On the menu today: The seemingly frozen-in-amber GOP presidential primary is getting most of the attention and headlines, but under the radar, in at least a quartet of key states, the state Republican parties are collapsing — going broke and devolving into infighting little fiefdoms. Even worse for the GOP, these aren’t just any states — Arizona, Colorado, Michigan, and Minnesota all rank as either key swing states or once-purple states that would be tantalizing targets in a good year. Meanwhile, the Georgia state Republican Party is spending a small fortune on the legal fees of those “alternate” Republican electors from the 2020 presidential election. If Republicans are disappointed with the results of the 2024 elections — for the fourth straight cycle, mind you — a key factor will be the replacement of competent, boring, regular state-party officials with quite exciting, blustering nutjobs who have little or no interest in the basics of successfully managing a state party or the basic blocking and tackling involved in helping GOP candidates win elections.
Crumbling State Republican Parties
When a political party adopts a mindset that prioritizes loyalty to a particular figure — in this case, Donald Trump — over all other traits, eventually it tends to run low on those other traits. We see the consequences of this mentality in the condition of several state Republican parties.
The Arizona Republican Party picked a bad time to run out of money.
There are two competitive House seats on the line as Republicans are looking to defend their slim majority in the lower chamber next year. Not to mention, Arizona is going to be a major swing state in the 2024 presidential election.
But the state GOP has just over $23,000 in cash on hand in its federal account, according to federal filings, and roughly $144,000 according to their [second-quarter] state filing. That pales in comparison to state parties in places like Wisconsin and Ohio, where both had more than $1 million in cash on hand at the end of the most recent quarter.
In Colorado:
In the wake of the vote in Congress to raise the debt ceiling, [state Republican Chair Dave] Williams delivered a strident attack on all Republicans who voted for the measure, and specifically his former primary opponent, Republican U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn (he lost to Lamborn last year by 18 points).
In a blast email, he basically called Lamborn a liar and a hypocrite and said “Colorado Republicans are fed up with say-anything politicians like Doug Lamborn…”
This is not only wildly inappropriate for a party chair but seems utterly unmoored from any serious strategy to build a robust, statewide election-winning organization. In fact, he included a plea for donations at the end of the anti-GOP email by touting his efforts to “put the Democrats on defense.”
Also in Colorado:
Stolen election conspiracist Dave Williams, the new state chairman, has announced the Colorado Republican State Central Committee (CRC) will vote on August 5 on whether to cancel the 2024 Republican primary election. And to accomplish this act of political suicide, they want to make a change in the committee’s voting rules that would make the old Soviet Politburo proud.
Voters passed Proposition 108 in 2016 which allows unaffiliated voters to vote in the primary election of their choice.
Unaffiliated voters receive both parties’ primary ballots in the mail and they can choose one. Voting in both primaries nullifies both ballots.
In Minnesota:
Recent filings with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) reveal that Minnesota’s Republican Party is financially struggling, with barely $54 cash on hand. Additionally, the state GOP has more than $335,000 in debt, according to the FEC paperwork filed in late June.
In Michigan:
At least four county parties in Michigan have been at open war with themselves, with members suing one another or putting forward competing slates that claim to be in charge. The night before an April state party meeting, two GOP officials got into a physical altercation in a hotel bar over an attempt to expel members. The state party’s new chairwoman, Kristina Karamo, has struggled to raise money and abandoned the party’s longtime headquarters.
Also in Michigan:
The Michigan Republican Party has about $93,000 in its bank accounts 16 months before the November 2024 presidential election, a revelation GOP insiders said paints an alarming financial picture for a political party that had full control of state government five years ago.
And we might even throw in what’s going on down in Georgia:
The Georgia GOP spent more in the first six months of 2023 than it paid out in all of 2022 to represent “alternate” Republican electors targeted amid Fulton County’s probe into whether Donald Trump and his allies committed crimes while trying to overturn his 2020 defeat.
Newly filed campaign disclosures show that the party paid out more than $520,000 in legal expenses in the first six months of 2023. That’s about 75% more than what was paid out in 2022 and five times what the party spent for legal expenses in 2021, according to disclosures.
More than $340,000 of that went to defend the fake electors who are possible targets in the Fulton County probe. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is expected to announce indictments in the case in August. It’s unclear whether any of the fake electors will face charges. . . .
The party raised $722,000 during the previous six months, through June 30, so a large chunk of what it took in went for legal expenses. It still listed having nearly $1.4 million banked.
As our Scott Howard observed, “For the price of a new Xbox game, you, too, can own your own state party.” Hey, it’s not like Republicans wanted to compete in Arizona, Colorado, Michigan, and Minnesota in 2024, right? And when has Georgia ever turned out to be key to Republican hopes in an election?
In these states, we are seeing the self-marginalization of the Republican Party. No outside force came along and forced these state parties to spend money, alienate traditional supporters and donors, pick nasty fights with their own lawmakers, turn loyalty to Trump into the preeminent litmus test on all issues and disputes, and alienate and repel once-persuadable swing voters. No, the people who took over these parties chose this path.
Yes, the pre-Trump Republican Party had its faults, and there’s no getting around that. Perhaps you remember it as being boring, stuffy, and predictable, with the state and local parties largely being run by nice old ladies who liked to wear big hats. But those allegedly boring types also tended to get the basics right: get more money coming in than is going out, pay attention to down-ballot races, and avoid infighting and messy public squabbles. Prudence, diligence, coalition-building, and cooperation — sure, those traits might not quicken your pulse, but they are required to get the job done. You cannot bellow, snarl, table-pound, and rage your way to an effective state or local party organization.
Again, the pre-Trump GOP state parties weren’t perfect, and they lost some races they ought to have won. But they also managed to win a bunch of races in states that now seem utterly repelled by the modern Republican Party. In 2014, the Arizona Republicans trounced Democrats up and down the ballot; now, Democrats hold the top three statewide offices and the GOP is hanging on to the state legislative chambers by its fingernails. That same year in Colorado, Republican Cory Gardner won a hard-fought Senate race, and Republicans won the attorney general, secretary of state, and treasurer races. Last year, Colorado voters reelected the state’s Democratic governor, Jared Polis, by 19 percentage points, reelected its Democratic U.S. Senator, Michael Bennet, by 14 percentage points, gave Democrats expanded legislative majorities, and handed easy victories to many down-ballot Democratic candidates.
In 2014 in Michigan, GOP governor Rick Snyder won reelection, as did Secretary of State Ruth Johnson and Attorney General Bill Schuette, and Republicans added seats to their majorities in the state house and state senate. Today, Democrats hold all the statewide offices and narrow majorities in both chambers.
In 2014 in Minnesota, the statewide races were a disappointment for Republicans, but the state GOP actually won a majority in the state house, picking up eleven seats to bring its total to 72. Today, Minnesota Republicans have just 64 seats in the state house.
The modern, very Trumpy Republican Party attracts certain people and repels certain people. It attracts people with passion, a sense that the fate of the country is at stake, and an eagerness to denounce any Republican official they deem insufficiently devoted to the cause. They also often adamantly insist that the 2020 election was stolen and see conspiracies at work everywhere. This same party repels the old guard and anyone with the old guard’s positive traits.
These state party leaders are not interested in attracting the votes of anyone they deem insufficiently dedicated to the MAGA vision. That includes a lot of suburbanites, white-collar professionals, soccer moms — the kinds of voters who are fine with voting for the likes of Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin, Georgia governor Brian Kemp (who’s at odds with the leaders of his state’s GOP), Ohio governor Mike DeWine, Iowa governor Kim Reynolds, and New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu. Sometimes you hear this rejection of past Republican voters expressed explicitly, as when Kari Lake declared at a rally shortly before the 2022 Arizona gubernatorial election, “We don’t have any McCain Republicans in here, do we? Get the hell out!”
A movement driven by a sense of a culture war requires enemies, and a lot of members of the MAGA crowd are perfectly happy to cast the old Republican base of boring, sensible, prudent suburbanites as one of its many enemies.
Unsurprisingly, those voters start to leave the party, both formally and informally, and they close their checkbooks. When the lunatics come in, the sane people want to leave.
The MAGA crowd now running these state parties insisted they didn’t need anyone else. And now we see where that got them.
ADDENDA: Over in that other Washington publication I write for, I take a look at the sordid tale of former Washington Redskins-turned-Commanders football-team owner Dan Snyder, and the hard lesson that character is destiny . . . eventually.
Hey, a president’s unilaterally choosing to ignore the Constitution’s requirement of Senate advice and consent couldn’t possibly have negative consequences down the road, now, could it?