Inside the G.O.P.’s State Party Problem

State Republican parties in roughly half of the most important battleground states are awash in various degrees of dysfunction, debt and disarray.

In Arizona, the chairman of the state’s Republican Party recently resigned after a leaked tape surfaced in which he appeared to offer a bribe to persuade a candidate to stay out of a Senate race.

In Georgia, the state party’s treasury has shrunk by more than 75 percent as it has spent more than $1.3 million on legal fees since 2023, largely to defend fake electors facing criminal charges, including the former party chairman. And in Nevada, the party chairman is himself under indictment for his role as a fake elector in the 2020 election.

With former President Donald J. Trump tightening his grip on the Republican presidential nomination, the widespread problems have caused deepening concern among top Republican officials. There is no one explanation for the disparate party struggles in the swing states that matter most for the presidency. But across the map, state parties have become combat zones for the broader struggles inside the G.O.P. between the party’s old guard and its ascendant Trump wing, with rifts that can prove divisive and costly.

The situation is especially acute in Michigan, where a vicious power struggle remains unresolved. Pete Hoekstra, the new party chairman officially recognized by the Republican National Committee, remains locked out of the state party servers and emails by the person clinging to power, Kristina Karamo. That fight comes as questions mount over where all the money has gone in the state.

A top lawyer for House Republicans wrote an unusually acidic letter last month to the Michigan state party, accusing party officials of “inexplicably” squandering the $263,000 they had been given by the campaign arm of House Republicans on “exorbitant” and unnecessary expenses that would do almost nothing to help Republicans keep hold of the House.

“We are growing increasingly alarmed,” the general counsel to the campaign arm, the National Republican Congressional Committee, wrote in the letter.

Strategists who have worked on past presidential campaigns say that state parties matter and that, when effective, they can serve as some of the most important unseen and unsung forces in national politics. They provide an efficient way for the national party to inject cash into key states and to coordinate field operations up and down the ballot, while allowing campaigns to leverage cheaper postage rates and unrivaled local know-how.

Mike DuHaime, a veteran of multiple presidential campaigns and a former political director of the R.N.C., said the work of state parties is critical.

“It’s a lot of the blocking and tackling that is certainly not covered in a debate, or it doesn’t get the same number of eyeballs as a TV commercial gets,” he said. “It really can be the difference between a point or two. In a state that gets decided by like 1 percent or 2 percent, this can make a difference.”

Not all state troubles are about ideology. In Florida, a perennial battleground that looks less competitive in 2024, the state G.O.P. ousted its chairman last month after the police confirmed he was under criminal investigation for sexual assault.

Inside the Trump operation, there is frustration over the sad state of affairs in key state parties. But Chris LaCivita, whom Mr. Trump would like to install as chief operating officer of the R.N.C. once he becomes the party’s presumptive nominee, said that those woes were worrisome but not unsolvable.

“The challenges that a handful of state parties have have not risen to a level that would prevent them from fulfilling their electoral responsibilities,” Mr. LaCivita said, adding that the campaign was excited for the new leaders in Michigan and Arizona, both of whom he described as “solid.”

As of now, Republicans will be unable to rely upon the R.N.C. to make up the difference financially.

The national party entered February with $8.7 million in the bank. Party officials have discussed tapping a line of credit to maintain operations until the nominating fight has concluded and more funds arrive. Some of the Trump team’s frustration is aimed at the R.N.C. for allowing state parties to flounder without sufficient oversight and training.

And beyond financial problems, the national party has seen other potential turmoil as Mr. Trump has named his pick to replace Ronna McDaniel as chairman — though Ms. McDaniel has not yet technically stepped aside. Mr. Trump’s pick, Michael Whatley, is the chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party, and his elevation could create yet another swing-state opening for a state G.O.P.

The R.N.C. recently told members it would hold a training meeting on March 7 in Houston that some see as a likely gathering to replace Ms. McDaniel if, as expected, she steps down after the South Carolina primary on Saturday.

The January letter to the Michigan party from House Republicans, first reported by The Detroit News, is a sign of how state parties can form an important cog in the broader political machinery. National congressional leaders had raised money and transferred a share to the state party in hopes that it would be spent on key House races there instead of on “plush conferences.” The party entered February with less than $75,000 after accounting for debts.

“These do not seem to be the actions of a state party that adheres to conservative principles; or frankly, one that has the desire or ability to elect Republicans to office,” the House G.O.P. counsel, Erin Clark, wrote in the letter.

Some Republicans acknowledged the state party woes but downplayed their significance.

“We’ve had dysfunctional state parties and won everything, and we’ve had really competent people and lost everything,” said Daniel Scarpinato, who served as chief of staff to Doug Ducey, the former Arizona governor who clashed with the leadership of his state party. “I really don’t think it matters that much,” he said, beyond reduced postage rates.

Democratic state parties are hardly all well-oiled machines, but some Democrats see the problems for Republicans at the state level as an opportunity. President Biden has been raising money in concert with the national party and in every state, and Mr. Trump is expected to eventually do the same.

“State parties are really important partners, especially in House races,” said Representative Suzan DelBene of Washington, the chairwoman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “Dysfunction absolutely matters.”

For Republicans in Arizona, simmering distrust and division burst into the open in January. Kari Lake, the leading Republican candidate for Senate, released a recording made last year in which the chairman of the party at the time, Jeff DeWit, appeared to ask her to name a price to keep her from running for Senate in 2024.

The surreptitious recording cast a chill throughout the state party. Mr. DeWit soon resigned and he was replaced by Gina Swoboda, who worked on Mr. Trump’s 2020 campaign and has since been part of the fruitless hunt for voter fraud. The Arizona Republican Party has seen its fund-raising efforts fall short of where the party was four years ago; accounting for outstanding debts, the party has roughly half the total cash on hand this year that it did in January 2020, according to the most recent campaign finance reports.

In Georgia, the former chairman, David Shafer, was among those indicted for their roles in the sprawling effort to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia, including organizing an unofficial slate of electors after the 2020 race. As he departed, Mr. Shafer wrote in an exit note that the state’s party had backed the slate of electors and had “voted to ratify their acts and pay their legal expenses.” The result: Some of the biggest expenses for the party in recent months have been to lawyers representing Mr. Shafer and other 2020 alternate fake electors who have faced charges, totaling some $1.3 million.

The party entered 2023 with $1.7 million but entered February with less than $400,000.

“Obviously there are resources we are having to spend on this that we would otherwise be spending on political action,” said Josh McKoon, the current chairman of the Georgia Republican Party. But he defended the expenses as necessary to protect people from what he described as an overzealous prosecution, arguing that the party was “all that has been standing between these folks and financial oblivion.”

Gov. Brian Kemp, Republican of Georgia, has long been at odds with the state party. In 2021, he signed a law that allowed him to create his own political committee that can take unlimited donations. Some Republicans thought there might have been a thaw in the rift when Mr. Kemp’s name — and that of the state House speaker — appeared atop a party fund-raising invitation for a gala last week.

But it turned out that the governor and the speaker were not attending, despite the fact that their names were on the invitation.

Georgia is not the only state where adherence to Mr. Trump’s falsehoods about the 2020 election have proved costly.

In Nevada, Michael McDonald, the longest-serving chairman in state party history, is facing a grand jury indictment for his role as a fake elector, though that has not affected his hold over the state party (The state’s national committeeman on the R.N.C. was also indicted). Mr. McDonald was instrumental in significantly transforming the state’s influential early contest, tilting the rules to Mr. Trump’s advantage by effectively blocking the super PAC that would have helped the former president’s rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, and by keeping delegates tied to the caucus system as opposed to the more open primary vote.

Mr. McDonald and officials with the Nevada Republican Party did not respond to requests for comment.

Party officials elsewhere are worried that debilitated or distracted state parties — unable to marshal a unified state operation and field campaign — can make all the difference in elections decided by razor-thin margins.

“What are we going to do?” asked Oscar Brock, a Republican national committeeman from Tennessee. “It’s going to be tough when you have disorganized or messy state party situations.”