Michigan Republicans are in a power struggle over control of the state party and tried to remove their leader last weekend. Their counterparts in Florida ousted their party chair on Monday over rape allegations. And Nevada’s party leader was indicted last month for being a fake elector in the 2020 election.
Leadership crises are engulfing battleground state Republican parties right as the presidential election kicks into high gear.
The challenges are a distraction that draws unwanted headlines when the party should instead be preparing for tough 2024 elections. And at worst, some Republicans worry, it could threaten some core electioneering functions — like the ability to attract and maintain donors to fund field programs or have an effective in-state messaging shop — that would make candidates' lives harder even if it probably wouldn't be a nail in the coffin of their electoral hopes.
Rebellion in the Michigan GOP has been brewing for months against party chair Kristina Karamo, who has faced significant financial struggles, physical altercations at party meetings last year and fights over control of county parties and who actually owns the state GOP headquarters. It culminated in a vote to oust her over the weekend. In an interview with POLITICO, Karamo refused to recognize the vote, saying it was an illegitimate meeting and asserting that she is still the chair.
“We just hit rock bottom on chaos,” said Dan Wholihan, a local Republican congressional district chair who was part of the group that voted to remove her.
Karamo shot to prominence in the state as part of a cadre of election-denying secretary of state candidates nationwide backed by former President Donald Trump in 2022.
She was blown out in the midterms — and refused to concede her loss — but parlayed that defeat to a campaign for state party chair. She won in a contentious vote, railing against the party establishment and riding a wave of grassroots activism to defeat a field that included a Trump-backed candidate.
The party has been beset by infighting and chaos since.
“The party really isn’t doing the things that it’s supposed to do,” like fundraising and uniting Republicans, said Saul Anuzis, a former chair of the Michigan Republican Party. “You’ve got a crisis of confidence going on.”
The vote over the weekend to remove Karamo and top aides was no revolt of the squishies: Many of the key players looking to dump Karamo now were close allies when she was first elected to the post less than a year ago but have become frustrated with the party’s poor fundraising and laundry list of controversies.
A defiant Karamo insists she isn’t going anywhere — she still has control of the state party’s website, social media accounts and mailing list.
“It’s pretty pathetic considering that there's so much on the line for the ’24 cycle,” she said.
It isn’t clear what happens next. Karamo and her allies say a meeting scheduled for this weekend to consider moving most of its primary elections to a caucus system is still on. But Malinda Pego, who was co-chair with Karamo and now says she is acting chair, sent an email to party members saying the meeting is canceled, Michigan Advance reported. Pego did not respond to an interview request from POLITICO.
Wholihan, the local chair — who stressed he was speaking personally — said the Republican National Committee “potentially will make a determination who they recognize, but in the end, I think it is going to be a court decision” about who leads the party going forward.
Opponents of Karamo said they are preparing legal filings to force her to turn over control of party resources. But Karamo insists it will be solved in-house and that “if they want to go to court, then they'll just lose in court,” for violating the bylaws.
And Karamo said she would step down if ordered by a court — “I’m not looking to make a spectacle” — but won’t do so willingly because it would “split” the party.
She said she has spoken to the RNC but would not elaborate on what the discussion entailed. The national committee still lists Karamo as Michigan’s chair on its website, even as it quickly updated Florida’s chair after the replacement vote on Monday.
“State chairs and RNC members are chosen by the state Republican parties. When the Michigan Republican Party sends us the information on their meeting over the weekend, we will review,” RNC spokesperson Anna Kelly said in a statement.
Outside groups may begin to step in to backfill operations that the party can't perform. That began happening in Georgia last year, when Republican Gov. Brian Kemp broke away from the state party after clashing with its leaders post-2020 and instead focused on building out his own political network.
Karamo acknowledged that the test of her leadership hurts the credibility of the party and makes it more difficult to attract donors.
“My goal is to minimize it as much as possible,” Karamo said of the impact this could have on 2024. “I’m not going to gaslight the public and act like, ‘Oh, it's not a big deal, just everybody go along.’ No, it is a problem when people do this. … We'll just proceed forward.”
Republicans in Florida are also trying to move past their recent leadership change.
Florida Republicans voted on Monday to oust Christian Ziegler, the party chair they elected early last year, who was recently accused of rape. (The police investigation is underway and Ziegler has maintained the encounter was consensual.)
Ziegler refused to resign, despite pressure from top Florida Republicans like Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sens. Rick Scott and Marco Rubio. Evan Power, who was vice chair, was quickly voted in as the new head of the Florida Republican Party.
Florida has trended red. Still, some Republicans in the state fretted that Ziegler’s lackluster fundraising during his tenure, and the impact of his scandal, could lead to the GOP loosening its grip, despite its dominance up and down the ballot.
President Joe Biden lost the state by around 3 points in 2020, but Democrats still say they will compete there, and Republicans want a strong showing — especially if the nominee is either Florida resident Trump or DeSantis.
“I don’t think it’s going to be a long-term impact,” Power said. “I think you are going to see us win big again in November.”
Divisions are also apparent in Nevada, where the state Republican party is led by a fake elector who has been criticized for changing the state’s nominating process — potentially to help Trump.
Nevada GOP Chair Michael McDonald was one of six Republicans indicted in December for falsely pledging the state’s electoral votes to Trump in 2020. Trump narrowly lost to Biden and sought to overturn the results.
McDonald — along with the others, some of whom are also involved in state party leadership — pleaded not guilty. But despite the legal peril facing him, there has been little major pressure to turn over leadership. McDonald has been party chair for over a decade.
However, there is commotion over the state party’s decision to hold a caucus just two days after the state-run primary. Convention delegates will be awarded at the caucus, where all the major candidates except former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley are taking part.
Some Republicans, including Gov. Joe Lombardo, have raised concerns that the dueling contests will confuse voters. DeSantis’ operation has accused the party of holding a caucus to benefit Trump. The state party — which is supposed to remain neutral — has downplayed those accusations. Still, McDonald has explicitly told voters to “cast your ballot for Donald Trump.”
“Until Trump is out of the running, I think he’s also viewed as a mini martyr,” said Amy Tarkanian, a former chair and outspoken critic of the current Nevada Republican Party.
Kimberly Leonard and Gary Fineout contributed to this report.
