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Don’t vote? The Trump campaign would like a word with you.

Ashley Arentz, 28, of Jacksonville, N.C., waits in line with friend Jonathan Ritter to enter a rally that President Donald Trump staged for Republican congressional candidate Dan Bishop in Fayetteville, N.C., Monday, Sept. 9, 2019. Arentz, a Marine, said she signed up to vote at the rally. Trump's campaign is on the hunt for political unicorns: Trump's team is searching for people in battleground states who support the president but didn't vote in 2016. (AP Photo/Alan Fram)
Ashley Arentz, 28, of Jacksonville, N.C., waits in line with friend Jonathan Ritter to enter a rally that President Donald Trump staged for Republican congressional candidate Dan Bishop in Fayetteville, N.C., Monday, Sept. 9, 2019. Arentz, a Marine, said she signed up to vote at the rally. Trump's campaign is on the hunt for political unicorns: Trump's team is searching for people in battleground states who support the president but didn't vote in 2016. (AP Photo/Alan Fram) Ashley Arentz, 28, of Jacksonville, N.C., waits in line with friend Jonathan Ritter to enter a rally that President Donald Trump staged for Republican congressional candidate Dan Bishop in Fayetteville, N.C., Monday, Sept. 9, 2019. Arentz, a Marine, said she signed up to vote at the rally. Trump's campaign is on the hunt for political unicorns: Trump's team is searching for people in battleground states who support the president but didn't vote in 2016. (AP Photo/Alan Fram)

By Associated Press 7 min read

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. (AP) – Ashley Arentz is a political unicorn.

The 28-year-old Marine from Jacksonville, North Carolina, didn’t vote in 2016, and she wasn’t even registered to vote in the state. But there she was on Monday, standing in line for hours in the 90-degree heat waiting to enter President Donald Trump’s rally in Fayetteville. That made her a golden target for the volunteers in day-glow yellow T-shirts working to register new voters.

Arentz said she likes the president because he’s “just being straightforward.”

She filled out a registration form on the spot.

Less than 14 months before Election Day, the president’s team is banking his reelection hopes on identifying and bringing to the polls hundreds of thousands of Trump supporters such as Arentz – people in closely contested states who didn’t vote in 2016. The campaign is betting that it may be easier to make voters out of these electoral rarities than to win over millions of Trump skeptics in the center of the electorate.