Former President Donald Trump’s false claims of a stolen election fueled anger among Republicans who flocked to local-level GOP chapters in hope of playing a greater role in future elections.
Now, some leaders of those grassroots outfits say they and their members have turned the page — even as Trump himself has made it clear that he wants the issue front and center in coming contests.
“People here have turned to the future,” Hai Cao, a member of the Gwinnett County GOP in Georgia, said in an interview.
Fellow members of the local Republican Party “don’t dwell and talk about” 2020, he added, because “we’ll just lose opportunity for future advancement — wins.”
Cao isn’t alone in his thinking. In interviews with more than a dozen local GOP officials in four key presidential battlegrounds, most indicated that they had moved on from the arguments about 2020, a notable shift from some of the most forceful Trump defenders during his second impeachment and through his first year out of office.