Former president Donald Trump took charge of the Republican National Committee this week with the political equivalent of shock and awe \u2014 leaving dozens out of work, revamping strategic priorities and raising fears among some former officials about the party\u2019s future support for down-ballot candidates.<\/p>\n
The senior leadership has been almost entirely replaced or reassigned, while dozens of lower-ranking officials including state directors were either fired or told to reapply for their jobs. A nationwide network of community outreach centers, once a fixture of the party\u2019s efforts to attract minority voters, will be shuttered or refocused on get-out-the-vote efforts. The much heralded \u201cBank Your Vote\u201d program, aimed at getting Republicans to vote early, will shift to a \u201cGrow The Vote\u201d program focused more on expanding the party\u2019s outreach to less likely Trump voters.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s team, led by campaign adviser Chris LaCivita, is bringing in allies with what LaCivita says will be a leaner, more aggressive operation with more political experience.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is about changing a mind-set,\u201d LaCivita said in an interview Tuesday. \u201cThe RNC is as much a part of the Trump campaign as the Trump campaign is part of the RNC. It is really important from our standpoint that everyone understand in a campaign that will be unprecedented in history that everyone has the same stated goal.\u201d<\/p>\n
The RNC\u2019s political director, its lead data officer and communications director have all been replaced, according to people familiar with the moves. The chief of staff and top counsel voluntarily left before LaCivita took over.<\/p>\n
One of the most experienced lawyers in GOP politics, Charlie Spies, who recently served as the architect of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis\u2019s shuttered presidential effort, will take over as chief counsel.<\/p>\n
Additionally, LaCivita is installing Christina Bobb \u2014 a former OAN reporter who has espoused false claims that the 2020 election was stolen \u2014 as senior counsel for election integrity. Bobb is the author of a book called \u201cStealing Your Vote: The Inside Story of the 2020 Election and What It Means for 2024\u201d and promoted the audit of Arizona elections.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m honored to join the RNC and thrilled the new leadership is focused on election integrity,\u201d Bobb said in a statement. \u201cI look forward to working to secure our elections and restore confidence in the process.\u201d<\/p>\n
The new leadership at the RNC has discussed a broader effort over the coming months to challenge voter identification and signature verification rules that were put into place for the 2020 election.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe RNC\u2019s new posture as it relates to litigation is much more offensive and much less defensive,\u201d LaCivita said in the interview.<\/p>\n
Some Trump allies privately questioned the hiring of Spies, a longtime GOP lawyer who previously worked for super PACs that supported the presidential campaigns of Republicans Mitt Romney in 2012 and Jeb Bush in 2016.<\/p>\n
LaCivita praised Spies as one of the party\u2019s top campaign attorneys, who is well respected by donors for his fundraising innovations and actively involved in election litigation.<\/p>\n
Some former Republican officials \u2014 caught off guard by the dramatic changes \u2014 have expressed concerns about the takeover, which normally happens in some form at the end of an open primary fight. Former RNC chair Ronna McDaniel, long a close adviser to Trump, was described as blindsided by the scale and speed of the changes, which target her efforts to balance Trump\u2019s interest with the rest of the party\u2019s interests.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere won\u2019t be a RNC operation to help the greater party. They don\u2019t care about the greater party,\u201d said a former RNC official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect future job prospects. \u201cThe RNC is important to lots of people in down-ballot elections. They\u2019re cutting off any service that doesn\u2019t provide help to anyone but Donald Trump. It\u2019s just all about Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n
LaCivita said in response that the rising tide of Trump\u2019s candidacy would lift all Republican boats this year, and that the RNC would continue to work closely with the Republican Party\u2019s House and Senate committees.<\/p>\n
Sean Cairncross, a former White House adviser to Trump who worked at the RNC during the 2016 campaign, is the new chief operating officer. And James Blair, a top adviser to Trump is also taking a senior political role at the RNC. Blair is a longtime Florida operative who is close with Susie Wiles, Trump\u2019s de facto chief of staff.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you choose to not reapply, your last day of employment will be March 31, 2024,\u201d Cairncross wrote in an email sent to some fired employees, which was obtained by The Washington Post. The changes at the RNC were described by LaCivita and eight other current and former party officials, most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal changes.<\/p>\n
Trump had made clear he wanted changes at the RNC even before he cleared the field of rivals for the Republican nomination. Trump had grown frustrated last year with McDaniel when she stuck by her pledge to remain neutral in the nomination fight and continued to sponsor primary debates long after Trump had made clear he would never participate. McDaniel called for the party to unite behind Trump after he won the New Hampshire primary in late January, but she was soon ousted.<\/p>\n
At Trump\u2019s direction, the RNC voted Friday to elect former North Carolina GOP chair Michael Whatley and Trump\u2019s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, to senior positions to replace McDaniel. Lara Trump is married to the former president\u2019s son Eric, who now runs the family\u2019s hospitality and branding business.<\/p>\n
They have also decided not to use RNC funds over the coming months to pay for Trump\u2019s ongoing legal costs, in part because his status as a candidate would likely mean the funds would have to come directly out of the party\u2019s limited political budget that is coordinated with the campaign. Trump has long argued that his legal prosecutions are politically motivated, suggesting that any spending on his own lawyer is a form of political spending.<\/p>\n
The RNC has a cash problem on its hands. The Democratic National Committee, which is functioning as a part of President Biden\u2019s campaign, had $24 million in the bank at the end of January \u2014 almost triple the $8.7 million held by the Republican National Committee.<\/p>\n
The entire revamp is being led by LaCivita, a combative and experienced strategist who during the 2004 presidential campaign led the group originally known as Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in an effort against Democratic nominee John F. Kerry, a massive outside spending effort on behalf of Trump in 2020 and countless other state and federal campaigns.<\/p>\n
A former Marine Corps sergeant who earned a Purple Heart in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, LaCivita has functioned as the senior political consultant for Trump since the start of his 2024 campaign, though he has not taken a formal title. He will take on a new dual role, overseeing the coordinated campaign effort at the RNC while maintaining his position advising Trump\u2019s campaign.<\/p>\n
The new approach is aimed, in part, at avoiding the deep dysfunction in message and advertising coordination that hampered Trump in 2020, when animosity flared between McDaniel and Trump\u2019s second campaign manager, Bill Stepien. Relations got so bad that Jared Kushner, Trump\u2019s son-in-law and top campaign adviser in 2020, had to convene a meeting between the campaign and party teams in October of that year to set an advertising strategy for the final weeks of the campaign.<\/p>\n
The firings, according to people familiar with them, were done by LaCivita, who met with employees in the human resource director\u2019s office with the director. In some cases, LaCivita told the employees they hadn\u2019t done anything wrong but he just wanted his own team. Most of the employees were gone within hours.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Former president Donald Trump took charge of the Republican National Committee this week with the political equivalent of shock and awe \u2014 leaving dozens out of work, revamping strategic priorities and raising fears among some former officials about the party\u2019s future support for down-ballot candidates. The senior leadership has been almost entirely replaced or reassigned, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":2039,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2038"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2038\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}