WASHINGTON — The installment of one of President Trump’s financial backers and a longtime Republican donor as the postmaster general is raising concerns among Democrats and ethics watchdogs that the Postal Service will be politicized at a time when states are mobilizing their vote-by-mail efforts ahead of the 2020 election.
The Postal Service’s board of governors on Wednesday night selected Louis DeJoy, a North Carolina businessman and veteran of the logistics industry, to lead the struggling agency, which faces insolvency and has frequently drawn the ire of Mr. Trump. The president has been pushing the post office to increase prices on companies that use it to deliver packages, such as Amazon, and has threatened to withhold funding if sweeping changes are not enacted.
Those changes have failed to get off the ground, but with Mr. DeJoy at the helm there are growing concerns that the nation’s mail carrier could be weaponized.
Mr. Trump declared last month that “the Postal Service is a joke” and assailed it for taking steep losses on packages it ships for big e-commerce companies at low rates. He suggested that the service increase the price it charges companies by four or five times the current rates.
The president has feuded publicly with Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive, over coverage of him by The Washington Post, which Mr. Bezos also owns.
In Mr. DeJoy, Mr. Trump will have an ally who is likely to do his bidding to bring major structural changes. Although Mr. DeJoy is well known among Republican donors, he is about to experience a new level of public scrutiny when he begins the job on June 15.
“GOP is naming a political operative with no USPS experience as the Postmaster General right before an election where millions of people will try to vote by mail to save their own lives,” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, said Thursday on Twitter. “They are eroding our democracy and crushing our public institutions before our very eyes.”
Mr. Trump dispatched Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to oversee an overhaul at the Postal Service, and negotiations over its funding have emerged as a point of tension between Republicans and Democrats. In March, Mr. Mnuchin quashed a bipartisan attempt to send the agency emergency funds, insisting instead that his department be given new authority to lend up to $10 billion to the Postal Service on terms it helps set. Mr. Trump has said the service will receive no additional money until it meets his demands.
Mr. Mnuchin’s agenda has created tension within the upper ranks of the Postal Service as well. The vice chairman of its board of governors, David C. Williams, was so uneasy over the terms being put forward by the Treasury Department that he resigned in recent weeks, lamenting to associates that the agency was being politicized in ways he had not previously experienced, according to people familiar with his thinking. Mr. Williams, who is also a former inspector general for the Postal Service, declined to comment.
Mr. Mnuchin praised the selection of Mr. DeJoy on Thursday and said in a statement that with his experience and leadership, the Postal Service would have a bright future. “He will bring valuable business experience to this important role and help lead the Postal Service to a successful future for the benefit of its employees, suppliers and customers,” Mr. Mnuchin said.
While the Postal Service’s financial straits are a concern, a bigger issue stems from the growing reality that many voters will probably want to cast their 2020 ballot by mail if the coronavirus does not abate or if people do not feel safe gathering at polling places on Nov. 3.
Five states currently conduct voting almost entirely by mail. Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said that she wants a provision in an upcoming economic relief bill that would allow mail-in voting on a national basis. However, many Republicans, including Mr. Trump, have opposed the concept, claiming that it could lead to voter fraud.
Critics of Mr. Trump believe that having Mr. DeJoy run the Postal Service could represent another obstacle to remote voting.
“For vote by mail, this seems like putting a fox in charge of the hen house,” William Kristol, the conservative commentator, said on Twitter. “Should Congress specify ways the Post Office has to cooperate with states’ vote by mail efforts?”
In a letter released on Wednesday, a group of 30 Democratic senators wrote to Mr. Mnuchin urging him to keep politics out of the Postal Service’s business.
“We urge you to reject imposing counterproductive or politically motivated conditions on the pledged $10 billion emergency loan to the U.S.P.S. and any other relief that the U.S.P.S. needs,” they wrote.
The Postal Service appealed to lawmakers last month for an $89 billion lifeline and warned that it could run out of money by the end of September without help. The Postal Service is projecting a $13 billion revenue shortfall this fiscal year because of the pandemic.
While Mr. Trump has suggested that the service could shore up its finances by charging more, it actually makes money from its business with Amazon. If the post office were to sharply raise prices, as Mr. Trump has suggested, Amazon could pull its business and shift to alternatives such as UPS or FedEx.
Mr. Mnuchin said last month that changes to the Postal Service would begin when a new postmaster general was in place. Mr. DeJoy will be taking over for Megan J. Brennan, who assumed the role in 2015 and announced last year that she was retiring.
The conversations about Mr. DeJoy becoming the postmaster general began in January, according to a person familiar with the discussions. Despite those talks, he continued with his role helping with the Republican National Convention, for which he serves as the national finance chairman.
Mr. DeJoy is the chairman and chief executive of New Breed Logistics in North Carolina. In announcing his selection, the Postal Service’s board of governors noted that his company had been a contractor to the service for more than 25 years, offering logistics support to its processing facilities.
Mr. DeJoy, who is originally from Brooklyn, has also spent decades as a major donor to Republicans across the country. This year he has already donated about $360,000 to Trump Victory, a super PAC supporting Mr. Trump’s re-election bid, and thousands to the Republican National Committee, according to federal filings. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog group, estimated that Mr. DeJoy had donated more than $2.5 million to Republican state parties, committees and candidates since 2016.
It is not the first time that the donations have led to prominent jobs for Mr. DeJoy or his family. Earlier this year, Mr. DeJoy’s wife, Aldona Wos, was tapped by Mr. Trump to be the United States ambassador to Canada. Ms. Wos had also served as the ambassador to Estonia under the administration of President George W. Bush in 2004.
That year, The News & Record of Greensboro noted that Mr. DeJoy had a penchant for turning his political connections and donations into profitable government contracts. At the time, Mr. DeJoy cast himself as a humble entrepreneur who probably would have struggled to succeed on a reality television show such as Mr. Trump’s “The Apprentice.”
“I’d be fired,” Mr. DeJoy told the newspaper. “That attitude that you are the most important person is self-destructive.”
Maggie Haberman, Emily Cochrane and Nicholas Fandos contributed reporting