The Amish vote doesn’t usually get a lot of play in presidential elections, but a new super PAC hopes to change that.
Amish PAC, founded by a handful of Trump allies tied to Ben Carson and Newt Gingrich, hopes to tip the scales in the swing states of Pennsylvania and Ohio by bringing voters from the traditional, rural communities into the GOP’s fold, according to a Sunday Politico report.
According to the report, there are around 70,000 Amish in both the Buckeye State and Keystone States, and the PAC plans to launch a billboard and newspaper ad campaign over the summer to familiarize Amish voters with Trump. The PAC founders told Politico that the paper-based ad push will come with the relatively low price tag of $40,000.
One founder, Ben Walters, an alum of a pro-Ben Carson super PAC, said that the logic behind their appeal to a relatively small population of voters was that the 2016 election could be as close as the 2000 race between Al Gore and George W. Bush.
“In Florida in 2000, it came down to a couple polling places,” Walters told Politico. “What if that happened in Ohio or Pennsylvania? It could.”
Their task is complicated by the fact that the Amish shun technology and church leaders strongly discourage voting. Trump’s two divorces and braggadocious personality could also raise the hackles of a deeply religious group for whom divorce is cause for excommunication.
