DANA POINT, California – Ronna McDaniel fended off an aggressive challenge on Monday to win a fourth two-year term as chairman of the Republican National Committee, persuading enough members that three consecutive bad elections for the party are not her fault.
McDaniel, who led the Michigan state party during the attempted coup by former President Donald Trump to install him as national chairman, defeated California RNC member Harmeet Dhillon 111-51 in a secret ballot. Pillowmonger-turned-Election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell won by 4 votes. Lee Zeldin got one vote, even though he was not an official candidate.
After the unexpected big margin was announced, McDaniel brought Dhillon and Lindell on stage with him. Grinning, he thanked her and promised to work together.
“We need everything,” he said. “With us united and all of us together, Democrats will listen to us in 2024.”
The race is the first contested election for the top post since 2011, when Wisconsin state chairman Reince Priebus defeated Michael Steele. However, the race was not as contentious as Dhillon’s campaign against McDaniel, who accused McDaniel of trying to bribe committee members with plums and other perks as well as using RNC devices to help get re-elected.
How McDaniel will handle the GOP’s biggest issue — Trump’s continued influence on the party — remains unclear. Republicans lost the House in 2018, the Senate and the White House in 2020, and barely won the House again while losing another seat in the Senate in 2022, when they hoped to have a strong year. In all three elections, exit polls show that Trump is a strong motivating factor in driving away Democrats and persuading swing voters to vote for Republicans.
Republican leaders in general, and at the RNC this week, remain divided over how to handle the former president — who is now the only announced candidate for the GOP nomination in 2024. Party officials see him as unpopular with the swing bloc. Voters made him a poor choice in the general election but, with a few notable exceptions, agreed that the party could not win without hard-line supporters.
One member of the RNC said on condition of anonymity that a secret poll today committee will find the most ready to move from Trump. “This was not true a year ago,” the member said.
Trump, who initially said he would support McDaniel for a fourth term, has remained officially neutral in recent weeks, although many of his top allies — including former White House adviser Kellyanne Conway and Trump’s current chief of political operations, Susie Wiles — have. proved McDaniel.
Dhillon, meanwhile, won the support of both pro-Trump and anti-Trump voices in the RNC membership as well as from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who said the party needs new leadership.
Dhillon, the election lawyer who represented Trump in the successful attempt to run out the clock in the subpoena of the House January 6 committee, dealt with Trump’s question by playing both sides of it. He has criticized the Republican-leaning law firm for failing to represent Trump in multiple lawsuits trying to overturn his 2020 election loss — but then also boasted that he refused to participate in similar post-election lawsuits.
New Jersey RNC member Bill Palatucci, among several members of the RNC publicly advocated a break from Trump, but supported Dhillon. He said McDaniel’s failure to admonish Trump for his racist attacks on his own transportation secretary, Elaine Chao, and his insults to Republican governors Glenn Youngkin of Virginia and DeSantis of Florida were unacceptable. “You can’t be a political enabler,” he said.
McDaniel’s new term lasts until the 2024 presidential election, which means he will have to guide the party through what will be another tumultuous presidential term while continuing to deal with Trump, who may face criminal charges based on the January 6, 2021 coup. confidential even in the face of a subpoena.