Georgia Republican Party Chair David Shafer criticized Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) after Herschel Walker lost the Georgia Senate runoff. Shafer said the NRSC didn’t provide enough support, according to an internal Republican National Committee (RNC) email chain obtained by Politico.
“Tuesday was a tough day in Georgia. Herschel was massively outspent, maybe 3 to 1 in a four week period of time and still held his own,” Shafer said in an email sent the day after the election.
“We used our RNC transfer dollars for the ground game and were forced to raise money from entirely within the state for our critically important mail program. Two weeks out, we were $2.5 million short when I sent what was for me an embarrassing email begging the other state parties for help,” he said.
He credited RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel with helping fill the fundraising gap.
“Ronna spent most of Thanksgiving week haranguing United States Senators and her major donors asking them to help us, and she came through in a big way,” he wrote. “She alone filled $1.9 million of the shortfall. THANK YOU.”
In August, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said that candidate quality could keep the GOP from flipping the Senate. In his Wednesday email, Shafer said the comments were unhelpful.
National Republicans like McConnell, NRSC Chairman Senator Rick Scott (R-FL), and McDaniel are targets of criticism after Republicans failed to take the Senate majority this year.
Other Republicans have criticized McDaniel and the RNC for not embracing early voting, allowing Senator Raphael Warnock (D-GA) to get a head start on early voting in Democrat-leaning counties. Other RNC members have put themselves forward as candidates for RNC Chair. In Georgia, a November survey of 551 state GOP insiders found McDaniel only had 7.6 percent support, with a four percent margin of error. GA GOP Second Vice Chair Brant Frost said there would be another survey soon.
Shafer defended McDaniel against criticism for not issuing a statement about former President Donald Trump meeting with Nick Fuentes and Kanye West.
“I feel for Ronna in the sense that I have spent much of my four years as Chairman of the Georgia Republican Party dealing with various requests and demands that I use my platform to denounce other Republicans,” Shafer wrote in a November 26 email in the same thread obtained by Politico. He said the Georgia runoff “does not grip the national imagination the way it did two years ago because there is no way for us to get to 51.”
Shafer didn’t return a request for comment.
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Eric Burk is a reporter at The Virginia Star and The Star News Network. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “David Shafer” by David Shafer. Photo “Mitch McConnell” by Gage Skidmore. CC BY-SA 2.0. Background Photo “U.S. Capitol” by Ramaz Bluashvili.
