New Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley told the great and good of the New York GOP Thursday night that he wanted to get more Republicans to vote early via mail ahead of the November election — despite previous criticisms of the practice by presumptive nominee Donald Trump.
“In order to get out the vote, we’re going to have to work, double down, on registering those new Republican voters,” Whatley told the New York Republican Committee’s annual gala in Manhattan.
“We are going to use our technology, and advances in digital data to target those voters, and we’re going to go talk to them.”
Trump, 77, has attacked mail-in voting as “totally corrupt,” as a surge in early ballots cast amid the COVID-19 pandemic helped push President Biden over the top four years ago.
The 45th president has said in recent weeks that mail-in voting leads to “fraud,” and promised Wisconsin residents at a rally earlier this week that he would “secure” elections with “one-day voting.”
But Whatley said Thursday night he doesn’t “care” how people vote, so long as they vote Republican.
“Over 50% of all voters in the United States, including Republicans and independents, are going to vote before Election Day,” he said. “We have to talk to them before they vote. We need to build a national early vote program that is going to communicate through door knocks, through phone calls, through mail, through digital, through data, but we can’t wait till the week before the election.
“Voters can vote early. They can vote on Election Day, they can vote by mail. Do I care how they vote? No I do not. I care that they vote,” Whatley added, promising the RNC would “recruit hundreds of thousands of volunteers” to have five-minute conversations with would-be voters.
The RNC had previously discussed their plan to target potential early voters in states like Michigan and Pennsylvania.
“We’ll have early voting in Michigan for the first time, we’ll take advantage of it,” an RNC rep told reporters in a press call last week. “Mail ballots are not very old in Pennsylvania — we’ll have an opportunity to grow that. Ballot harvesting is legal in Nevada under certain circumstances, we’ll take advantage of that.”
Whatley, who was endorsed by Trump to assume the chairmanship after the former president nudged Ronna McDaniel out — also joked Thursday about his ascension in the RNC.
“When President Trump called and talked to me for the first time about taking over the RNC, and I’ll tell you just a really quick funny story — somebody asked me, at the RNC [spring] meeting … ‘What was it like when President Trump called and asked you to do this?’” he riffed.
“I said, ‘He didn’t,’” Whatley continued.
“Wait, what? He didn’t call you?” he went on, describing the other end of the conversation.
“I said, ‘Oh, he called, but he didn’t ask,’” Whatley concluded to laughter from the audience.
Whatley was unanimously elected as chair at the meeting in Houston last month after receiving Trump’s support — and with no one running against him.
RNC members told The Post the result of the election was basically pre-determined, given the known preference of the presumptive GOP nominee.
Trump also tapped his daughter in law Lara to be co-chair and top adviser Chris LaCivita to be RNC chief of staff.
The Trump campaign did not respond to an inquiry from The Post.