Sticking With Trump: Early Supporter Makes Bid for GOP Leader.

Early Donald Trump enthusiast Jim Campbell today joined the race for leader of Connecticut’s crumbling Republican party organization. Formerly of Greenwich, the Westport Republican hails from the region of the state where the party’s decline has been most dramatic. Campbell made no mention of Trump or his ardent support for the loathsome demagogue in a lengthy email announcement to state central committee members.

The Trump effect has eroded the party’s ranks in the state legislature to rump status. Campbell enjoys the quiet support of prominent Trumpists, national committee members Leora Levy and John Frey. Levy was nominated by Trump to serve as ambassador to Chile. The Senate declined to confirm her. Frey survived a close call in his 2018 re-election bid to the state House of Representatives from Ridgefield. He chose not to seek another term in 2020. His seat was won by a Democrat as anti-Republican fury added to its Connecticut cull.

Campbell has gloried in his support for Trump. It’s memorialized in this cringe-inducing New Yorker article, “How Greenwich Republicans Learned to Love Trump.” Much of the rest of the former Republican bastion has not. Joe Biden won 61% of the tony town’s vote in November, leaving Boris and Natasha Republicans like Campbell in a withering minority.

The former Greenwich party chair is an executive with state contractor Frontier Communications. Battered by the communications revolution, Frontier recently emerged from an extended bankruptcy ordeal as a result of changing consumer habits and expensive landline carrier purchases.

The party committee selects a new leader in June.