The “Catholics for Trump” advisory group launched a little over a month ago, and it is concerning both for Catholics and for people who want to see Trump win in November.

A Catholics for Trump event was originally scheduled for March 19 in Milwaukee, but COVID forced its cancellation. Two weeks later, a group led by Matt Schlapp, Mary Matalin, and Newt Gingrich appeared.

Many of the people on the advisory board do fine and important work on pro-life issues, among other things. In fact, most of them are pro-life leaders. But one need not be a “seamless garment” liberal Catholic to point out that, as an election effort, there are probably better ways to bring Catholic voters themselves around to Trump, many of whom are sadly not as motivated by the issue as perhaps they should be. Many of these people, in places like Pennsylvania or Michigan (former Pennsylvania Sen. Santorum was on the advisory group in 2016 and his absence from this one is notable), have a cultural affinity for someone like Joe Biden, and many will not be dissuaded from voting for him just because of his volte-face on the Hyde Amendment. This is a problem the Trump administration needs to take very seriously.

One also wonders if featuring a figure like Fr. Frank Pavone so prominently, whose political activities have caused tension with his ordinaries for years and whose status in the Church is in question, could make prelates less willing to speak favorably about the gains made by the pro-life movement under Trump. Pavone has been an outspoken supporter of Trump on Twitter and elsewhere, and he joined Mary Matalin and the Schlapps for the conference call that launched Catholics for Trump.

Ironically, the Trump campaign is more likely to keep Catholic voters in the Republican camp to the extent that it is populist, not because they talk about pro-life issues, important as those issues are. And that’s why an organization stacked with GOP operatives bodes ill for success with Catholic voters. Ed Martin for instance, for all the good work he does, was the Club for Growth’s Missouri chief. That isn’t the sort of economic vision that is going to give Trump four more years, nor is the sort of criticism of Trump’s trade policies levied by Jason Trennert, another member of the group. What would help Trump win Michigan and Pennsylvania are the sort of things that Trump ran on that distinguished him from conventional Republicans, like infrastructure and trade policy designed to help the beleaguered working class in those states.

Then there’s immigration. It would be one thing if the campaign was taking a position more in line with some of the things Pope Francis has said about the subject. One could understand that; I would disagree, but it would be what Republicans have typically done. It’s quite another thing to talk a tough game on immigration while having a group like this co-chaired by a guest-worker lobbyist like Schlapp. That’s a good way to poison the well with blue-collar Catholic voters who are concerned about immigration depressing their wages.

There are other problems. For starters, the website is minimal, with the link to the campaign store being featured more prominently than any actual argument to Catholic voters. For another thing, two of the board members’ names are spelled wrong. The name of socialite Somers Farkas is spelled “Somers Farks,” and the middle name of Bertica Cabrera Morris is spelled “Cabers.”

The former, Somers Farkas, is an odd choice to include on the list in the first place. In addition to being a Hillary Clinton donor in 2015, her partner, Jonathan Farkas, was a friend of Jeffrey Epstein for decades, and his nephew co-owned a marina in St. Thomas with him. Somers Farkas was also written about in a 2002 New York Times story about women who marry their husbands on the condition of having no children. To each their own, I suppose, but that would make the marriage illegitimate from a Catholic standpoint, so it’s not clear to me what business she has being on a board advising the campaign about outreach to Catholics.

There is a big disconnect between the politics of most of the people on the board, and those of what Michael Novak called the “white ethnics,” whom Trump is going to need again to win. The pitch to these people needs to be a lot different than the pitch you’d make to a suburban Notre Dame grad working in finance. One hopes Schlapp and the rest of the group understand this, but based on their launch it is by no means clear that they do.