Gruters unanimously elected RNC chair, Trump-backed Florida figure

Florida state senator Joe Gruters was unanimously elected Friday to lead the Republican National Committee, taking over as chairman at the party’s summer meeting in Atlanta. Gruters, who has been the RNC’s treasurer and who was backed by President Donald Trump, succeeds Michael Whatley, who left the post to run for the U.S. Senate seat in North Carolina. The selection comes as the party muscles for the 2026 midterm elections and contends with a period of close alignment between the White House and the RNC.

Gruters, 48, brings a long-running record in Republican politics to the chair, including seven years as a Florida lawmaker and a previous stint as chair of the Florida Republican Party. His rise through the ranks mirrors Trump’s ongoing influence over the national party apparatus. Gruters was an early Trump supporter, helped co-chair the 2016 Florida campaign, and has been a steadfast ally of the former president. At the meeting, he asserted that the moment was about the broader mission of expanding Republican majorities and advancing the party’s presidential goals, rather than any single figure.

Florida’s political trajectory during Gruters’s time at the state level is...