http://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/trump-campaign-eyes-nevertrump-blacklist-223147 Trump campaign eyes #NeverTrump blacklist
Candidates’ aides and allies want anti-Trump vendors barred from lucrative general-election contracts.
By Kenneth P. Vogel and Ben Schreckinger
05/13/16 05:11 AM EDT
Donald Trump’s campaign is considering hitting his Republican enemies where it hurts: Their wallets.
As Trump moves to work in closer concert with the Republican National Committee apparatus, some campaign aides and allies are pushing him to block lucrative party contracts from consultants who worked to keep him from winning the nomination, according to four sources familiar with the discussions.
“The Never Trump vendors and supporters shouldn’t be in striking distance of the RNC, any of its committees or anyone working on behalf of Donald Trump,” said a Trump campaign official.
The blacklist talk — which sources say mostly targets operatives who worked for Never Trump groups, but also some who worked for Trump’s GOP presidential rivals or their supportive super PACs — strikes against a Republican consulting class that Trump has assailed as a pillar of a corrupt political establishment. It’s a sweet bit of turnabout for Trump aides and consultants who in recent months were warned that their work for the anti-establishment billionaire real estate showman could diminish their own career prospects.
If Trump’s team makes good on the blacklist, it could elevate a whole new crop of vendors, while penalizing establishment operatives who attacked him, often in deeply personal terms. But it also could put Trump’s campaign at a competitive disadvantage as it scrambles to quickly beef up capabilities in highly technical campaign tactics that it largely eschewed in the primary, including voter data, direct mail and phone banking.
Newly minted presidential nominees typically install staff at their respective parties’ national committees, and have been known to steer contracts to at least some of their favored vendors, which often provokes backlash. Since Trump all but clinched the GOP nomination this month with a lopsided victory in Indiana’s primary, his staffers including political director Rick Wiley have spent considerable time at the RNC’s Capitol Hill headquarters discussing joint fundraising and field operations.
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