PITTSBURGH — Scott Presler is a huge of a person.
Standing at 6’5″ and 200 kilos with 22 inches of lengthy brown hair operating down his again, the homosexual conservative political activist informed The Submit, “I’m an enormous boy.”
Presler proved himself to be one thing of a political titan too this 12 months.
After shedding Pennsylvania by some 80,000 votes in 2020, President-elect Donald Trump flipped the Keystone State pink this November by 120,000.
That’s due in no small half to Presler, whose nonprofit Early Vote Motion put the Trump marketing campaign’s “Swamp the vote” technique into motion in Pennsylvania, registering Republican voters and getting them to vote early, by mail, or “by no matter means obligatory,” the group’s web site reads.
“I didn’t invent the wheel. I simply took the Democrats’ instruments and used it to elect Republicans,” Presler snickered.
Presler based EVA within the wake of the 2022 pink wave that by no means got here. This spring, he zeroed the group’s efforts on reclaiming Pennsylvania’s 19 electoral votes for Trump in 2024.
And the Virginia activist dedicated to the trigger personally by shopping for a home in Beaver County to Pittsburgh’s west.
Main a data-driven peak subject employees of 74 and a military of volunteers making calls, writing postcards and knocking doorways, Presler mentioned his workforce registered 50,000 Republicans, flipped two longtime Democratic counties (Bucks and Luzerne) pink by voter registration and elevated Republican early voting by 10 factors.
On Election Day, Trump retook Erie, Northampton, Monroe and Bucks counties, which went for Biden in 2020.
Presler was proud to indicate conservative “naysayers and doom-and-gloomers” skeptical of mail-in voting that Republicans may beat Democrats at their very own recreation.
And he revelled of their defeat.
“You’re going to listen to Democrats say we didn’t have a floor recreation. Babe, we out-registered you each single week. We flipped your counties from blue to pink. And we delivered the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for Donald J. Trump,” he mentioned.
“Put the ‘babe’ in there. That’s vital,” he added.
For those who haven’t seen, Presler is a persona.
The luscious mane, the cowboy boots, the V-neck revealing a furry chest, Presler resembles without delay Aragon of “Lord of the Rings” and a Founding Father, or so his greater than 2 million social-media followers can have you consider. (Presler insisted The Submit credit score X person @6hsense for the very best of the AI-generated renderings he shares on his X and Instagram accounts.)
Presler cultivates the mythos along with his free-wheeling humor.
“I look so younger and recent that you’d by no means know the way outdated I’m,” he mentioned, refusing to offer his age, although Wikipedia has narrowed it to 36 or 37.
He routinely posts selfie-style movies of him rallying volunteers — and not too long ago riling up Republicans to sentence a Bucks County commissioner who admitted to illegally counting votes for Democratic Sen. Bob Casey.
This ardour for provocation — organizing a “March Towards Sharia” in 2017 and “Cease the Steal” protests claiming President Biden received the 2020 election by mass voter fraud — has fueled Presler’s political clout, which he says helped entice crowdfunding and even the eye of Elon Musk, who gave his political-action committee $1 million in August.
With a thoughts for what goes viral, it’s no shock “Scott” trended on X for 13.5 hours when Trump received the election — the longest-trending search second solely to “Latinos.”
However earlier than Presler gained his notoriety, he walked canine, unable to discover a job after graduating from George Mason College throughout the Obama years.
Impressed by the conservative politics of his retired Navy captain father and eager to “be the answer,” Presler volunteered on his first marketing campaign in 2013 and fell in love with the game, happening to assist defeat Hillary Clinton in Virginia in 2016 and attend Trump’s Presidential Social Media summit in 2019.
“I went from the canine home to the White Home,” he likes to say.
And Trumpworld took discover of Presler in 2024, with Republican Nationwide Committee Co-Chair Lara Trump calling Presler “my buddy” and welcoming him on stage throughout the former president’s return rally to the place he was almost assassinated in Butler, Penn.
Presler didn’t know he was supposed to talk however took to the rostrum in shorts and used the platform to courtroom his goal demographics: union employees, hunters, frat guys, sorority sisters and — most memorably — the Amish.
“We’ll shield your uncooked milk, your dairy, your farm, your faculty alternative, your spiritual freedom, your means to afford to have 10 stunning youngsters per household,” he mentioned to the cheers of tens of hundreds.
A self-described populist, Presler shamelessly pandered to teams he discovered have been unlikely to be registered or vote for one motive or one other.
Studying many Amish get married on Tuesdays (which would come with Election Day) and elders discourage voting solely, he offered many on early voting and voting privately by mail.
His relentless efforts to register Pennsylvania’s 930,000 hunters grew to become an AI-generated meme.
And he energized volunteers by working with them within the subject and updating them on the most recent registration numbers each week, making their progress really feel purposeful.
“We made voter registration attractive in Pennsylvania,” he mentioned.
And although being a homosexual man in conservative politics has elicited hateful feedback sometimes, Presler mentioned he’s proud to have earned the respect of full strangers from his work ethic.
“I all the time love when the tremendous macho, alpha, manly man walks up, shakes my hand and says, ‘I really like the work you do, and I couldn’t be extra pleased with you than when you have been my very own son,’” he mentioned.
However tacky because it sounds, he mentioned he owes all of it to his dad and mom.
“I’m the person I’m in the present day due to my mother and pop.”
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