AT THE PINNACLE OF POWER
“Reince is a bridge builder and I think he will help President Trump bring people together. We need the country to heal.” Henry Barbour, RNC member from Mississippi
Until last week, Reince Priebus had one burning regret as the GOP’s longestserving chairman. “Unfortunately, we’ve become a party that can’t lose a midterm and can’t win a presidential,” he said in a 2014 interview. “I’m here to try to fix that.” The election of Donald Trump not only fixed that, it brought Priebus to the pinnacle of power in Washington.
When Trump named him White House chief of staff last week, it capped a breathtaking climb for the onetime student body president at the University of Wisconsin- Whitewater.
The new power broker at the heart of the Trump White House is a sociable lawyer and litigator who savors politics and can enjoy sharing a beer with a Democrat.
He’s a data- driven manager who sometimes lapses into the language of marketing and metrics when he talks about “growing” the Republican Party.
But Priebus is also an “insider” with an ideology.
He is a born- and- bred conservative who grew up idolizing Ronald Reagan and whose mantra is, “Win every day, live the mission every day, wait on God’s timing, and good things happen.”
As the early turbulence of the Trump transition suggests, Priebus faces immense challenges in his new job: a president with no government experience, competing White House factions, a party riven in the primaries, and the urgent need to adapt the skills of a party operative and fundraiser to the task of keeping a presidency on track.
His approach to decision- making is that “he talks to lots of people, he doesn’t do it by himself. He’s very inclusive, very collaborative. Once there is a plan in place, he becomes laser- focused on executing ( it),” said Jeff Larson, who worked for Priebus at the Republican National Committee and managed the 2016 GOP convention.
Because of the controversy around parts of the Trump team, some inside and outside the party have invested hopes in Priebus as a stabilizing force.
“America has no idea what we’re going to get from Donald Trump as president,” said Mike Tate, who chaired the Wisconsin Democratic Party when Priebus was the state Republican chair. Tate said he took the Priebus appointment as a positive, saying he has a “moral center.”
“Reince is a bridge builder and I think he will help President Trump bring people together. We need the country to heal,” said Henry Barbour, an RNC member from Mississippi.
Priebus, 44, grew up in Kenosha County, historically Democratic bluecollar turf that went Republican this year for the first time since 1972.
His father was a pro- military, pro-Reagan union electrician. ( Reince is short for Reinhold, reflecting his father’s German heritage.) His mother, born in the Greek community in Khartoum in the Sudan, met her husband while he served in the U. S. Army in Ethiopia.
When Priebus ran in 2011 to be leader of the Republican National Committee, he told RNC members that “our chairman has to be an outspoken, unabashed conservative.” He promised to “work like an absolute dog.”
When the five candidates for chair were asked how many guns they have at home, he said five. ( Another candidate said 16.)
Asked who his hero was besides Reagan, he said Lincoln.
Asked where he gets his news, he included the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and the op- ed pages of The Wall Street Journal.
Asked his favorite book, he said The Reagan Diaries.
Priebus, who promised to be a “no drama” chairman, won on the seventh ballot. Among those he defeated was the sitting chair, Michael Steele, whom he once advised and supported but who was dogged by controversy and left the RNC more than $ 20 million in debt.
“I am so blessed,” he told the Republicans after the vote. “My first date with my wife ( Sally) was a Lincoln Day dinner with ( then- GOP congressman) Henry Hyde and ( GOP U. S. Rep.) Jim Sensenbrenner, which will tell you a little something about me,” he said.
“He is not a stick- in- the- mud conservative,” his close friend, House Speaker Paul Ryan, said of him back in 2009. “He’s a younger conservative who believes in expanding the base.”
Priebus’ only bid for office ended in defeat when he lost a state Senate race in 2004 by 4 percentage points. He rose from county chair to district chair to Wisconsin GOP chair in 2007, before enduring the 2008 Obama landslide, when Arizona Sen. John McCain lost the state by 14 points.
He jokingly complained the election was called so quickly that reporters phoned him for comment one minute after polls closed. “Can you at least let me have one beer?” he pleaded.
In the GOP wave of 2010, his party enjoyed its best Wisconsin election since the 1930s, gaining the governor’s office, the Legislature and a U. S. Senate and House seat. Priebus became a fundraising workhorse at the RNC, eager to spend money on better data, technology, turnout models and year- round local organizing.
For 2016, RNC member Barbour said, Priebus “made a big bet on organization. We spent about five times more on data and digital. ... He did the hard work before the election.”