A mother of five’s clever strategy helped millions of people vote for Trump and she knew they won before the polls opened

The magnitude of Donald Trump’s election victory came as a stunning surprise to many across America on November 5.

But not for Ashley Hayek, the executive director of America First Works (AFW), a pro-Trump nonprofit who accuses the “establishment media” of “gaslighting” voters with talk of a tight race.

Hayek says early votes indicated that Republican women were showing up, while their Democratic counterparts were not. and that all swing states were winnable.

“We felt very confident,” she told DailyMail.com this week while visiting Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s resort in Palm Beach, Florida, for an annual AFW event.

“It wasn’t a surprise when we saw the numbers.”

Ashley Hayek is a political strategist who combined elections with caring for five children

Ashley Hayek, 40, executive director of America First Works

Ashley Hayek is married to Brian Hayek, a Marine, and has four children between the ages of two and thirteen.

Ultimately, Trump won the Electoral College by a huge margin of 86 votes, capturing all seven battleground states and making consequential gains in blue cities and suburbs and among Latino and black voters.

Hayek, 40, is now seen as a likely appointee for the new Trump administration.

The mother of five is from Clovis, in central California, and studied political science at the University of California, San Diego, before starting her first business, a political fundraising firm, in that city at the age of 22.

She says she has face time with the former president “every few months” and considers his daughter-in-law Lara Trump, co-chair of the Republican National Committee, her “closest relationship” in his family.

She also has a first-name relationship with Kimberly Guilfoyle, 55, the glamorous fiancée of Donald Trump Jr., who previously hosted Fox News and was married to Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom, she says.

As she celebrated her election victory this week, she posted on Instagram the “iconic moment” she saw Trump and his government official czar Elon Musk singing God Bless America together on stage at an event.

The wife of US Marine Brian Hayek operated under the radar during the 2024 race.

Although she is not a member of Trump’s formal campaign team, her methods for identifying hard-to-reach voters and her ties to dozens of allied groups are seen as driving turnout in swing states where it mattered.

AFW’s 3,500 paid door-to-door surveys reached doorsteps some 5.7 million times in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and other swing states, while some 29 million campaign text messages bombarded cell phones, she says.

“Our priority was to bring out people who didn’t vote in 2020, or people who vote in every four elections,” she says.

She says the ground game was “pretty phenomenal” and, while it was a conventional campaign in many ways, was sometimes willing to try “unconventional” approaches to identify “low propensity” voters.

Hayek considers Lara Trump, co-chair of the Republican National Committee, to be her “close relation” in the newly elected president’s family.

Hayek says she didn’t get a good night’s sleep for six months due to the grueling campaign.

“I feel passionate about advancing the America First agenda,” said Ashley Hayek.

Ashley Hayek coordinates with pollsters in Michigan, where Arab Americans helped turn the state red.

Acquisition teams usually start their work after Labor Day, Hayek says. However, AFW came knocking in June.

If voters needed assistance getting to a polling place, a ride service was arranged.

Planners also took a new approach to campaign text messages, which have become a nuisance for swing state residents who complain that their cellphones ping incessantly with spam during election years.

When text message recipients complained, their response was forwarded to a human volunteer, who then chatted with the voter, Hayek says: “They were surprised that someone actually read their message.”

Impressive victories in blue strongholds like Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and Saginaw, Michigan, were aided by local recruits who came knocking and helped Trump secure a total of 34 Electoral College votes, Hayek says.

She credits a dedicated “team of 20 Arab-American canvassers” for helping to refer Dearborn, Michigan, to Trump, where pro-Palestinian voters were angry about the Biden administration’s support for Israel.

Hayek also praises the collaboration among dozens of like-minded organizations for bringing together specific groups of voters, such as Moms for Liberty, the Association of Mature American Citizens and Hunter Nation, for gun enthusiasts.

Women were a secret weapon in getting Trump back into the White House, she adds.

Democrats believed that women would rally behind them in support of access to abortions. Instead, Hayek says, they “stayed at home” and conservative women showed up with force to keep trans women out of women’s bathrooms and sports teams.

She spoke to DailyMail.com this week as Trump named his picks for key posts, including Florida Sen. Marco Rubio as secretary of state and House troublemaker Elise Stefanik as his U.N. ambassador.

Hayek says she is following the flow of nominations but is “not really thinking” about what role she might play in the Trump administration. Yet she does not rule out joining his team.

‘I have five children, aged from thirteen to two. “I had to send my children to private school… because the woke agenda of the radical left was being shoved down our family’s throats, especially in a state like Virginia,” she says.

“My role, whether at AFW or anywhere else, I feel passionate about advancing the America First agenda and supporting this new administration as much as possible.”