They’re among the endangered species of the 2016 presidential race: state and county party chairs for Donald Trump’s campaign.
With four weeks to go before the election, Trump campaign Virginia chair Corey Stewart, who got the boot on Monday, is the latest Trump campaign chair to be fired or quit. Some have left under questionable circumstances.
Stewart, who was fired for participating in a protest of the Republican National Committee said he understood why he was let go, noting that he was warned by Trump deputy campaign manager David Bossie against participating. But Stewart said he was protesting what he believed was insufficient financial support to the campaign from the GOP organization.
Bossie, in a statement to The Washington Post, said “Corey made this decision when he staged a stunt in front of the RNC without the knowledge or the approval of the Trump campaign.”
The other losing their jobs include: Brandon Phillips, who stepped down last month as chair of Trump’s Georgia campaign amid a report by an Atlanta television station that he had pleaded guilty to criminal trespassing charges in 2008.
He admitted that he destroyed a laptop and slashed someone’s tires. He received three years probation and was ordered to pay $1,500 in restitution.
Kathy Miller, who was Trump’s campaign chair in Mahoning County, Ohio, also resigned last month after she made racially-insensitive comments to The Guardian.
She told the publication that “I don’t think there was any racism until Obama got elected.” She added that if African Americans “haven’t been successful in the last 50 years, it’s your own fault ... You’ve had every opportunity, it was given to you...You’ve had the same schools everybody else went to. You had benefits to go to college that white kids didn’t have. You had all the advantages and didn’t take advantage of it. It’s not our fault, certainly.”
The Trump Ohio campaign told Politico in a statement announcing Miller’s resignation that county chairs are volunteers who “are not spokespeople for the campaign.”
In August, Earl Phillip was replaced as director of Trump’s campaign effort in North Carolina. Phillip at the time said he was shifting over to become deputy chair of the GOP presidential nominee’s National Diversity Coalition.
But a week later, a Trump North Carolina campaign staffer filed a lawsuit against Phillip charging that Phillip pulled a gun on him.
Vincent Bordini, the staffer, said in the suit filed in Mecklenburg County Superior Court, that he was driving with Phillip in South Carolina in February 2015 when Phillip pulled out a loaded .45 caliber pistol pointed it at him.
Phillip told NBC News in August that “I have retained counsel. I have also stepped down from all affiliation with any and all organizations associated with Donald J. Trump for President to include the campaign and National Diversity Coalition for Trump.”
The travails of Trump state and county chairs is likely indicative of a campaign that came together and hurriedly hired people, perhaps without doing sufficient checking, said Michael Steele, a former Republican National Committee chair.
“That’s all part of the vetting,” Steele said. “Rushing to ramp up to put an organization in place, they weren’t properly vetted. This is the chickens coming home to roost.”
He added: “All of this goes back to the lack of identification and vetting of people who would be representative of the campaign. In some respects, they failed 101 – the basic stuff in getting a campaign running.”
Trump has boasted of his hiring skills -- he took credit last week for his running mate’s measured debate performance, saying he was the one who picked him.
“Mike Pence did an incredible job and I'm getting a lot of credit because that's really my first so-called choice," the Republican presidential nominee said at a rally in Henderson, Nev. “That was my first hire as we would say in Las Vegas.”
But Steele declined to blame Trump himself.
“Donald Trump, when he talks about hiring good people, he means those working directly for him, not 10 floors below,” Steele said.
William Douglas: 202-383-6026, @williamgdouglas
Lesley Clark: 202-383-6054, @lesleyclark