‘Depending on how the top of the ticket does, we could have some real surprises’: Lawrence Tabas is ready for Election Day

With the looming maelstrom of Election Day – and whatever comes after – just a matter of hours away, Lawrence Tabas could be forgiven for being on edge. 

Except he isn’t. During a Zoom interview, Tabas, a partner at the Philadelphia-based law firm Obermayer Rebmann Maxwell & Hippel and the chair of the Pennsylvania GOP since 2019, acted like someone who has been here before – because he has. The Republican lifer has decades of experience in virtually every aspect of the state’s political process, including any number of the most important elections of our lifetime – like this one. 

This is the second of a two-part series of conversations with the respective heads of the state political parties. To read our interview with Pennsylvania Democratic Party Chair Sharif Street, click here. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

City & State: What does the PA GOP do during an election and how do your efforts fit into those of all of the other organizations working to get Republican candidates elected?

We represent and support all of the candidates on the Republican ticket in the election; we are not just focused on the presidency or the U.S. Senate – every single candidate is our responsibility. We work in partnership in a year like this with the Republican National Committee, but in other years, we work very closely with our county parties, with our volunteers. We work with all of the candidates and their campaigns, with the state Senate and House Republican campaign committees, and we’re sort of the focal point. We provide the infrastructure, the tools, the ground game oversight, legal advice and guidance, certain media guidance, how to communicate and messaging. We do a lot of training as well, but we are the focal point in this election, and that has historically been our role.

What’s being done differently by the PA GOP in this cycle – and what’s being done the same as in previous cycles?

When I first got elected five years ago, I made it my No. 1 priority to reduce the voter registration gap. At that time, the Democrats’ voter registration advantage was over 800,000; as of the deadline this year, we have reduced that by over 500,000 – it’s the lowest it’s been in 52 years. 

The second thing is, as everybody knows, for three years, our party and Republican voters weren’t very keen on mail-in ballots, although I felt that the mail-in ballot law had some implementation issues in the beginning and there are some things that could have been done differently. I still supported it back then, but this was the first year that we were able to implement a very effective strategy because I was able to get President Trump to publicly come out and say that mail-in ballots are fine. 

One more thing that we’ve done differently is that we’ve really expanded our outreach into other communities and connected with voters who haven’t traditionally supported us in the African American community, in the Hispanic and Latino community, with younger people, and we’ve really been making an effort in the Asian community and with the blue-collar working people who traditionally supported the Democratic Party. 

If you want to know what we have been doing that basically hasn’t changed, that would be the ground game, our get-out-the-vote work – that was always one of our strong suits and something we've always been good at. 

Elon Musk and his America PAC are perhaps the most high-profile example of the prominent role being played by outside organizations for get-out-the-vote efforts and other election activities. What do you think these groups bring to the table?

I don’t always know what they’re all doing, and I’m sure Sharif has maybe some of the same issues. I know what we’re doing in partnership with the RNC – that’s what I focus on. And yes, from time to time, if we call up a voter, we say, “Hey, have you registered to vote or have you turned in your ballot?” and they’ll say, “Well, you’re the fifth person that’s called me.” I have no idea who the other four were, but I do know there are other groups in there. They may have different objectives, different approaches – maybe they’re focusing on congressional races or legislative – that’s not really something we deal with.

Where are you deploying your firepower for down-ballot races – and why?

I don’t want to give too much away, you know – Walmart doesn’t tell Target what they’re going to be doing for their Christmas marketing. But we are looking to help win back the State House. We are confident that we can do that. There are several incumbent Democratic seats in the state House that we believe can be flipped, and we are also working closely with the state Senate. I think we have a great chance of winning that state Senate seat in Philadelphia with Joe Picozzi, and I think we’ll protect the rest of our incumbents. We’re working with the congressional candidates – I think we have a great chance in three congressional districts, and depending on how the top of the ticket does, we could have some real surprises.

Why should Republican voters feel optimistic about their party’s chances on Tuesday – and why should they feel anxious?

Well, I think they should feel optimistic because, again, we have done an enormously successful job with voter registration by reducing that gap and bringing new voters into our party. This year alone, 70,000 Democrats switched their registration to Republican. The mail-in ballot issue is absolutely a source of optimism because we have cut the Democrats’ advantage in half. And we have reached down into other communities and connected with other voters that we’re going to be adding to our voter base. So we feel very good about it. People have a much better feeling that the Republicans are going to be able to restore the economy, to help protect the border and make it safer for people in their communities.

When the postmortems on this campaign are written, what do you think some of the key takeaways will be?

Probably the fact that Kamala Harris and the Democrats have failed to acknowledge the suffering that a lot of Americans have been going through with the economy: how tough it’s been with inflation, putting food on the table. I think they have also ignored, again, the border crisis. They haven’t secured it. Millions of illegal aliens are coming into our nation and causing all kinds of issues and problems affecting crime, safety, the economy, and the job market. Look at those policies and what they’ve done on an international scale – Afghanistan, they’re kind of wishy-washy on trying to protect the right of Israel to exist. I think a lot of voters compared the Biden-Harris administration to the Trump administration and have found – and I think the pundits will say this as well – that it was better under Trump on all kinds of levels, like national security, the economy and our national values – and that’s what American voters wanted.