After just 10 weeks on the job Postmaster General of the United States Postal Service, Louis DeJoy is at the center of a swirling controversy following the slowdown of mail services ahead of the 2020 election.
DeJoy’s long history as a Republican fundraiser, which includes millions he’s personally donated to GOP candidates, has left many questioning whether the slow-downs are politically motivated.
Since the mid-1990s, DeJoy and his wife, Aldona Wos, have contributed over $3 million to federal Republican candidates. They donated two-thirds of that total since the start of the 2016 cycle, giving $1.2 million to a joint fundraising committee that distributed that money to President Donald Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee.
DeJoy’s political affiliations have led some to speculate that mail slowdowns at the postal service since he took over may be politically motivated. For the last several months, Trump has made baseless claims that mail-in voting is rife with fraud as Democrats push for its expansion amid a pandemic that may make in-person voting a health risk.
These concerns came to a head when, two months after DeJoy entered office, Trump appeared to announce that he was refusing extra funds for USPS in a Democrat-backed stimulus bill citing the express purpose of stymying mail-in voting,
Meanwhile, DeJoy’s efforts to lower USPS’ overhead, including calling for an end to overtime work for post office employees and directing couriers to leave with partially-filled trucks if all mail is not loaded by strict deadlines, slowed mail service across the country. Days after Trump’s remarks, news outlets reported that mail sorting machines were being removed from post offices across the country.
DeJoy testified before the House Oversight Committee Monday that service was already speeding up after an initial slowdown and that he was confident in the agency’s ability to deliver in an election that may see tens of millions of mail-in ballots.
As well as contributing to Republican lawmakers’ election bids, DeJoy and his wife, Aldona Wos, have hosted GOP fundraisers for decades. These include many in their Greensboro, N.C., home that, replete with a gold leaf-painted staircase, is known as “the castle.”
Trump made his first presidential appearance at a fundraiser in DeJoy’s home in October 2017, months after DeJoy was named a deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee. In 2019, DeJoy was made the National Finance Chairman of the Republican National Committee, which at the time was to be held in Charlotte, N.C.
DeJoy’s wife, Wos, has also benefited from their fundraising. Wos served as the vice-chairwoman of George W. Bush’s North Carolina fundraising team and was then appointed by the former president as ambassador to Estonia. After her time as ambassador, Wos, a practicing doctor for many years, served as the Secretary of North Carolina’s Department Health and Human Services.
Under Trump, she served as the vice-chairwoman of the President’s Commission on White House Fellowships beginning in 2017. Trump nominated Wos to be U.S. ambassador to Canada in February. She has yet to be confirmed by the Senate.
Yet DeJoy’s allies attribute his appointment as postmaster general not to his fundraising success, but to his demonstrated acumen in the logistics business. After college, DeJoy took over his small family trucking business, New Breed Logistics, and over two decades transformed it into a major firm that sold to XPO Logistics in 2014 for $615 million. Part of the success can be attributed to contracts with USPS, as well as other government agencies.
Following the acquisition, DeJoy served as the CEO of XPO’s supply chain business until 2015, and maintained a spot on XPO’s board of directors until 2018.
DeJoy no longer works for XPO, but holds a stake in the company that, according to Washington Post reporting, is worth somewhere between $30 million and $75 million. He and his wife also have a smaller stake in other USPS competitors including UPS.
DeJoy’s involvement with New Breed and XPO have raised alarms for critics. Both companies were marred by scandal under DeJoy’s watch. He was accused of anti-union hiring practices in the ‘90s as New Breed CEO, and in 2013, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission successfully sued the company over employee claims of sexual harassment and discrimination.
In 2018, the New York Times published an investigation into a warehouse acquired by XPO from New Breed following the on-the-job death of a warehouse worker and multiple miscarriages by female employees. The employees alleged that their supervisors ignored requests for lighter workloads, even when they were backed up by doctor’s notes.
The years after leaving New Breed were DeJoy’s most substantial as a Republican Donor. Dejoy and Wos passed the $1 million mark in contributions for the first and only time in the 2018 cycle. In the 2020 cycle, DeJoy had already contributed more to Republican campaigns than he had in any election except 2018, $568,000. His last contribution came in April, one month before he was announced as USPS’s appointee to Postmaster General, and seven months before the election.
A May 6 press release from the USPS Board of Governors, a bipartisan board appointed by Trump to lead the agency, praised DeJoy for his business success in the fields of shipping and logistics.
Just shy of a week before the announcement, then-Board of Governors member David Williams resigned from his post. In an August testimony to the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Williams cited Dejoy’s then-imminent appointment and political pressure from the Trump administration, specifically from Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, as the reason for his resignation. Williams was followed by former board member and Deputy Postmaster General Ronald Stroman
“It became clear to me that the administration was politicizing the Postal Service with the Treasury Secretary as the lead figure for the White House in that effort,” Williams said in his opening statement.
Still, DeJoy’s appointment by the Board of Governors was unanimous. Currently, the board is made up of two Democrats and Four Republicans.
Congressional Democrats have alleged foul play in the selection of DeJoy as appointee. Robert Duncan, chairman of the Board of Governors, has denied any wrongdoing in the selection process. Duncan is also the director of pro-Trump super PAC American Crossroads and the Republican super PAC, Senate Leadership Fund. Duncan himself has also been a major Republican donor, and appeared via video conference along with DeJoy at Monday’s hearing on the state of the agency.
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