The Republican Party continues to face many setbacks, mostly of its own doing, in several states heading into the 2024 elections. Many swing states where the GOP is relying on voters to help deliver a presidential victory are plagued by fractured leadership, financial troubles, and infighting.
Most recently, Arizona Republicans have been hit with a case of alleged bribery, forcing the party chairman to resign just one year after being elected. Infighting among GOP lawmakers in Missouri caused a shake-up of committee assignments just weeks into the state’s legislative session. In a battleground state likely to decide the 2024 presidential election, Michigan Republican leaders are at odds with one another over their chairwoman’s future.
Arizona
The Arizona GOP is once again without a chairperson after Jeff DeWit resigned Wednesday following a leaked recording of him appearing to offer Senate candidate Kari Lake a bribe not to enter the 2024 Senate race. The recording, from last March, was released on Tuesday, with Lake upset at the request, especially coming after she lost the 2022 gubernatorial race to now-Gov. Katie Hobbs (D-AZ).
DeWit, in his resignation letter, accused Lake of manufacturing the recording’s release, stating the situation “confirms a disturbing tendency to exploit private interactions for personal gain and increases concerns about her habit of secretly recording personal and private conversations.”
“This is obviously a concern given how much interaction she has with high profile people including (former) President (Donald) Trump,” DeWit wrote.
This week’s incident is only the latest display of infighting to rock the Arizona GOP. DeWit inherited the chairmanship from Kelli Ward, who led Arizona Republicans in efforts to overturn the 2020 elections. Struggling with the party’s large amount of debt and a shrinking budget, DeWit began his reign by seeking money from national Republicans, but his pleas to the Republican National Committee largely went unanswered.
Arizona GOP local staff members have also received texts, calls, and emails constantly from pro-Trump activists who are calling for a purge of Republicans who are deemed unloyal to the cause. The Arizona GOP has long been split between a pro-Trump wing and an establishment wing that believes throwing its support behind the former president and his candidates in 2024 could cost the party similar losses to those it experienced in 2020 and 2022.
Infighting among Republicans in the Copper State could cost them significantly in the Senate and presidential races in November. Lake goes back and forth in the polls between slightly leading and trailing Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ), the likely Democratic nominee. The surge in independent voters and Democrats’ sweeping victories in the 2022 midterm elections could spell trouble for the GOP in Arizona as a battleground state in 2024.
Michigan
Factions of GOP leadership in Michigan are at odds with each other after 40 state committee members voted to remove Kristina Karamo as chairwoman for stoking the flames of the state’s broken party ahead of the Feb. 23 primary.
Karamo, who was elected in February 2023, and her allies pushed back on the decision, saying the vote violated party bylaws. She did not attend the vote and said it was illegally organized. Karamo rose to power by spreading debunked claims that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. She ran for secretary of state in 2022 with the former president’s endorsement, but she lost and still refuses to concede the race.
Karamo held her own meeting on Jan. 13, during which a 59-1 majority voted to reinstate her and to ban former co-Chairwoman Malinda Pego for five years after acting as chairwoman.
Those who voted Karamo out argued that she was not in charge during that Jan. 13 meeting and that Pego was, as acting chairwoman. However, the faction supporting her said Karamo was the “undisputed” state leader. An election for a new chairperson was set for Saturday. On that day, Pego and party coalitions Vice Chairman Hassan Nehme filed a lawsuit in Kent County Circuit Court to remove Karamo as party chairwoman, alleging a breach of contract.
The party elected Pete Hoekstra as chairman. A letter from the RNC to Karamo and Hoekstra on Wednesday found that the former was “properly removed” as party chairwoman, but the latter will not be recognized as the leader by the national party pending additional review.
The Michigan GOP has long been in disarray after suffering historic losses in the 2022 midterm elections. The party had a net income of $71,000 between March and November 2023 and more than $600,000 in debt as of November, according to CNN.
Missouri
Republican leaders in the Missouri legislature removed members of the newly formed Freedom Caucus from their committees on Thursday, just three weeks into the legislative session. GOP state Senate Pro Tempore Caleb Rowden called the beginning of the session an embarrassment, blaming a “small group of self-interested career politicians.”
Republican state Sen. Bill Eigel was removed as chairman of the Committee on Veterans Military Affairs and Pensions and replaced by GOP state Sen. Mike Bernskoetter. Eigel blasted the chamber’s leadership for his removal. Some other members who were removed had their parking spots relocated from the basement garage, farther away from the Missouri Capitol.
“It’s disappointing to me certainly that this action today by the Senate leadership, which is clearly punitive and retaliatory in action, has occurred,” Eigel said on the state Senate floor.
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Democratic senators were quick to capitalize on the Republican infighting outside the chamber but elected to stay out of the spotlight while the GOP plunged into chaos.
“The Republicans’ fighting is masking their failures, as they are failing to address the issues Missourians truly care about,” state Senate Minority Leader John Rizzo said to the Missouri Independent, knocking Republicans for prioritizing “personal attacks and partisan pandering” over policy.
