Wake GOP, struggling to win elections, invites U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to gala
Georgia U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a known Republican conspiracy theorist in Congress, will be the Wake County Republican Party’s keynote speaker next week at a Roaring Twenties-themed gala.
Greene, who consistently generates national headlines for her controversial views, is a strong campaign fundraiser, and she has been popular with parts of the Republican base. Tickets for the Wake County event on Sept. 23 run between $80 and $125 a person.
Wake party chair Donna Williams said the party didn't invite Greene to be controversial.
"I'm very excited about having her come," Williams said. "As you know she is a strong female Republican ... she just won her primary, and she won it mightily.
Greene’s visit may prove awkward for GOP candidates in Wake County trying to regain a foothold for the party, which has struggled to elect candidates in the left-leaning county.
The gala is scheduled for the same day, and nearly the same time, that former President Donald Trump will visit to Wilmington for a rally to support Republican U.S. Senate nominee Ted Budd. Budd faces Democrat Cheri Beasley, Libertarian Shannon Bray and Green Party nominee Matthew Hoh.
It's also the same weekend as the Salt & Light Conference in Charlotte, an annual conservative gathering that features U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-CO, and other conservatives.
Only one Republican represents Wake County in the General Assembly, which has 13 seats in the body. That’s state Rep. Erin Paré, who said Thursday that she won’t attend the gala.
“I’m not going to be a part of that that night,” said Paré, adding that she plans to attend a Holly Springs High School football game with her family.
“I’m a Republican, but I’m also my own person,” Paré said. “I guess I don’t have any comment beyond that.”
Some Republicans were starkly critical of the decision to invite Greene.
“I wonder why @wakegop never wins anything anymore,” Brent Woodcox, a legislative attorney for the top Republican in the North Carolina Senate, said on Twitter. “A convention of willingly duped morons and easy marks for grifters and con men. The institutional Republican Party is worthless and actively makes it harder for conservatives to achieve meaningful political victories.”
Greene’s office didn’t respond Thursday to a request for comment.
Greene has embraced a number of conspiracy theories over the years and supported Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Before her election in 2020, posts on Greene’s Facebook page trafficked in far-right extremism, including suggestions that Democratic elected officials should be executed. At one point she questioned whether space-based lasers ignited a California wildfire.
As a member of Congress, Greene compared COVID-19 masking rules to the Nazi treatment of Jewish people during the holocaust, for which she later apologized.
Williams said that "throughout our history we always have people who are questioning things."
"I'm not afraid of that," she said.
Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger, who is hoping Republicans pick up seats in the November elections so GOP lawmakers can overturn Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s vetoes next year, said he didn’t know Greene was coming to North Carolina until WRAL News asked him about it at an event Thursday.
“She wins elections in her district,” Berger said. “There are people in both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party that win elections in their district that don’t sell so well in other parts of the country.”
