City right now in Pennsylvania. We know those young people are paying attention and turning out in high numbers.

I can tell you what's happening in Clark County right now. And I'm not even in their headquarters. I can tell you where black voters need to show up more, in Durham, for example, in the Raleigh, here in Greensboro, in Winston-Salem. We can tell you these things because of data.

I believe what they're seeing right now is a turnout problem in a lot of these areas. But what we also have to realize is that voters -- this thing is not over. When you have -- and we're still away from peak voting hours.

BURNETT: Right.

SELLERS: People work. People vote after work, particularly black folk. I mean, they are showing up at 5:00 to wait in line for two or three hours.

(CROSSTALK)

BURNETT: Ashley?

ALLISON: One thing, the gender gap thing. I think one thing that they might be seeing -- we saw it a little bit, what David Chalian said on the early vote. But I think if you're seeing more women show up right now and you're Trump --

(CROSSTALK)

BURNETT: And we are seeing that. But of course, in the youth vote, interesting, that is not one --

ALLISON: Yes.

BURNETT: -- one thing.

[13:44:36]

All right, next, what Democrat running mate, Tim Walz, of course, of Kamala Harris V.P. pick, just had to stay at a stop in Pennsylvania as Election Day in America rolls on.

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BLITZER: Campaigning did to the end when Election Day began. Just a few moments ago, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Vice President Harris' running mate, Tim Walz, made a final pitch to voters. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TIM WALZ, (D), VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Choose -- choose what you know is right, I would say. The opportunity for hopefulness, unity, forward- looking versus this absolute chaos of Donald Trump.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: Tim Walz in Pennsylvania, which could be the whole ballgame tonight.

Phil Mattingly is with me over here at the Magic Wall.

Tell us more about what you're looking at right now.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR & CHIEF DOMESTIC CORRESPONDENT: There's a reason more than $100 million has been spent on this state by Republicans and Democrats than any other battleground state. They know how critical it is, a linchpin.

And it's interesting where Tim Walz is. We talk about it all the time. Where campaigns spend money and where they send their candidates, that's the tell as to what's most important.

Coming into the Harrisburg area for vice presidential candidate, Governor Tim Walz, is important, because this is one of the few counties outside of Philadelphia in those counties where Democrats traditionally hold a pretty significant advantage.

Joe Biden, back in 2020, by about eight points, 8.5 points. What did Hillary Clinton do back here in 2016? A narrower margin.

We talked about it a lot and, over the course of the day, we'll be talking about it all night. Whether or not the Harris campaign is able to match what Joe Biden was able to do in 2020, in terms of shifting the margins from Donald Trump in 2016, even counties they won, also counties they lost, that will be critical to watch.

[13:50:09]

But it's also what's outside of the Harrisburg area. This is Cumberland County. You look at this margin and say, why are we paying attention to Cumberland County?

The reason why is, from a medium-income demographic basis and a population surge over the course over the last several years, this is one of those counties that perhaps could show whether or not the strength of the Harris campaign can push out beyond Cumberland County.

So watch this. This is a county that Josh Shapiro, the governor, was able to flip towards Democrats in his 2022 campaign. The Senate candidate, John Fetterman, was not able to do so. How Trump performs here will be very interesting to watch.

We talk a lot about Allegheny and we talk about Philadelphia and we talk about other counties. There are a couple of places that I'm most interested in going into tonight, Wolf. And this is the western P.A. area right here, where there's a significant amount of vote.

It is a place where Donald Trump is expected to win rather handily. Whether he can bump those margins up is key. And it's right in there. Right in there.

How Donald Trump matches up with 2016 versus 2020, that more than anything else, will the story about Donald Trump's strength in a state where he'll have to matchup with the Philadelphia, with the Allegheny County, the Harrisburg, and the county vote for Harris -- Wolf?

BLITZER: Important points, indeed.

Phil Mattingly, at the Magic Wall, thanks very much.

And back here with CNN's Manu Raju, Jamie Gangel and Nia-Malika Henderson.

And, Jamie, I know you've been speaking to your sources inside the Harris campaign. Pennsylvania is clearly important. But what about Michigan? What are you hearing about that?

JAMIE GANGEL, CNN SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT: So two sources who are very familiar with the Harris campaigns internals have said they are confident about Michigan. They think that they have Michigan. They have they have Wisconsin.

You get mixed reads on some of the other states. Some people say, you know, we're going to be good in North Carolina. We're going to be good in Georgia, North Dakota. They don't know yet, Wolf.

Jen O'Malley, the campaign manager said, I think the word that everybody has to go by, listen to, they have to be patient. They don't know yet.

She also has said that they can win without Pennsylvania. They want Pennsylvania, but if they get two out of three of North Carolina, Georgia, what's my third one?

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Arizona.

GANGEL: Not Arizona --

(CROSSTALK)

GANGEL: Nevada.

Should two of three of those three. They're not so confident about Arizona, that they can live without Pennsylvania.

I just want to point to one other thing that they are looking at. And that is older voters. And this actually has to do with that Iowa poll we saw where Harris was up, unexpectedly.

A Republican source of mine just texted me and said that his mother is a lifelong Iowan, she last voted for a Democrat in 1960. She voted for Donald Trump twice.

But the source said, after January 6th, she vowed to never support Trump again. She felt that not voting or a write-in vote would be a vote for Trump, so she voted for Vice President Harris.

BLITZER: Interesting, indeed.

Manu, how likely, based on all of your reporting, is what we're calling a trifecta? Either party winning not just the president, but the House and the Senate as well.

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It's more likely for the Republicans to do that, than for the Democrats, just simply because of the map. And the United States Senate heavily favoring Republicans right now.

It would be a monumental upset if the Democrats were somehow retain control of the United States Senate. They are defending seats in a number of states, about eight competitive seats.

But they also have three in red states. One is almost certain to flip. That's West Virginia. And the Senate right now is 51-49. That would mean a 50-50 Senate.

Those two other red states, Montana and Ohio, which they're defending Democratic incumbents. They would essentially have to run the table and have very few pickup opportunities.

Really just Texas is the one opportunity, and that's to be seen as a long shot. Just to keep the Senate at 50-50, that's very difficult.

The House is an interesting situation as well. Because there are so few true toss-up districts in the House. Maybe eight, maybe a dozen or so. A lot of them are in New York, in California, and the suburbs and the like.

Typically, House races go with the presidency. But given where these are and how few there are, perhaps there's a split verdict among voters, where the president may not have a House in his or her same party.

So there's so many different variations that could play out. But Republicans maintaining, having total control of Washington is the most likely scenario, if you look at Democrats with a very little chance, given the Senate.

BLITZER: Nia-Malika, I know the Harris campaign is really hoping for a big night in some of the Blue Wall big cities that we're talking about. Cities like Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Milwaukee. What are you hearing about that?

HENDERSON: Yes, listen, I mean, this is one of the reasons why Kamala Harris has been calling into radio stations all day. She's going to be doing it throughout the day, trying to drive up turnout in these big blue cities.

[13:55:05]

This is the way that Biden was able to win. It's the way Obama was able to win, as well.

Her coalition is going to look different if she wins. It's going to be a winning coalition that looks different than Biden's winning coalition and Obamas winning coalition.

You talked about older voters, for instance. It is one of the reasons why she was sort of paling around with Liz Cheney. They see a very different demographic.

They realize that there is some kind of drop-off among African- American voters and particularly black men, in particular. It's almost like, you know, sort of -- there are black Republicans, right? And you know, maybe 12 to 15 percent.

And that sort of voting bloc, I think, is causing them to say, OK, where can we look for other voters? And that's where you see older voters, white voters, college-educated white voters as well.

And the woman factor, across all demographics. They want to do really, really well among African-American women voters. They typically do.

But they're also looking at, can they sort of shift things, as well, with Latino women voters, right? Can they up the margins? They're going to win that voting bloc. But can they even up the margins?

And that's where issues like abortion come in, democracy comes in. The Madison Square Garden festival of racism and sexism come in, as well.

They think their closing arguments were about hope. But also, they had this contrast with Donald Trump in these last days, really going off script, and being very sexist, at times racist as well, in talking about women in different voting blocs.

BLITZER: All right, to all of you, thanks very much, for now. We have more to discuss down the road for sure.

We're going to take you to Harris and Trump campaign headquarters as well, when we come back, on this Election Day in America, as our special coverage continues.

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