But Trump had a vested interest in helping dictate the leadership and direction of one state party in particular.
In New York, where Trump was born, raised and ruminated for years about a political campaign of his own, the state Republican Party had a leadership change Monday, moving from the genteel leadership of Edward F. Cox, the son-in-law of President Richard M. Nixon, to the grassroots style of Nick Langworthy, of Erie County.
The president and his campaign aides never spoke publicly about Langworthy’s bid to unseat Cox. But for months, top aides to Trump were discussing the race with Langworthy.
The former White House political director, Bill Stepien, was in regular contact with Langworthy, the chairman of the Erie County Republican Party, since December, as Langworthy worked to amass enough support to overtake Cox, according to New York officials briefed on the discussions.
Inside the West Wing, Trump was apprised of what was happening in his home state just over a month ago. Initially, Trump only had minimal interest, but he became more engaged as it became clear that Langworthy was moving ahead, according to people close to the president.
In recent weeks, one of Trump’s White House aides, Dan Scavino, the digital director who is from Dutchess County, spoke with a local Republican official there, conveying that the president “likes” Cox, but couldn’t understand why the party lost control of the state Senate last year, according to one person familiar with the discussion.
Cox had led the party since 2009, taking over just before a wave of Tea Party energy swept a half-dozen Republicans into Democratic-held congressional seats. But he was never able to convert that momentum into something more durable.
In 2014, Cox earned Trump’s enmity, when some New York Republicans tried to draft Trump into the governor’s race, and Cox backed a different candidate.
Roughly two years later, when Trump was forming a team for the New York presidential primary, it largely comprised residents of upstate and western New York, some of whom had worked on the campaign of the insurgent 2010 candidate for governor, Carl Paladino, one of the president’s most vocal supporters in his home state.
“While the New York State GOP declined under Ed Cox, the Erie County Republican Party thrived,” said Michael Caputo, who worked for Paladino during the 2010 race, and helped lead Trump’s efforts in the state in 2016.
“Every time I attend Nick’s monthly grassroots meeting, I see more and more young people,” he added. “He’s got them volunteering, petitioning, voting by the dozens.”
Cox has now gone from getting married in the Rose Garden of the White House decades ago to being given a slot on the Trump campaign finance team as a landing pad.
In a news conference at Republican Party headquarters in Albany on Tuesday, Cox stressed that New York, while not a swing state, remained a critical cog in the fundraising machine.
“New York State can play a role in re-electing President Trump,” Cox said, as he stood alongside Langworthy. “We certainly played a role in 2016, and we can play it in 2020.”
Cox also noted that he would be joining the finance committee with Trump Victory, a joint fundraising committee backing his re-election, and also sought to portray the latest events as a sign of his loyalty and faith in the president. “This is all about President Trump and getting him re-elected,” Cox said.
Yet for Cox, the circumstances of his departure from the state Republican Party were a vivid reminder that Trump’s memories about who supported him — and who did not — do not fade, and can only be overwritten by his needs in the moment.
Cox said he was predicting a Trump victory next year, in what he called “a realignment election,” something he said that his father-in-law, Nixon, had also tried to accomplish, with a coalition of “Southern Democrats along with the Northern ethnics” who often voted for Democratic candidates.
“I think this president can bring in those Democratic voters and realign the party system, into where the Republican Party will be the majority party in the United States,” Cox said. “I look forward to being part of that campaign.”
For his part, Langworthy, an early and ardent supporter of Trump, said he hoped to flip back several congressional seats that Republicans lost in 2018. “In every race we lost, we’re going to go right back at,” he said.
He also insisted that voters would not be as concerned with social issues like abortion, which he conceded Democrats had done a good job of spinning to their advantage with female voters. “This is going to be a pocketbook election,” Langworthy said. “And the Trump economy is on fire.”
“The president,” he said, “is going to be much more popular than people think.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.