As the 2024 elections near, I am deeply concerned about various Republican organizations talking about how they are cleverly going to target and focus on so-called key states — or key Senate and House seats. It’s not going to work.

I helped elect a massive Republican majority with candidate Ronald Reagan in 1980 — including unexpectedly gaining the first Republican Senate majority in 26 years. I also helped design and implement the 1994 Contract with America campaign, which won the first House Republican majority in 40 years. 

Before all of that, I survived in Georgia when it was a deeply Democratic state. I have also watched many failed election strategies. In my experience, targeting is a road map to attrition. It minimizes potential victories in strong years — and ultimately leads to a minority.

Targeting may be smart tactically for an individual campaign, but it is strategically self-defeating at scale over time. Hyper focusing on tough races, slowly erodes support in so-called safe races. This is how Republicans have historically lost ground in places such as California and New York. The national party quit campaigning in those states. When you stop talking to people, people forget about you.

This is why we have not attracted Asian Americans as expected. On educational, economic, and cultural grounds, they are on paper much closer to Republicans than to the anti-merit, anti-achievement, woke left. But the vast majority of Asian Americans live in cities where the Democrats are dominant, and the Republicans are absent.

When you target, you signal to everyone who is not on your target list that their situation is hopeless. You discourage participation and risk-taking — and eliminate hope of victory.

When I first started running for Congress in the mid-1970s, Georgia was overwhelmingly Democratic. I took on Congressman John Flynt, the Democratic dean of the Georgia delegation, who was powerful and entrenched. However, I knew he had weaknesses. I started with the principle that everyone was a potential supporter except for Mr. Flynt’s immediate family. 

As I wrote in “March to the Majority,” he had been in a property fight with his next door neighbor. Amazingly, the neighbor called our campaign and asked for the largest possible “Vote for Newt” yard sign. He just wanted to drive Mr. Flynt nuts. We painted a 4-by-12-foot sign and cheerfully put it where Mr. Flynt would see it every time he drove home.

At a more substantial level, I broadened the map by attracting reformers who were liberal Democrats, people who favored integration. They knew Mr. Flynt had refused to host delegation breakfasts once Andy Young, who was black, was elected. As a result, the oldest black-owned newspaper in Atlanta endorsed me over him. 

I also attracted environmentalists (I had taught environmental studies when it was a commonsense reform and not an alternative religion). On my first try, we gradually put together 48.5 percent of the vote in the middle of Watergate — when a more narrowly focused Republican would have been much lower. That was good enough to run again and finally win.

In 1980, I worked with the Reagan presidential campaign to build a ticket approach that helped every candidate in the country. In September, candidate Reagan stood on the Capitol steps with all the federal candidates and pledged to support a five-part contract. By identifying with Reagan, many candidates who might have foundered on their own were suddenly boosted into contention. 

The Senate GOP picked up 12 seats, the most since 1946, and became a majority for the first time since 1954. It was a shocking result which no one in the Senate leadership thought was possible. Five seats went Republican by a combined total of 52,378 votes. 

The rising tide of Reaganism combined with the collapsing tide of Jimmy Carterism reshaped the political map dramatically — Mr. Reagan won the largest electoral college victory against an incumbent president in American history. Had national Republicans focused on targeting the tough races in 1980, we would have seen anemic gains — or maybe lost.

Similarly, in 1994, we adopted a conscious strategy of competing everywhere. As Joe Gaylord and I outlined in “March to the Majority,” we had three goals. First, we wanted to threaten all the senior Democrats. When the big guys get frightened, they absorb resources which could otherwise go to weaker members. Second, we wanted to be a bigger, broader, more inclusive party with new ideas and new energy. We had to break out from the narrow box which had trapped House Republicans for 40 years. 

Third, we believed that Americans were unhappy with the radicalism and incompetence of the Clinton team. We theorized that many districts could come our way against all projections. We were thoroughly convinced that if we laid the groundwork for a truly national campaign, things would happen in September and October which we could not predict in advance.

The proof was in the pudding. We beat the Ways and Means chairman, Congressman Daniel Rostenkowski, at downtown Chicago. This is a feat no expert would have risked their reputation predicting. We defeated Speaker Foley at Spokane, Washington, where experts assumed he was unbeatable. We beat the Judiciary Committee chairman, Congressman Jack Brooks, in the Houston, Texas suburbs, where he had been a fixture for a generation.

This broad-based strategy enabled us to pick up 54 seats and have the first national majority in 40 years. The same broad approach enabled us in 1996, while the GOP was losing the presidency, to become the first re-elected House GOP majority since 1928.

The latest poll has New York City Mayor Adams at 23 percent approval. This is after the disastrous performance of his predecessor, Mayor de Blasio. A Republican Reform Coalition in this environment might create the potential to change the power structure of our largest city — and therefore of the whole state.

Nationally, the latest polls have President Biden at 55.8 percent disapproval and 38.2 percent approval. Things are likely to get worse. Consider Mr. Biden’s illegal immigration policy, his national security confusion, rising crime, Mr. Biden’s family scandals, the continuing crises of affordability and inflation, the collapse of inner-city education, the cultural war between most of the country and the hard left, and the growing pro-terrorist wing of the Democratic Party.

Any national campaign designer should be looking at a potentially nationwide opportunity for Republicans gains. That requires a broad strategy, not a narrowly targeted tactical approach. Too many current Republican leaders have it exactly backwards.