Donald Trump’s campaign hired a veteran political operative Wednesday to lead his efforts in Colorado.
Patrick Davis, a Colorado Springs-based , will serve as Trump’s state director — the first indication that the presumptive Republican nominee is building an infrastructure to make a play in this top battleground state.
The announcement came two days before Trump is Colorado for the first time in 2016. He will give a speech Friday morning at the Western Conservative Summit in Denver.
Davis was the political director for the National Republican Senatorial Committee in 2004 and served as the executive director for the South Dakota Republican Party in 1995. More recently, he led the nascent super PAC, Go America PAC, that supported Robert Blaha’s unsuccessful campaign for U.S. Senate.
Davis is a familiar face in Trump circles. Hired at the last-minute ahead of the Colorado Republican Party convention in April, he led a Trump delegate recruitment effort and later volunteered for the campaign in Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
In his new role, Davis will coordinate GOP efforts, working with the on the ground. Davis knows the magnitude of the work ahead of him.
“Colorado is still kind of unknown territory for Donald Trump because we didn’t have a primary here,” he said.