Trump’s RNC pick will face pressure over election claims
After the 2020 election, one story out of North Carolina had a powerful effect on Donald Trump.
A proactive Republican, the story went, had worked behind the scenes to stop Democrats from stealing the election in the state and helped secure the former president’s victory there.
That Republican was Michael Whatley, chairman of the North Carolina GOP. He had pushed the state party to recruit what he described as thousands of poll observers and hundreds of volunteer lawyers as part of an election-protection program. Trump called Whatley after the election, and Whatley boasted about that program’s success.
“That’s great,” Trump replied, as Whatley recounted the conversation in a speech to North Carolina Republicans last year. “Why the hell didn’t they do that in Arizona and Georgia?”
Whatley, who became the Republican National Committee’s general counsel last year, is now poised for a far bigger and more consequential role: Trump hand-picked him to succeed Ronna McDaniel as the committee’s chair. McDaniel is expected to step aside Friday.
Trump’s selection of Whatley, whose appointment still awaits a formal vote, sums up the former president’s vision for the new RNC. He wants it to share his obsession with the false idea President Joe Biden and Democrats stole the 2020 election from him and are working to do it again in 2024. Trump believes Whatley is more in sync with his views about voter fraud than McDaniel, and he has insisted Whatley will stop Democrats from “cheating” in November, according to two people who have spoken to Trump and who insisted on anonymity to discuss private conversations.
But the story that stuck with Trump — his victory in North Carolina had hinged on Whatley’s election-watchdog work — was based only loosely on reality.
Local election officials and national Republican leaders saw the North Carolina GOP’s 2020 election-protection program as well organized but hardly as the reason for Trump’s victory there. Despite Whatley’s boasts to Trump, in the days after the election, he and other party officials attributed the victory in North Carolina to their robust efforts to get out the vote and to Trump’s own appearance there Election Day.
Moreover, Whatley himself has a more mixed record than Trump may realize on the former president’s No. 1 issue. While he often sounds like a loyal soldier in the effort to falsely discredit Biden’s win, at other times he has distanced himself from the most extreme conspiracy theories promoted by Trump and his allies.
The RNC leadership changes expected to start Friday serve as yet another example of an institution being shaped to fit the mold of what Trump wants it to be.
This time around, Trump wants the RNC to be more aggressive in training poll watchers and filing lawsuits, both before and after the November election. He is claiming, without evidence, Democrats are plotting to steal the presidential election. The committee has invested in so-called election integrity efforts, at Trump’s insistence.