A celebrated Republican operative who has spent years registering voters in key states is warning that not using mail-in voting — which President Trump is demanding — could lead the GOP to lose “everything” in November.

Voters are set to go to the polls in Virginia and New Jersey to elect their new governors, while other states have critical ballot initiatives and offices on the ballots as well. 

Scott Presler, who has a social media following in the millions across various platforms, says he has spent years registering thousands of voters in several important states, for everything from presidential elections to off-cycle races like this year’s Wisconsin supreme court race. He received a prestigious award from the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2021, and even met with Mr. Trump and Vice President JD Vance in the Oval Office earlier this year. 

In a video message posted over the weekend, Mr. Presler warned that his party is staring down a debilitating loss in just two months. 

“I’m not here to bring you a happy video. I’m here to give you a dose of reality,” he warned in a direct-to-camera message. “Republicans are gonna lose everything this November unless we change things, and quickly.”

Mr. Presler predicts that the GOP is on track to lose this year’s Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial elections, which have always been used as bellwethers in assessing how voters feel about presidents in the first year of their terms. 

Since 1977, the Virginia governorship has been won by the party that does not control the White House in every election except for one. The New Jersey governorship has been won by the out-of-power party in every election since 1985 except for the 2021 election, when Governor Phil Murphy barely won re-election. 

Beyond those two prizes, Mr. Presler also predicts that Democrats are going to win three seats on the Pennsylvania state supreme court, even though he and his team have been registering Republican voters “non-stop” since November 2024. 

“Republicans — I hate to say it, and I love ya, but I’m gonna be honest: You are absolutely clueless,” he warned. Mr. Presler says that if the GOP waits until Election Day to be engaged, then it will “lose everything.” He argues that the party needs to embrace early and mail-in voting. 

“If you don’t request a mail-in ballot, you are going to lose everything,” he said. “I’m making this video … as a ‘Scott was right video,’ that, if and when Republicans do not embrace early voting and mail-in voting and we lose everything, I want to be able to point to this video and say, ‘Well, I tried to tell ya.’”

Mr. Presler — who says he has 25 full-time employees in Pennsylvania and 14 full-time employees in New Jersey — is advocating for exactly what Mr. Trump himself despises. The president has gone so far to say that the use of mail-in voting should be banned entirely. 

Earlier this month, Mr. Trump wrote in a Truth Social post that he would be signing an executive order aimed at getting rid of mail-in voting, though that will almost certainly run into legal challenges. 

“I am going to lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS, and also, while we’re at it, Highly ‘Inaccurate,’ Very Expensive, and Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES, which cost Ten Times more than accurate and sophisticated Watermark Paper, which is faster, and leaves NO DOUBT, at the end of the evening, as to who WON, and who LOST, the Election,” the president wrote at the time. 

Despite Mr. Trump’s fierce criticism of mail voting, Mr. Presler says that anyone who is “loyal” to the president would do “anything” to make sure that voters use mail-in and early voting ballots before November. 

“I need y’all to step up. I need y’all to do more,” Mr. Presler warned in his video.