Chair of the Republican National Committee
Whatley has a track record of emphasizing election integrity, but some of his critics say he needs to amp up his efforts.
The Republican
National Committee (RNC) replaced its
chairwoman Ronna McDaniel with
the now-former North Carolina Republican
Party (NCGOP) chair Michael Whatley, who
was the Trump-backed frontrunner. Ever
since Whatley's name was floated, the
corporate media predictably deployed the
"election denier" smear they assign to
any Republican who has ever shown an
interest in protecting the integrity of
elections.
Whatley has a track
record of emphasizing election integrity
- and that's enough, in the eyes of the
corporate press, to paint him as a
radical election-denying extremist. But
with the high stakes of the 2024
election cycle, some of Whatley's
critics say he needs to amp up his
election integrity efforts to another
level in his anticipated post at the
RNC.
Attacks From The Corporate Media
Whatley, who had served as NCGOP
chair since narrowly defeating his
opponents Jim Womack and John Lewis in
2019, has been the target of
hand-wringing pieces from corporate
media ever since he was tapped as former
President Trump's choice to lead the
RNC.
In an MSNBC column, North
Carolina Democratic Party Chair Anderson
Clayton clutched her pearls about the
"danger" Whatley poses.
"It's
clear that Trump is looking for an RNC
leader who won't hesitate to
disenfranchise voters, rig elections or
dismantle our democracy," Clayton
melodramatically wrote. "[Whatley] has
helped lead efforts to defy the will of
the people and infringe on North
Carolinians" rights."
CNN ran a
piece entitled "Likely frontrunner for
RNC chair parroted Trump's 2020 election
lies."
Multiple outlets
affiliated with States Newsroom - a
network launched by a Democrat
dark-money group - shuddered at the
thought that Whatley teamed up with
organizations like Cleta Mitchell's
Election Integrity Network that trains
poll watchers, under the headline:
"Trump's pick for RNC chief worked with
top election denier's group."
Russia hoax lawyer Marc Elias" Democracy
Docket joined in the attacks, saying
Trump's "endorsement of Whatley signals
that the party is continuing down its
path of pushing false election fraud
narratives ahead of the November general
election."
What did Whatley do to
be smeared as an election conspiracy
theorist? In November 2020, he alleged
that there was "massive fraud" in
"places like Milwaukee and Detroit and
Philadelphia." Of course, even the
Associated Press has admitted the
existence of voter fraud in the 2020
election, just simply not enough for
their liking to denote it as
"widespread."
As Whatley told
CNN, "changes to the 2020 election
process " weakened safeguards on
absentee and mail-in votes in some
states," which "led to distrust by many
across the country."
Whatley's Work
on Election Integrity
Whatley's
supporters tout major wins for the
state's courts and election integrity
efforts under his leadership.
"I
think [election integrity] is probably
[Whatley's] greatest strength," Nash
County Republican Party Chair Mark
Edwards said. "Coming out of the 2020
election there was a lot of angst and
energy among Republicans about election
integrity and rather than stoke some of
the more outlandish and extreme and
outrageous reactions to what happened in
2020, Whatley stood above it and saw
that this is where the concerns of the
party were."
"He took it upon
himself to grab the election integrity
issue by the horns and direct that
energy into productive use by setting up
the Election Integrity Review Committee
within the party," Edwards added,
crediting Whatley with "hiring legal
staff to help head up the election
integrity efforts of the party, and work
very closely with Republican legislators
to craft legislation that was drafted,
introduced and passed and is now being
implemented."
The NCGOP
established the Election Integrity
Committee in 2021 to recruit, train and
send out attorneys and poll watchers to
observe "absentee-by-mail approval
meetings, early voting polls, election
day polls, county canvasses, recount
meetings, and protest hearings."
In 2022, "Whatley doubled down on his
efforts to recruit and train poll
observers and lawyers," said former
NCGOP legal counsel Philip Thomas. The
NCGOP was unable to provide numbers for
how many poll watchers were appointed
over the course of Whatley's tenure.
Whatley critic Jay DeLancy, however,
said it might be difficult for the NCGOP
to obtain that data since individual
counties appoint observers and the
process is decentralized.
Senior
legal fellow at the Conservative
Partnership Institute Cleta Mitchell
said Whatley "understands that there is
more to winning elections than just
turning out votes and voters."
"He has a sense of the need to focus on
the election system itself," Mitchell
added. "While sometimes he has too
narrow a focus, such as thinking that
volunteer lawyers on Election Day will
somehow overcome the billions of dollars
that the left has invested in changing
the entire voting system in our country,
Michael is at least aware that there is
more to winning than the historic or
traditional "If we have a good candidate
and good issues and a good campaign, our
side will win." Those days are long gone
and at some level, Michael understands
that."
Whatley also created the
Judicial Victory Fund, which states its
goal is "raising the resources needed to
support statewide conservative judicial
candidates."
NCGOP
Communications Director Matt Mercer said
the fund is "something that really can't
be overstated enough."
"Whatley
campaigned on "Reset in Raleigh" and
overturning a 6-1 Republican deficit on
the Supreme Court," Mercer said.
"Whatley has been undefeated [in
judicial races] in 2020 and 2022 with
the Judicial Victory Fund and the
partners at the county and district
levels."
Mercer also credits
Whatley with helping get voter ID "past
the finish line" by flipping the balance
of the court, adding while the NCGOP
will miss him, "it's going to be a
benefit for the RNC to have someone of
his caliber there."
The fund was
particularly handy during the 2020
election for the North Carolina Supreme
Court's chief justice between Democrat
incumbent Cheri Beasley and Republican
Associate Justice Paul Newby. Beasley
refused to concede after she lost by
about 400 votes, and attempted to
restore thousands of ballots. Of the
2,800 of those ballots analyzed by The
News & Observer at the time, 70 percent
belonged to Democrats and just nine
ballots belonged to Republicans.
Some of the ballots Beasley tried to
force election officials to accept were
ballots that had already been counted,
WRAL News reported. But the NCGOP says
her attempts ultimately failed after
they used resources from the Judicial
Victory Fund to fight back.
Republicans also managed to flip the
balance of the state's Supreme Court in
2022 after Republicans Trey Allen and
Richard Dietz won their races, giving
Republicans a 5-2 majority.
"If
you're a state party chairman and you
don't have critics, you probably aren't
doing your job," former chairman of the
NCGOP Tom Fetzer told The Federalist.
"It's something that anybody who has
ever been a state party chairman accepts
and deals with."
GOP Critics Say
Whatley Could Do More
Womack and
John Kane, who tried to unseat Whatley
in 2022, say he is being given too much
credit and should be doing more for
election integrity.
"He's taking
credit for [the Judicial Victory Fund]
as a great accomplishment, but the
credit needs to be shared with the
attorneys that were working on the
judicial campaigns, there were different
districts that were raising money,"
Womack said.
And when it comes
to fighting to secure elections, Womack
said the real effort comes from the RNC.
In October, the NCGOP and RNC intervened
in a lawsuit wherein Democrats attacked
a state senate bill that "prevents
non-citizens from voting, protects
bipartisan poll watchers, and eliminates
dark money in elections."
"The
RNC is taking the lead on their lawyers
so the NCGOP is just saying, "Me too,'"
Womack told The Federalist. "We do have
a general counsel who is pretty good but
the RNC is the one floating all these
costs for the lawsuits nationwide."
Aside from the RNC's election integrity
efforts, he added, grassroots
Republicans have also worked behind the
scenes to ensure the state has a fair
process.
This criticism was
echoed by Executive Director of Voter
Integrity Project of North Carolina, Jay
DeLancy, who claimed the NCGOP only
addressed allegations of dead people
voting in the Beasley-Newby race after
his organization took the lead and began
investigating.
"It wasn't [the
NCGOP] idea, it was ours," DeLancy said,
adding however that he was pleased the
NCGOP helped ramp up efforts. DeLancy
also argued that while he has "no
complaints about [the NCGOP] lawsuits"
and said he gives "credit" to the
"effective" legal action that was taken,
securing elections starts from the
bottom up.
"Election integrity
takes creativity, you have to think
about how the bad guys are doing things
and get into the process," he said.
"What we're more concerned with is
day-to-day ground game and where people
are cheating, where the rubber meets the
road at the polls."
"When things
go south at the polls, we train our poll
workers to pull out the law and show the
clerk where they're wrong. [NCGOP]
doesn't, they just say "call us""and log
it unless they feel they can take legal
action," DeLancy added. "I would love to
have seen someone who took election
integrity seriously as RNC chairman but
at the end of the day, all they really
care about is get out the vote efforts
and they're not serious about election
integrity."
Mitchell expressed
similar thoughts, saying while
recruiting volunteer lawyers and poll
observers is "absolutely vital," she
hopes Whatley "will be open to hearing
about and understanding" that
Republicans need to "fight the left on
every single issue and every inflection
point regarding the election system."
"We cannot hope to counter their
massive funding and organizational
advantage that has nothing to do with
the DNC or the normal political
campaigns," Mitchell said. "We are in a
different world now and hopefully,
Michael and the new RNC leadership will
want to learn and do something about it.
Banking early votes or ballot harvesting
as a singular strategy has the left
rolling in the aisles laughing at us."
Womack and Kane also expressed
concerns about whether Whatley could
actually fundraise for the party.
"The state party would be broke if
it weren't for RNC subsidies," Womack
said. Kane also attributed the state
party's funds to the RNC.
Womack
acknowledged, however, that Whatley
likely wouldn't need to worry about
doing all the heavy lifting when it
comes to fundraising because Trump would
be able to drum up most of the support
himself.
"Trump's train has left
the station," Womack said. "I think he's
gonna do well regardless of who the RNC
chair is so I'm guessing it really
doesn't matter who leads the RNC."
Brianna Lyman is an elections correspondent at The Federalist.