A troubling trend has emerged among Republican Party committees in a few key states that could cause trouble for candidates facing off with Democrats in 2024. In addition to the strife in Oregon, the Republican Party in Michigan, Nebraska, and Arizona have also faced significant turbulence. This has led to poor fundraising, infighting, and an uphill climb in building the grassroots army needed to defeat Democrats. The disarray in these states could signal bad news for Republicans at all levels, right up to the presidential election.
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Reports have emerged that the Arizona Republican Party can’t pay its bills due to excessive spending and moribund fundraising. According to Jon Gabriel of the Arizona Republic:
The Arizona Republican Party is down on its luck.
They’re still hanging on to one-vote majorities in the state House and Senate, but they’ll have trouble in 2024 if they don’t get their finances in order.
The Arizona GOP had less than $50,000 in cash reserves as of March 31. That’s not much money to fund crucial expenses such as rent, payroll and campaign operations.
Four years earlier, it had close to $770,000.
The cobwebs in the bank vault aren’t as important as all the money wasted.
The party blew $300,000 on “legal consulting,” much of which focused on overturning Trump’s 2020 defeat. All they have to show for it are a Democratic governor and U.S. Senate delegation.
Reuters further reported on spending by the Arizona Republican Party:
More than $500,000 was also spent in Arizona on an election night party and a bus tour for statewide Trump-backed candidates last year, the financial filings show. All of those candidates, who supported the former president’s election-steal claims, lost in last November’s midterms.
One can argue whether the spending has caused donors to shy away or whether to blame the focus on investigations of the 2020 election. Regardless, donors have yet to help the Arizona GOP restock and prepare to fund a full operation going into the 2024 presidential election cycle.
Related: Oregon Republican Party Embarks on Embarrassing Recall of Its RNC Representative
The news is even worse in Michigan. A state meeting recently led to several physical altercations between warring factions, and at least one delegate was sent to the hospital:
In an interview with The Detroit News, James Chapman, a Republican from Wayne County, said he had travelled to Clare for the meeting but was forced to listen to it through a locked door.
Mr Chapman said he and others said the Pledge of Allegiance together in the lobby outside the meeting, after which he jiggled the doorknob of the meeting room.
It was then that Mark DeYoung, chairman of the Clare County Republican Party, approached the door, saw someone flip him off through a small window, and opened it.
“He kicked me in my balls as soon as I opened the door,” Mr DeYoung said, adding that Mr Chapman ran at him and slammed him into a chair.
Mr DeYoung gave his account to the outlet over the phone from an emergency room where he said he was being treated for a broken rib.
For his part, Mr Chapman alleges that Mr DeYoung had swung at him and said: “I’ll kick your ass.” Mr DeYoung denies this happened.
This is also not the first time internal tensions have erupted. The Washington Post reported in June: “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 newly elected chair of the Michigan Republican Party, Kristina Karamo, has faced criticism over closing the state offices to save money, lackluster fundraising, and replacing the chair of the Budget Committee. Again from Reuters:
The Michigan party’s federal account had about $116,000 on March 31, a drop from nearly $867,000 two years ago. It has yet to disclose updated financial information for its state account this year.
The two parties [Arizona and Michigan] have “astonishingly low cash reserves,” said Seth Masket, director of the non-partisan Center on American Politics at the University of Denver, adding that state parties play a key election role, helping promote candidates, fund get-out-the-vote efforts, pay for ads and recruit volunteers.
“Their ability to help candidates is severely limited right now.”
Therein lies the real problem. Much finger-pointing has gone back and forth between pro-Trump and anti-Trump factions at all levels of the Republican Party. When that infighting suppresses enthusiasm for the parties overall, fundraising becomes nearly impossible.
Related: The Battleground State That Republicans Must Win to Take Back the White House
A state party has a few main functions: create a strong infrastructure, bring together activists to act as a team, raise funds to support these operations, and act as the face and voice for Republican values in the state. Any dissension, infighting, or distraction from the cause will undermine everything the party tries to accomplish.
Going into 2024, Republican candidates at all levels need a functioning party to enhance their efforts to get elected. That goes for school board candidates all the way up to presidential candidates.
Problems have even cropped up in reliably red Nebraska, where the state’s largest Republican donor has pulled out of his relationship with the Republican Party. According to the Omaha World-Herald:
A year after a turbulent convention resulted in a massive turnover of party leadership, local donations to the Nebraska Republican Party have yet to return to previous levels.
Since the state party convention on July 9, 2022, the last 11 months of local donations to the Nebraska GOP added up to about $122,000, according to the Nebraska Accountability and Disclosure Commission. In the year leading up to the convention, the party raised nearly $1 million.
In contrast, national donations to the Nebraska GOP as recorded by the Federal Election Commission remained at the same level. The party collected about $632,000 in money during the last 11 months, according to FEC reports, and $631,000 in the previous year.
All told, the state GOP has brought in roughly $746,000 since the convention, compared with more than $1.6 million the previous year.
The Nebraska GOP convention last year was marked with tension from beginning to end, culminating in delegates voting to change the party’s constitution so they could immediately vote out Welch and replace him with current Chairman Eric Underwood.
Welch’s removal prompted a wave of resignations among other leaders in the party, including the executive director, the national committeewoman, the first and second district chair, the party treasurer, the secretary, the assistant chairman, and the assistant state party chair.
Prior to the 2022 convention, Sen. Pete Ricketts, the former governor, and his family sent more than $1 million to the Nebraska GOP, making it the “epicenter” of Republican fundraising in the state. Since the convention, the Ricketts family has not given any money, focusing instead on donations to individual campaigns.
If Republicans want to win in 2024, they need to focus on building the teams, frameworks, and fundraising apparatus necessary to make their state party operations well-oiled machines. So far, it seems, the activists would prefer to continue infighting and undermining party cohesion.
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