Chair Michael Whatley and co-chair Lara Trump move to reorganize the party, with an expected cull of 60 members
Donald Trump’s new leadership team at the Republican National Committee started the process of ousting scores of staffers on Monday night, clearing out its ranks as they prepare to bring the committee under the wing of the Trump 2024 presidential campaign, sources familiar with the matter said.
The RNC is expected to cull about 60 people across the political, data and communications departments. At least five members of the senior staff will be let go and some third-party contracts may also be cancelled. One source familiar with the situation described it as an “absolute bloodbath”.
In ousting large swathes of the RNC, the new chair Michael Whatley and the new co-chair Lara Trump – the former president’s daughter-in-law – moved to reorganize the Republican party’s central committee to fall squarely behind the Trump campaign just days after they were formally elected.
Name recognition gets him about 20% of the vote. He gets another 20% or so from people who don’t like him, but hate Democrats more.
Getting that last 10% is the trick, and it’s where all the money goes. In 2016, Hillary’s campaign spent $564M and Trump $333M. This doesn’t include outside PACs and such, but note that Trump only won on a technicality that year. In 2020, Biden spent $1,000M and Trump $774M, and Trump lost.
The GOP does need to collect donations. The 2016 Republican Convention cost $67M. They have $8M in the bank, which isn’t even enough to cover the inflation on the 2016 number. State level Republican parties are outright broke. Oh, and some successful legal challenges to gerrymandering mean they’ll have to back more candidates in races that are actually competitive.
There’s danger here that Trump will win and be able to establish his dictatorship, but there’s also a possibility of Republicans having complete electoral collapse outside of deep red states and districts.