The States of Play

It’s no secret that the Republican Party has become a cult of personality during the Trump era.

While the GOP has had its share of hero worship in the past, celebrating leaders ranging from Abraham Lincoln to Ronald Reagan, the party’s prostration before Donald Trump is in a category all by itself. MAGA crowds worship him as a golden idol (literally), while the Republican Party so completely merged its identity with Trump that its 2020 platform was basically “we want whatever Dear Leader wants.”

But Trump’s complete control of the party apparatus these past several years has overshadowed an equally important development — the steady collapse of the state parties on his watch, due to a wave of partisan infighting, fundamental insanity, base corruption and scandals. You know, “Trumpism.”

In Florida, for instance, Republicans just ousted their state chairman over rape allegations that surfaced after explosive revelations that he and his wife, a leader in the state’s Moms for Liberty organization and a crusader for moral living, were having threesomes.

In Michigan, meanwhile, Republicans are likewise trying to remove their election-denying state chairman as well, following a year of vicious fighting (again, literal!) and mounting debts. The party voted to remove her, but in a classic Trumpian turn, she’s refusing to accept defeat.

Those are just stories from this week.

If we zoom back a bit, you can see the state organizations of the Republican Party in crisis across the country. Several of them have become so financially strapped that they’re struggling to keep the lights on.

Last spring, the Colorado GOP couldn’t even pay its own employees, and now it’s fighting a rear-guard effort just to keep its presidential nominee on state ballots. Last summer, the Minnesota GOP was humiliated when it came out that it was more than $300,000 in debt. The Massachusetts GOP has $400,000 in debts and just $70,000 on hand to pay them. (With the national party badly lagging in its own fundraising, there’s not much hope for relief in sight.)

These financial problems, in many states, are directly attributable to the rise of MAGA Republicans. In Colorado, for instance, the new state party head is a Trump diehard who vowed to take on “RINOs” in the party as much as the filthy Democrats outside it, an aggressive stance that drove away some top donors.

How much will this all matter? Well, it’s hard to say. In the presidential race, maybe not too much — Trump is something of a perpetual motion machine, able to survive and thrive on his own, turning mugshots into millions in donations, and the national media and outside PACs will more than keep him afloat.

But in other races, at the state and local level, this will matter. The workings of retail politics — knocking on doors, sending out literature, running ads, getting the vote out on Election Day, etc. — will be severely hampered by the lack of funds and internal fighting on the Republican side.

So let me urge you to look away from the shiny object of the presidential election and instead turn your attention to the states, where the Republicans are in disarray and there’s a real opportunity for considerable change.

If you’re looking to donate, please ignore whatever vanity challenger is going to waste millions against Marjorie Taylor Greene this cycle and instead focus on the races for state legislature, where (a) your dollars make much more of an impact and (b) there’s an actual chance of flipping a chamber. If you don’t live in a competitive state or just want to maximize your donation, I highly recommend The States Project, which has already done the hard work of identifying promising candidates in winnable races.

Better yet, if you’re looking to run, there’s never been a more promising time. Check out the great resources at Run for Something to get started on your own political campaign or to link up with someone else from your area.

Get up. Get into it. Get involved.