ATLANTA – The Republican National Committee on Friday unanimously chose Florida state Sen. Joe Gruters as its next chairman, placing him in charge of the party apparatus that will be responsible for defending dozens of congressional seats next year.
Gruters, who has spent the past seven months as RNC treasurer, will step in to replace Michael Whatley, who resigned to run for the U.S. Senate in his home state. He takes the gavel midway through the election cycle, a scenario that echoes 2024, when Whatley assumed control from Ronna McDaniel, allowing Trump allies to guide the party once he locked up the GOP nomination.
“The midterms are ahead, where we must expand our majority in the House, the Senate, and continue electing Republicans nationwide, and then we march forth towards the presidential election, where the stakes cannot be higher,” Gruters said after he was elected on Friday.
Scott Golden, a longtime friend of Gruters who currently chairs the Tennessee Republican Party, nominated him during the meeting on Friday.
“When you start looking at his resume, you will see 20 years worth of political involvement at every single level,” Golden said in his nomination speech. “He’s been a volunteer, a staffer, a party, local party chairman, the vice chairman of the Florida Republican Party, the chairman of the Florida Republican Party, a state representative, a state senator, ultimately, our treasurer, RNC committee man. He has been in every one of the positions that you and I currently serve.”
President Donald Trump weighed in on both transitions last month, endorsing Gruters for chairman and urging Republicans to rally behind Whatley in North Carolina. Gruters ultimately ran unopposed for the chairmanship with the president’s support.
In his farewell remarks, Whatley praised the committee’s role in Trump’s return to the White House and framed 2024 as a historic political victory.
“We can only continue this great work by keeping and expanding our majority in the House and Senate. We must ensure that President Trump and his congressional Republicans have Republicans in his corner,” Whatley said on Friday. “We have a choice, two more years of a golden age, or two more years of impeachment and radical democratic schemes.”
Whatley praised Gruters’s leadership, highlighting the surge in Republican voter registration in Florida during his tenure as state party chair. He credited Gruters with helping transform Florida “from a purple state to a red state” and said that’s the momentum he intends to carry nationwide.
Good morning from the RNC’s summer meeting where the group is expected to quickly elect President Donald Trump’s candidate of choice, Florida State Sen. Joe Gruters, as its next chair. pic.twitter.com/vVsM3mOpn3
— Samantha-Jo Roth (@SamanthaJoRoth) August 22, 2025
There’s a certain symmetry in Gruters succeeding Whatley as RNC chairman. During the 2020 Republican National Convention, it was Whatley who moved to nominate Trump, and Gruters who seconded it. At the time, both were leading GOP state parties in key battlegrounds that Trump carried, even as Joe Biden ultimately won the presidency.
A seasoned Florida lawmaker and early supporter of Trump, Gruters represents the Sarasota area in the state Senate and previously chaired the Republican Party of Florida. He also helped lead Trump’s 2016 Florida campaign alongside Susie Wiles, now the White House’s chief of staff.
Gruters’s connection to Trump goes back more than a decade. In 2012, after GOP leaders denied Trump a speaking slot at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Gruters invited him to Sarasota, where he presented the future president with a “Statesman of the Year” award, well before Trump entered politics.
But Gruters’s close ties to Trump stand in sharp contrast to his rocky relationship with Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL). Their feud deepened during the 2024 presidential primary, when Gruters openly backed Trump over his home-state governor. Just weeks ago, DeSantis bypassed Gruters for a chief financial officer appointment and publicly dismissed his conservative credentials.
“If George Washington rose from the dead and came back and tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Will you appoint Joe Gruters CFO?’” DeSantis quipped. “My response would be, no.”
Gruters downplayed talk of a lingering feud with DeSantis, even floating the governor as a possible guest speaker for the Michigan Republican Party.
“I reached out to the governor’s team, and I think he’s going to do it,” Gruters told Florida Politics. “I’m focused on building bridges, that’s what I do. I appreciate the important role the governor plays in our party.”
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While Gruters plans to serve through 2028, his immediate task is defending the GOP’s fragile congressional majorities. In the House, Republicans hold 191 safe seats to Democrats’ 175, but dozens of districts remain competitive, including 19 rated as toss-ups. In the Senate, the GOP’s 53–47 edge faces pressure in just a handful of battlegrounds, with North Carolina, Maine, Iowa, Ohio, and Texas among the races to watch.
With Republicans holding the White House and Congress, the RNC has posted strong fundraising numbers and enters the midterm season with a sizable cash advantage over Democrats. Gruters used his last treasury report to highlight the committee’s $84 million war chest.
“We are in great shape from a financial standpoint because of Michael Whatley, because our chairman has been grinding and has been doing fundraising meeting after fundraising meeting,” Gruters said.