Ronna McDaniel survived a grassroots effort to dethrone her as head of the Republican National Committee on Friday in a race that became a referendum on the party’s poor showing in last year’s midterm elections.
In a secret-ballot election at the RNC’s annual winter meeting, McDaniel comfortably defeated conservative lawyer Harmeet Dhillon, who channeled the anger of activists who blamed McDaniel’s leadership for the party’s repeated setbacks the last three election cycles.
But Dhillon also courted the anti-Trump wing of the RNC, which spent weeks accusing McDaniel of being beholden to former President Donald Trump, in part because he hand-picked her to lead the RNC in 2017. In order for the party to move on from Trump, the argument went, the party needed to move on from McDaniel.
Though these voices represented a distinct minority within the RNC, they hint at the volleys McDaniel will have to endure as the RNC finds itself caught between a former president who demands unyielding loyalty and a crop of 2024 hopefuls trying to wrest the party from him.
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Trump did not endorse McDaniel in the contest even as he offered his backing for lower leadership posts. But his public neutrality — Trump surrogates such as Kellyanne Conway were reportedly there to shore up support for the incumbent — did not spare McDaniel from attacks.
“She’s been Trump’s lap dog for four-plus years,” Bill Palatucci, a committee member from New Jersey, told the Associated Press ahead of the vote.
The RNC’s bylaws require that it remain neutral in a contested GOP primary, something Dhillon, who has close ties to the former president herself as his one-time lawyer, suggested she was in a better position to do.
“I would not have been installed by any particular president, for example,” Dhillon told Time magazine. “That’s an important difference.” McDaniel, for her part, insists she will remain neutral in the 2024 primaries.
Republican strategist John Feehery told the Washington Examiner that while McDaniel is more deferential to Trump than an establishment RNC chair might be, he doesn’t view their relationship as problematic.
“I don't think she's seen as a hardcore Trump person. You know, obviously, she has a good relationship with Trump, and I don't think she's — I think she is impartial. I don't see her as in Trump's back pocket,” he said.
But the complaint lodged against McDaniel echoes criticism the RNC has faced in recent years over its ties to a man who was, and arguably still is, the standard-bearer for the party. Most of the committee’s members joined after Trump became president, and the organization’s fundraising operations became deeply entangled with Trump’s.
Even after he left office, the RNC spent more than $100,000 to hold some of its spring donor retreat at Mar-a-Lago, and it paid Trump’s personal legal fees in what Republicans called “politically motivated” investigations by New York Attorney General Letitia James and then-Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr.
The organization stopped paying Trump’s bills as soon as he announced his third run for the White House.
The RNC, acutely aware that accusations of bias could crop up in 2024, cites this and other steps it’s taken to avoid the appearance of partiality.
“We passed our primary calendar and the rules of our nominating contest last cycle so that that claim couldn't be made,” an RNC official told the Washington Examiner. “Before any candidate got in the race, thought about getting in the race — because we knew that, not just being neutral, but the perception of neutrality was important because we know that's something that could come up.”
Nonetheless, the committee will have a difficult time convincing the former president’s critics, chief among them the GOP candidates competing against him in the 2024 primary, that the party apparatus won’t tilt the playing field for Trump.
“I think Trump, you know, will see Ronna and everything else at the RNC as part of his operation — because it has been,” GOP strategist Scott Jennings told the Washington Examiner. “This has been basically another extension of him, and so, there has to be extreme vigilance on this front for the process to be fair and for other candidates not to feel like the RNC is putting its thumb on the scale for Trump.”
The RNC is in charge of aspects of the presidential primary, including the GOP debates, meaning opportunities abound for the RNC to get caught between the demands of Trump and the other candidates.
“I don't know what it's gonna be, but I guarantee you, Ronna is going to face situations where Trump is going to want X and the other candidates are going to want Y, and sorting that out is going to be difficult,” Jennings said.
Possible White House hopefuls largely kept their powder dry in the race for RNC chair, but the last-minute decision by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), believed to be Trump’s chief rival should he run in 2024, previews how the RNC could get caught up in the sniping between DeSantis and the former president.
“I think we need a change. I think we need to get some new blood in the RNC. I like what Harmeet Dhillon said about getting the RNC out of D.C.,” DeSantis said on a podcast one day before the Friday election. “I do think we need some fresh thinking.”
DeSantis did not mention Trump or his relationship with McDaniel, but Feehery believes the move was an attempt by the Florida governor to channel grassroots anger at the RNC to build support for his own candidacy.
Until recently, that anger basically came from the handful of Trump critics in the Republican Party willing to speak out against him. Former Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) accused McDaniel of “carrying water” for Trump after the RNC voted to censure then-Reps. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) and Liz Cheney (R-WY) for sitting on the Jan. 6 committee, which built the case that Trump was responsible for the storming of the Capitol.
The censure “shows more about them than us,” Kinzinger said at the time. “It shows that Trump and Trumpism has overtaken the RNC.”
That chorus is expected to grow in a 2024 primary in which many Republicans will be making the case that it’s time for the party to move past Trump.
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Jennings believes McDaniel will be able to navigate the unusual circumstance of a former president running for reelection in an open primary, despite the possible pitfalls.
“I have some confidence in her,” he said. “I think she's a very good person. She has been put into some difficult situations, and I'm glad she won. And, you know, I think she'll be perfectly fine and capable of handling this.”