Rogers Messaging Strategy
CD2 Republican Primary · Aug 18, 2026 · message architecture, anchored to Guidant message-test · confidential
The architecture in one line: identity mobilizes the base, federal affordability persuades the middle. The base already knows it wants an America First fighter — Rogers's identity messages test 62–72%. But the race is decided among the 39% undecided and the moderates, and that slice is almost pure affordability. So the addition to the plan is a disciplined federal cost-of-living lane — inflation, wasteful spending, taxes, energy, and protecting Social Security & Medicare — the levers a member of Congress actually controls. Keep it federal; insurance and property taxes are state/local and off-limits for this office.
TIER 1 — Identity · the base mobilizer · lead with this on cable/TV
Rogers's proven anchor. These are the Guidant top-testers — run them to consolidate and turn out the America First base (47% of the electorate self-ID as "Trump Republicans").
| Tested message | % More likely | Definitely |
|---|
| Protect American jobs & national security — ban CCP purchase of U.S. farmland | 72 | 46 |
| Staunchly conservative, pro-family Evangelical Christian — fighter for the unborn | 64 | 38 |
| Saw DC corruption firsthand; in Congress will back President Trump 100% | 62 | 37 |
"Austin Rogers — a Christian conservative who'll ban Communist China from buying our farmland, and back President Trump 100%."
TIER 2 — Federal Affordability NEW / EXPANDED · the persuasion lane · moderates & undecideds
The biggest
movable issue (economy = 28% when asked that way; moderates 39% economy / 0% immigration). Rogers already owns two economic-security pieces that test well — extend them into an explicit cost-of-living message a congressman can deliver.
| Message (federal lever) | Status | Basis |
|---|
| Protect Social Security & Medicare; gut waste, fraud & abuse in healthcare spending | 64 | tested (Guidant) |
| Protect American jobs & food security (CCP farmland) | 72 | tested (Guidant) |
| Cut Washington's wasteful spending that drove up prices; balance the budget | add | #1 issue, untested — test in wave 3 |
| Tax relief for working families & seniors | add | federal lever; pairs with above |
| Unleash American energy to bring down gas & utility costs | add | federal lever; cost-of-living |
"Washington's reckless spending made your groceries, gas, and rent unaffordable. Austin Rogers will cut the waste, protect Social Security and Medicare, and fight to make life affordable again — the right way, from Congress."
Discipline: keep it on the federal drivers — inflation, federal spending, taxes, energy, Social Security/Medicare. Do not promise insurance or property-tax relief; those are state/local, and a congressional candidate who claims them invites "what can you actually do?" (The lone federal insurance hook, if ever needed: NFIP flood-program reauthorization.)
TIER 3 — Biography & Contrast · credibility + the wedge vs Gross
| Message | % More | Note |
|---|
| Panhandle native — moved home to raise his kids where he was raised (faith, family, hunting & fishing) | 52 | inoculates the DC-years attack |
| Former General Counsel to Sen. Rick Scott — battle-tested against the deep state | 55 | credibility; handle w/ care (see guardrail) |
Guardrail — the one real vulnerability. "Moved away from the Panhandle, only recently returning" tests −31% / +17% — his worst number. Run the "came home to raise my family" message (and the Hala video) proactively, before Gross frames the DC years. Never claim "outsider"; the honest frame is "I saw how Washington works from the inside — that's why I'll fight it."
Market tailoring
| Market | Lead with | Why (from the issue map) |
|---|
| Panama City (west) | Identity + jobs / American security (CCP farmland), plus the local roots | Home turf; jobs & security resonate; Gov't Corruption runs slightly higher here |
| Tallahassee (east) | Fiscal discipline — cut spending, balance the budget, tax relief | The market where we trail; it skews Taxes/Spending +5 and government — the federal affordability lane lands hardest here |
How it beats Gross
| Gross's move | Our counter |
|---|
| "Make Florida Affordable Again" | His slogan is state-flavored — most FL affordability pain (insurance, property tax) is the Legislature's job, not Congress's. Own the federal version he can't deliver: inflation, spending, taxes, energy. "Nice slogan — but that's Tallahassee's job. I'll fix what Washington broke." |
| Self-funded "outsider success story" | Tier 3 contrast: Georgia Democrat / perennial loser / say-anything (see contrast playbook). Rogers is the authentic Panhandle conservative; Gross is the chameleon. |
| Runs as the "one man & one woman" family-values conservative | The values-hypocrisy contrast (below). His own website vs. his own marriage. Highest-potency contrast in the race — but only if framed as the lie, never as the orientation. |
The values-hypocrisy contrastSTRONGEST
The charge is the lie, not the man. Gross's campaign website states:
"Marriage is a God-ordained, sacred and legal union of one man and one woman. No government has the authority to alter this definition."
He is married to a man. This is the most documented, self-inflicted hypocrisy in the field — his words vs. his life — on the single most salient values issue for this electorate.
"Keith Gross wrote the rule. Then he broke it. He'll say anything to get elected — even things he doesn't believe about his own life."
| Frame | Modeled net
(Rogers win-odds) | Why |
|---|
| Values hypocrisy — his site vs. his marriage | ≈ +4 | Charge is fraud, not identity → low backlash, high potency. Lands hardest rural/evangelical. |
| Folded into the full record contrast (6 attacks) | ≈ +12–15 | The values hit compounds the Georgia-Democrat / perennial-loser / self-funder record. |
| The flighted PAC ad — Georgia Democrat + "openly gay" highlight, as aired | ≈ +4 | Net positive in THIS electorate. The strong Georgia-Democrat frame carries it; the gay highlight costs ~2 pts vs. a clean cut but does not sink it. Panhandle Patriots (independent). |
| Pure "he's gay" — no hypocrisy hook, standalone | ≈ wash | Audience-adjusted up from −6 (this electorate barely feels the sympathy backlash) to roughly break-even — within model noise of zero. But it is not additive and turns clearly negative in any wider audience or if it draws press. No upside; avoid as a standalone. |
Audience adjustment (2026-07-24). Backfire on any sexuality-based frame was recalibrated down for this specific electorate: a low-turnout August GOP primary in the Panhandle / Big Bend, 53% over 65, heavily White evangelical Protestant (PRRI's least-same-sex-marriage-supporting group, ~38%). The general-population backlash literature overstates blowback here. This is why the flighted ad nets positive and the pure-identity penalty shrank from −6 to about −2. A non-zero floor remains — a bare identity attack still nets negative — because the residual risk (bad press, general-election spillover) reaches beyond the primary audience.
Discipline — the line that decides whether this helps or hurts. The power is in his quote next to his marriage: let his own website make the argument. The instant a piece editorializes about him being gay rather than letting the contradiction speak for itself, it slides from the +4 version toward the pure-identity version (a wash here at best, clearly negative in any wider audience). Test: if a piece only makes sense because he's gay, it's the wrong piece. Same standing rule — the PAC carries the contrast; Austin carries the biography. Vehicle: mail or CTV (the visual reveal — his ad, then his post). Geography: rural Tallahassee, where the marriage issue is most sacred and Gross's image is still intact (he is already 27/35 in Panama City).
How these net numbers are produced. They are not poll results — they are outputs of the CD2 Scenario Lab, which runs 2,500–4,000 simulated elections per setting. Each attack's damage = potency × medium reach × how definable Gross is, distributed across the three markets (PC / Leon / rural TL) and offset by backfire on the attacker. The identity vs. hypocrisy split lives in that backfire term, now audience-scaled for this evangelical primary (see green box above). "Net" is the change in Rogers's share of simulated first-place finishes vs. baseline. The simulation now also carries a systematic poll-bias band (the July 16 poll itself could be off), which puts the baseline race at a near coin-flip and adds ±2–3 pts of run-to-run noise to every figure — hence the ranges and the "≈". Magnitudes are an upper bound calibrated to an informed-ballot question; the literature (Lau/Sigelman/Rovner 2007) finds real-world effects smaller. Trust the ranking and the sign, not the decimal. Full method note accompanies this document.