In Ohio, the state GOP chairman had repeatedly chided Trump in public, amplifying the concerns of Gov. John Kasich, a Republican dissenter. In New Hampshire, the party chairman harbored deep, if largely private, misgivings about her party’s nominee. The Republican Party of Florida was listing, hobbled by local feuds and a rift between donors loyal to Sen. Marco Rubio and former Gov. Jeb Bush and those backing the man who humiliated both in the primaries.
Those power struggles have now been resolved in a one-sided fashion. In every state important to the 2020 race, Trump and his lieutenants are in firm control of the Republican electoral machinery, and they are taking steps to extend and tighten their grip.
It is, in every institutional sense, Trump’s party.
As Trump has prepared to embark on a difficult fight for re-election, a small but ferocious operation within his campaign has helped install loyal allies atop the most significant state parties and urged them to speak up loudly to discourage conservative criticism of Trump. The campaign has dispatched aides to state party conclaves, Republican executive committee meetings and fundraising dinners, all with the aim of ensuring the delegates at next year’s convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, are utterly committed to Trump.
To Joe Gruters, who was co-chairman of Trump’s campaign in Florida and now leads the state party, the local GOP is effectively a regional arm of the president’s re-election effort.
“I’ve had probably 10 conversations with the Trump team about the delegate selection process in Florida,” Gruters said.
For Trump, the ability to control the levers of Republican politics at the state level could make the difference in a close election. It also leaves other Republicans with precious little room to oppose Trump on his policy preferences for fear of retribution from within the party.
“There is no challenge to the president,” declared John Watson, a former supporter of Kasich who now leads the Georgia Republican Party. “The party is in near-unanimous lock step in support of him, certainly at the activist and delegate level.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.