The NPR Politics Podcast - Why Some State Republican Parties Are Struggling to Raise Money

Episode Date: August 7, 2023

Some state Republican parties are struggling. In Colorado, Michigan and Minnesota, the parties' organizations have suffered heavy election losses and are experiencing deep disagreements about the future of the GOP.This episode: voting correspondent Miles Parks, political correspondent Susan Davis, and Colorado Public Radio reporter Bente Birkeland.The podcast is produced by Elena Moore and Casey Morell. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Unlock access to this and other bonus content by supporting The NPR Politics Podcast+. Sign up via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. And today we are joined by Colorado Public Radio's Benta Birkland. Hi, Benta. Hi, thanks for having me. So, Benta, you've got some great new reporting on state-level Republican parties that are struggling right now, including in Colorado, where you are. Tell us a little bit more about what's going on. Well, so Colorado, you know, used to be a very purple, competitive state. And now it's looking pretty deep blue. So there's just been a huge, swift political transformation really over the last decade. And right now, Republicans don't hold any statewide offices and they have fewer seats at the state legislature than at any time in Colorado history. So it's definitely a very low point for the party politically.

And there's just been a lot of finger pointing on how it got this way, how to turn things around and what's really driving all of this. Does this go back to the what feels like a decade old question? Are you with Trump or are you against Trump at this point? Is that what's happening? I think a little bit. I mean, I would say some of the party activists, the more conservative grassroots, they feel like the party establishment has abandoned them and they want to go back to the base and rally in the base. But people really just don't agree on what that really means. And especially in a state like Colorado, unaffiliated voters now represent the largest voting bloc in the state. So is it trying to appeal to a broader swath of the electorate,

focusing on things like taxes, housing, crime, or rallying the far right and talking about election fraud and parents' rights? And what's interesting is I talked to one longtime Republican consultant, Dick Wadhams. He was the former head of the Colorado Republican Party. Now, he's someone who's voted for President Donald Trump twice. He thinks President Trump was a wonderful president. But having said that, he said in this political environment, Wadhams himself isn't considered conservative enough. And that's because Wadhams does not believe the 2020 presidential election was stolen. It comes down to fealty to Trump. And if you agree with Trump that the election was stolen,

and now if you agree with Trump that he should pardon, if he's elected again, that he would pardon the people who attack the Capitol. If that's the litmus test, then you're damn right, I am a rhino. Because I will never subscribe to that. And so, Benta, is all of this kind of infighting actually translating to a lack of fundraising? There's been lackluster fundraising. And I think we have to see a few more months of finances to see fully what's driving it. But I think that is part of it. The state, for the first time in years, is not paying any staff at the Republican Party. I went to the headquarters recently and the lights were out.

The blinds are drawn. They're still paying rent for the headquarters, but I don't think anyone's working out of there. I think part of it is the vitriol from some of the donors I've talked to. They don't want to put money into the state party now because there's a new party chair who has said he will go on offense against conservatives he doesn't think are conservative enough. And he has attacked Republicans, including a sitting member of Congress. So some Republicans said, look, I don't want my money to be spent attacking other Republicans in the state. about what's happening in Colorado is it's not unique just to Colorado. The breakdown of the state party apparatus is happening all over the country in places like Arizona and Pennsylvania and Michigan, all pretty critical states to the 2024 presidential race. I mean, that's right. Michigan election deniers now helm the GOP party. The party's nearly broke. The operation's being run out of a condo. And I think it's especially divisive there. So

that's one issue. And then you have Minnesota that this spring, the party was down to just over $50 cash on hand. And that comes after years of statewide election losses. So I think that's absolutely right. What's happening in Colorado is not unique. It's also I think it's happening more acutely in the Republican Party, especially as Donald Trump has sort of transformed what it means to be a Republican and what the leadership of the party should look like. But Democrats have also experienced a taste of this as well. The structural breakdown on the on the of the party level, I think, of a state like Nevada, where you saw it both in the primary process between I'm going to shorthand this, but the Bernie wing versus the Clinton wing back in 2016. You even had in the most recent midterms, the state party was sort of at odds with the quote-unquote Reed machine,

the political apparatus of the late Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that sort of propped up its own organization to try to run and field and support candidates. I think the story of weakening political parties is a much bigger umbrella, and this is a fascinating sort of data point explaining all of this. Well, Sue, how does this actually play out long term? How does this affect the politics to have the state parties essentially getting weaker? You know, there is an argument and there's a lot of political science behind the fact that weakened political parties

have actually helped drive up polarization when the polarization. Because the parties are supposed to be this sort of deciding factor. They are supposed to pick the candidates. They're supposed to field the candidates, give the money to the candidates, and have a lot of power in deciding the will of the voters and the best candidates to do that. When they're weakened, when people can raise money without the support of the political party, when the grassroots want to throw out the leadership of political parties. It has, I mean, anecdotally, and we see it both through real-time data, polarization has increased in American politics, especially as political parties on the national and state level have declined in sort of the powerhouses of American politics as they used to be. So I think that's part of it. I think weak

state parties matter a lot for candidate recruitment. You know, like a lot of politics happens on the local level. The city council of today is the member of Congress of tomorrow who is the future presidential candidate in 25 years. And if parties aren't robust and able to recruit and run and field and support candidates, you sort of get an atrophy on the local level. And I think, you know, you can make an argument that there's red states and there's blue states and a lot of that. And these purple, like Colorado, right, as Bente's saying, used to be purple. Now it's more and more blue. And part of that is because the Republican Party there is atrophied and turned on itself and can't raise money. That's what I was trying to say. It's kind of a chicken or the egg situation, right? Where it's like, when I started covering the voting beat, I mean, there was

a secretary of state who was a Republican in Colorado. There was a Republican senator there, and now all of that has changed. But I wonder which comes first. Does losing a bunch then atrophy the state party, or does the state party atrophy and then that causes all of the losing, Benta? What do you think? I mean, I think that's a great question. And that's, I don't have the answer to that. I think it's a little bit of both, but this dates me, but I remember covering back-to-back rallies, you know, Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, like one was in the evening and one was the next morning. I mean, they were constantly coming to Colorado, that presidential cycle. For this next cycle, I'd be surprised if Colorado even gets a candidate to come into the state. But I think that is part of it.

The conservative wing of the party is saying, look, you've tried to run more moderate GOP candidates to appeal to this broad swath of the electorate. And guess what? We still lost. So let's try to do it a different way. Let's rally the grassroots. So I don't know whether that will work. But to Susan's point about the party wielding less power, even though that's the case in Colorado, I would say that the state party still has a big megaphone. So they're still quoted a lot. In some

ways, you're still the voice of the party or you can be seen that way in the media because it's, the head of the Republican Party is saying this or that. So I think even if there's not as much money flowing through, I'd be curious, depending upon how the PR campaign goes, how they can shape the public narrative about that particular party in a given state. All right, it's time for a quick break, but we will be right back after this. Support for this podcast and the following message come from Autograph Collection Hotels, offering over 300 independent hotels around the world, each exactly like nothing else. Hand-selected for their inherent craft, each hotel tells its own unique story through distinctive design and immersive experiences, from medieval falconry to volcanic wine tasting.

Autograph Collection is part of the Marriott Bonvoy portfolio of over 30 hotel brands around the world. Find the unforgettable at autographcollection.com. And we're back. So, Sue, I'm hoping you can put this into perspective for me a little bit. When do you think this changing of the guard in terms of the importance of state-level parties kind of began? Well, I don't think we can have this conversation and just not talk about the role money plays in politics. And the details in Bente's story about, you know, say parties being broke or closing down offices, but it's not like

money in politics has dried up, right? Every election is more expensive than the one before it. There's more and more money flowing through the political system than ever before. So how are these two things connected? I think the political parties have been weakened by our current campaign finance rules, both, you know, for the past generation, you know, there was the 2002 McCain-Feingold, which was a campaign finance law that has been partly overruled and partly changed. And then also the 2010 Citizens United case in the Supreme Court that changed the way that money can flow into politics. So, you know, in the old guard world, the political parties were the places that everybody sent their money.

They were financial powerhouses. And very rich people and corporations can spend as much money as they want and are still limited in what they can give to political parties but can start super PACs or any number of political ways that you can flood the system with money. The money's just shifted, right? You know, if political parties were still the central house of where most people sent their political donations, they would be more powerful. But people don't – they have more options. They don't need to just give their money to political parties. And you heard that in Benta's story too. People, rich donors are looking at the political parties right now and saying, well, they're a mess. Again, it's the chicken and egg problem. You look at the party and say, well, this is a mess. I'm more of a traditional Republican guy. You have way more options of where you can write that check. It's

not like they're, it's not going anywhere. It's just not going to the state parties or the national parties in a lot of ways, too. Well, so, Benta, I mean, how are candidates responding to this kind of new normal? Well, I think Georgia is a good example of how a candidate has responded successfully. So if you look at sitting Governor Brian Kemp, he faced a primary challenger in 2022, And that was after Kemp refused to act on President Trump's stolen election lies. So Kemp ultimately did defeat former U.S. Senator David Perdue. And he defeated him in the primary by a very wide margin. But Kemp went on to win reelection by leaning on his own campaign infrastructure. So he did not rely on the state parties because there was this deep division.

And in fact, in April of this year, Kemp would not even attend Georgia's GOP convention because of the former GOP state party chair who was very closely aligned with Trump. So I think that's a way that you see, maybe it's not ideal, but a candidate working around a state party that there was too much infighting and division for there to be a collaboration, which is pretty unheard of when you think of, you know, a sitting governor running for reelection,

and that the state party is not supporting the governor. One thing I'm, I don't have the answer to this question, but I think it's a question we're going to keep coming back to over the next year or so. You know, state parties do historically play a pretty fundamental role in the nominating process building up to the national conventions next summer. And I am curious to see how this structural decline and how this infighting could affect the process or make it more chaotic or, you know, make it more difficult to track, especially in states that do things like caucuses. Remember, like the party decides how you nominate the candidates before you get into federal election laws for a general election. And it seems to me that in this environment, there's so much potential for discord and

fighting. And I think it's an important trend to watch play out, especially because so much of this party collapse is in a lot of the swing states. Again, like I mentioned, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan. You know, it seems to me that this is just the beginning of a conversation that we need to keep watching what's happening in these states because they could play an outside role in the nominating process. Well, that's what I don't I don't understand how this moves forward, to be honest, Sue, because it does feel like many of these state parties are doubling down on these things that were not successful in, say, 2022 in terms of running on hardline values in swing states.

Or election denialism. Right, exactly. But I mean, at what point do some of the party insiders say, no, we are going to switch tacks? You know, I have become a deep skeptic of party insiders. If party insiders ever had their way in the Republican Party, it would look very different than it does right now. I do think that in some ways, the process, again, bends toward Donald Trump because a lot of the disruption and the state party level is being filled by people who are supporters of Donald Trump. It's not the Dick Wadhams anymore. It's the election deniers. It's people taking over grassroots activity on the state level. And if they support Donald Trump and are able to facilitate their political muscle in his direction in the nominating process,

that's a powerful force to have behind a candidacy. Ben, what do the Republicans in Colorado think going forward in terms of, like you said, this is a state that used to be purple is now looking more and more blue. How are Republicans thinking about getting back in power? I think a lot of them don't know what to do in terms of the traditional conservatives, the big donors, the business interests. I talked to one former state house leader, strong Republican from Colorado Springs, and he said that he thinks it's kind of like a wrecking crew right now that a faction faction of the party is taking charge, and he thinks they're going to run it to the ground. And he said, kind of a direct quote, he's worried for the Republican Party in Colorado now. And they're also nervous about who is going to be at the top of the ticket in the presidential

election year. Because former President Trump isn't extremely popular among conservatives in Colorado, yes, he definitely has supporters in certain areas, but even in Colorado Springs, a very traditionally conservative area, Trump didn't do that well in the last cycle. So if he is the party brand, they think that as low as things are for Republicans in the state of Colorado currently, things are probably going to get worse. All right, well, let's leave it there for now. Benta Birke state of Colorado currently, things are probably going to get worse. All right, well, let's leave it there for now. Benta Birkeland of Colorado Public Radio, thank you so much for joining us.

Thanks for having me. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. And I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.