In order to sustain a successful political operation for an election win this year, former Republican National Committee Co-chair Lara Trump said that both firings and an intense focus on election integrity were required.
Trump took over leadership of the RNC with chairman Michael Whatley in March after a contentious seven years under former Chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel. McDaniel’s tenure was highlighted by losing or underperforming in every election cycle she oversaw, as well as a scandal in which the RNC under her leadership was caught spending an enormous amount of donor money on private jets, luxury retreats, floral arrangements, cosmetics, and more.
McDaniel’s embattled tenure, coupled with the grave concerns about how the 2020 election was run and Americans’ subsequent lack of trust that it was conducted fairly, resulted in an overhaul at the RNC. The overhaul was driven by Republicans who believed both that there was very little integrity in elections generally and that the RNC was doing nothing to solve the issues.
Trump, speaking with PragerU about reforms she and Whatley made after taking over control from McDaniel, said, “Previously, people were very nervous about discussing election integrity. It got people upset, and it was a hot-button topic for a lot of people: You could be heavily criticized for even contemplating that there could be a problem in our voting process.”
“But if you have half the country thinking … that their vote isn’t going to matter or that there’s some something nefarious going on, that’s a big problem,” she added.
Ultimately, that discussion about election integrity could not begin without cleaning house among the staff ranks at the RNC, she said, explaining, “I don’t want for a second people to think that we’re wasting money on a staffer who doesn’t ultimately need to be there. So, we knew prior to day one, really what we wanted to do, and kind of who we needed to, to get rid of.”
“It was necessary, not just for the organization, but to start to reestablish some of that trust that the RNC really had kind of lost with a lot of the, the Republicans across the country,” Trump said.
Get-out-the-vote efforts were critical to the success of President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign this year, and some of that meant changing the minds of the Republican base when it came to utilizing early voting, Trump told PragerU. Republicans have traditionally been skeptical of early voting, but the RNC realized that even though early voting was not popular it was part of the political playing field and needed to be used.
Mobilizing individuals who were either inconsistent voters or skeptical voters was one of the aims of promoting early voting, she explained. Those voters were part of the strategy to make the election “too big to rig,” as the Trump campaign put it.
“The truth is, if you have an election season, if you have weeks on end of early voting, and we’re not capitalizing on that as, you know, the Republican Party, we’re missing a whole swath of the electorate. And that seemed like it was a bad play in previous elections,” Trump said. “So we said we’re going to have to start encouraging people to vote early, and we’re going to have to get our low-propensity voters out.”
Part of motivating Republicans or natural Trump voters to go to the polls meant convincing them that their vote was going to matter and that the RNC was doing everything in its power to make sure the election was run securely. The importance of executing this part of the strategy, Trump said, “really can’t be overstated.”
“No matter where I went … the number one question I got was, ‘Will they cheat? Will it be fair? What are you guys doing?’ So that was sort of our plan, and focusing on just those two things and nothing else, I think was really important to show people we were serious,” she said.
The election integrity effort included recruiting 230,000 poll watchers and poll workers, as well as 6,500 attorneys, across the country. It also involved the RNC launching a litany of lawsuits to address issues that were arising in swing states.
In Bucks County, Pennsylvania, for example, the RNC filed a lawsuit after finding out that early polling locations were being closed early. The RNC prevailed, and Bucks County voters got more time to vote after being turned away by county officials.
Another Pennsylvania issue arose when far-left activists in the courts and government tried to eschew state law and count improperly or undated ballots. While a lower court sided with Democrats, the state Supreme Court ultimately required county boards to enforce the law and had to reaffirm that decision when Bucks County attempted to undermine it after the election.
In North Carolina and elsewhere, the RNC brought challenges to how states allow overseas voters to participate in elections, and objections to improperly registered voters were also filed.
The RNC initiated or participated in lawsuits all over the country, primarily in the swing states of Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. The large team assembled by the RNC allowed the organization to respond to issues even in states Trump was not concerned about losing, like Kentucky and Texas, where there were issues with voting machines.
Many election lawsuits are ongoing as well, because, as my colleague Elle Purnell pointed out, election integrity efforts cannot stop just because Donald Trump won the election. They need to be redoubled.
Breccan F. Thies is an elections correspondent for The Federalist. He previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.
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