Tag: McDaniel

Ronna McDaniel wins a race for RNC chair that grew very messy by the end

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“We need all of us,” McDaniel told committee members after calling Dhillon and Lindell to join her onstage. “We heard you, grassroots. We know. We heard Harmeet; we heard Mike Lindell… [W]ith us united and all of us joining together, the Democrats are going to hear us in 2024.”
The committee meeting at the Waldorf Astoria Monarch Beach, a luxury seaside resort, illustrated the tense division within the Republican ranks that continue to exist months after the 2022 elections.
Dhillon, whose firm represents former President Donald Trump, raised her profile over the last year with regular appearances on Fox News’ evening programs — garnering support in her bid for chair from a prominent cast of conservative commentators. That list included Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham and Charlie Kirk, who helped mobilize an army of grassroots activists to call and email RNC committee members, urging them to oppose McDaniel’s reelection. But those high-profile figures were not always a value add.
On multiple occasions, on-the-fence members told Dhillon and her allies that they would be open to supporting her if Kirk weren’t one of her surrogates, said Oscar Brock, the national committeeman from Tennessee who was part of her team. Dhillon had assured concerned members that Kirk, a firebrand conservative figure, wouldn’t be part of RNC staff, should she win. But there was never a conversation among her whip team about asking Kirk to dial down his support.
“There probably should have been,” Brock said. “But there wasn’t.”
In an interview Friday, Kirk called McDaniel’s victory “a direct insult to the grassroots people that they send 10 emails a day to, begging for money.”
“I think the RNC is going to have a lot of trouble raising small-dollar donations, a lot of trouble rebuilding trust,” Kirk said. “Going into 2024, the apparatus that should be a machine and clicking on all cylinders and firing on all cylinders is going to be in a trust deficit.”
Kirk wasn’t the only Dhillon ally whose aggressive advocacy ended up turning off members of the committee. Caroline Wren, who most recently ran Kari Lake’s gubernatorial campaign in Arizona, got into a heated exchange with Georgia state Rep. Vernon Jones on Thursday night in the lobby of the Waldorf Astoria.

According to three people familiar with the encounter, Wren, who has been Dhillon’s top adviser in her campaign for chair, told Jones: “Everyone knows you’re here fucking whipping votes for Ronna.” She proceeded to call him a “fucking sell out,” adding that, “the grassroots will never support you again.”
A person familiar with the conversation said Wren had also approached Jones two other times this week, once while he was speaking with an RNC member, during which she called him “the fucking enemy,” and another time as Jones was speaking with Lake, during which she called him a “sellout.”
Wren confirmed she was frustrated with Jones because he had previously said he would support Dhillon. But she downplayed the tenor of Thursday night’s conversation, adding that she even laughed at one point. Asked Friday about the encounter, Jones smiled and shrugged, saying, “there’s not much more to say.”
In addition to relying on prominent conservative figures, Dhillon’s whip team also held calls once or twice weekly, said Brock. But several committee members in recent days said that calls and emails from Dhillon’s team had become too much, eventually solidifying their support for McDaniel.
“I think Harmeet could have taken a different approach and said, ‘The RNC, it isn’t where we want to be. And here’s what it will be like when I become chair,’ without, you know, calling into question the motives of all the people that are a part of the organization,” said Paul Dame, the Vermont Republican Party chair who joined the committee in fall 2021. After remaining undecided for much of the chair race, Dame put his support behind McDaniel this week.
Dhillon drew a last-minute nod of support from Ron DeSantis on Thursday, though it’s unclear whether it swayed any votes. The Florida governor’s decision to weigh in on the race stood in contrast to Trump.
Despite choosing McDaniel as his RNC chair after his 2016 victory, the former president publicly stayed out of this year’s contest, though Dhillon said he sent her a text message through one of his advisers on Wednesday. In the text, Trump joked about disliking one of her endorsers (she declined to say who). Prior to that message, Dhillon hadn’t spoken with the former president since shortly after she announced her chair bid. She said that when she told Trump she was running, he remarked that McDaniel had also announced a campaign.
“He said, ‘OK, well, that’ll be interesting,’” Dhillon recalled. “‘Good luck.’”
While Trump stayed mum, his top aides were privately supporting McDaniel’s reelection bid — though advisers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles disputed the notion that they were whipping votes for her while meeting with members at the Waldorf Astoria in recent days.
Ultimately, McDaniel’s team, with the help of allies, convinced members that a fourth term was earned even after the lackluster midterms. It left Dhillon’s supporters exasperated.
“Ya got me,” said Bill Palatucci, the national committee member from New Jersey, about why his colleagues on the committee overwhelmingly backed McDaniel, despite multiple cycles of GOP disappointments. “That has been my speech to these people on email and via phone calls and meetings here. We just had this terrible midterm cycle, and you guys don’t want to make a change? For whatever reason, they have their heads buried in the sand.”
McDaniel’s bid for a fourth term was a fight before it officially started.
Former Rep. Lee Zeldin, the GOP gubernatorial nominee in New York whose race drew national attention for being closer than expected, floated his name for RNC chair shortly after the midterms. And Palatucci — upset by what he described as McDaniel’s brief “disaster” of a call with RNC members on Nov. 9 — emailed top RNC staff and some members his concerns. In the note, he wrote that McDaniel’s remarks “showed incredible unwillingness to face the reality of what happened last evening,” adding that he and other members “want a real, honest assessment of what happened.”
When she formally announced her bid on Nov. 14, McDaniel held a lengthy call with members — taking questions and making her case for why she should continue in the role. McDaniel had previously told members in 2021 she would not seek another term after her third.
By the end of the week, McDaniel had assembled a list of more than 100 members publicly supporting her. Just after Thanksgiving, she announced she was launching a “Republican Party Advisory Council” to “review” the party’s electoral performance in 2022.
Last week, McDaniel sent members a document she called her “Vision for Unity,” which included plans to improve Republicans’ “legal ballot collecting” efforts, find new tactics for small-dollar fundraising that has suffered in recent years, and boosting the youth vote. In the document, first reported by POLITICO, McDaniel made an appeal to members who were inclined to support Dhillon, saying she would work with Dhillon and Lindell over the next two years in an effort to unite all corners of the GOP.
“I look forward to uniting once again as a Party and working together, alongside Harmeet and Mike, to heal as a Party and elect Republicans,” McDaniel wrote.
Rachael Bade contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

January 28, 2023
Why the Senate GOP’s McDaniel for RNC caucus is surprisingly small

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Though Cramer isn’t calling for McDaniel to be replaced, his shrug-emoji reaction is widespread among many GOP lawmakers. That has more to do with large-scale political changes than her personally: The more that super PACs, party committees and candidate fundraising have decentralized the party, the less enmeshed Republican lawmakers are in the RNC structure.
As Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) put it on Tuesday: “I don’t know what the RNC does. I really don’t.”
Yet McDaniel’s chilly reception from some Republicans also stems from her mixed record, which includes an eyebrow-raising move to censure two former House Republicans who joined the Jan. 6 committee. With the GOP facing an identity crisis after Donald Trump left the White House, the RNC chair is poised to play a pivotal role in the party’s navigation of an open presidential primary next year. And senior Senate Republicans aren’t exactly clamoring for two more years of McDaniel.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and GOP Whip John Thune are both avoiding an endorsement of any candidate in the RNC race. A handful of notable Republican senators do support McDaniel, including Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Thom Tillis (N.C.) and her cousin Mitt Romney (Utah), who said that “we don’t always agree on all policies, but I stand with family.”
“She has been so helpful to Iowa, in really fleshing out the first-in-the-nation caucus … she does a great job,” said No. 4 Senate Republican Joni Ernst of Iowa. “She can promote Republican candidates as much as possible and try to hold our party together. But at the end of the day, you have to have candidates that will make their case.”
National Republican Senatorial Committee Chair Steve Daines (R-Mont.) and Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) also signed a letter backing McDaniel. Emma Vaughn, a spokesperson for McDaniel’s RNC campaign, said that “Just like the RNC, Chairwoman McDaniel’s decision to run for re-election was member-driven.”
“Support for the chairwoman among members and leaders from across the ecosystem has grown since her announcement,” Vaughn said.
But most Republican senators want nothing to do with the RNC race. Several said they didn’t even know when the vote is (it’s Friday).

“I have a lot of things on my plate. That’s not one of them. I wish them all well,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas).
One thing that unites both McDaniel backers and those who care little about the race is that they don’t see the RNC as primarily accountable for the GOP’s recent election performances. That’s in part because of Trump’s outsized sway since McDaniel took over the national party.
What’s more, the days of Howard Dean’s 50-state DNC strategy or Haley Barbour’s storied reign atop the RNC appear to be in the past. These days, there are major limitations to the level of control either the RNC or the DNC have over the two major political parties.
“If we’re going to blame losing on a national committee chairman, we’ve got problems. They don’t control that much,” said Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.)
One reason congressional Republicans aren’t calling for McDaniel to be replaced is that they are uncertain about her challengers. There is no GOP equivalent to Pete Buttigieg, who achieved a level of national-politics wunderkind status by running for DNC chair in 2017.
Mike Lindell, one of McDaniel’s challengers who is colloquially called the “My Pillow Guy” in some GOP quarters, is a known commodity to several Senate Republicans, including Tuberville. But Republicans said they were not sure how serious Lindell is about running.
Harmeet Dhillon, the other challenger to McDaniel, faces a steep path to victory among the RNC’s 168 voting members. On top of that, Senate Republicans said in interviews that they were not particularly familiar with Dhillon or her style of politics.
By contrast, several Republican senators observed that turnout — a key RNC mandate — was high in 2022. And that’s why McDaniel’s boosters are behind her for two more years.
“[McDaniel] knows the system. Our problems in 2022 were multiple. I don’t blame her over anything. Personally, I think continuity is good. We are in a good spot to take back the Senate in 2024, and in the presidential primaries she’s a competent, fair-minded person,” Graham said. “I have confidence in her.”
Even so, Graham is part of an apparent minority of Hill Republicans prepared to publicly stick their necks out for the RNC chair. It is particularly telling that McConnell declined to endorse her; he blanched at the national GOP’s censures of Trump-antagonist former Reps. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) and Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) last year and was far more bearish than most Republicans on his party’s midterm election prospects.
McConnell’s top deputy, and one of his potential successors, is joining him in the neutral zone.
“I’m not going to wade into that. They’ll figure it out,” Thune said. “I’m guessing whatever I say, if I support someone, it’d probably hurt them.”
Marianne LeVine contributed to this report.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

January 25, 2023
McDaniel vs. Dhillon: Inside the battle for the RNC

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“We just can’t afford to take our foot off the gas,” McDaniel said, projecting confidence she would prevail over Dhillon.
Dhillon, meanwhile, asserted that with stronger leadership, Republicans “might have won bigger in the 2022 election, and we would be ready to win in 2024.”
Friday’s election among the 168 RNC members will follow two days of meet-and-greets, debates and glad-handing among the other typical party business. Measured by public statements of support, McDaniel would appear safe: She has more than 100 members publicly backing her, while Dhillon has fewer than 30. (MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell is also running, but few RNC members take him seriously.)
But the bitter tenor of the fight, the enormous stakes for the GOP going into the 2024 elections and the uncertainty of a secret-ballot election have elevated the contest into a political battle royale.
Dhillon on Monday emailed her latest pitch to RNC members — pledging to make changes that include moving her family from California to Washington (McDaniel commutes from Michigan), banning “extremely loud entertainment” at committee events, and maintaining a “culture of collegiality and cooperation” inside the party.
In the subsequent interview, Dhillon went chapter-and-verse on the failings she sees under McDaniel: The RNC has overspent on consultants and “frivolous expenditures that don’t win elections.” It has fallen behind Democrats in encouraging voting before Election Day and making sure as many of its voters’ ballots are counted as possible. And, she argued, the party “whiffed” in shaping the GOP’s midterm message — arguing that the RNC has to lead, not follow, when the party is out of power.
McDaniel rejected the accusations that the RNC fumbled the midterms, arguing that her efforts to build the party infrastructure “made it a better election than it would have otherwise been” and that Dhillon and her other critics simply “don’t understand what the RNC’s job actually is.”
“The infrastructure we built made it so a Republican could get to the finish line,” she said, noting that more than 4 million more GOP voters turned out nationwide than Democrats. “But the difference between why one Republican did and didn’t is down to the campaign, the candidate and messaging, which the RNC does not have control over.”

Dhillon said losing Republican candidates such as Arizona’s Kari Lake, Pennsylvania’s Mehmet Oz and Georgia’s Herschel Walker were no more flawed than the Democrats who beat them. Republicans just have to get as “efficient” as Democrats, she said, at turning out their voters and making sure their ballots are counted.
“John Fetterman could not even speak and articulate for himself during much of his campaign, and he got elected,” she said, referring to the new Pennsylvania senator, who suffered a stroke mid-campaign. “So I disagree with that explanation.”
Hanging over the contest is the shadow of former president Donald Trump, who has ties to both candidates but has not made an endorsement in the race.
Dhillon and McDaniel have this in common: Neither was eager to finger Trump for the GOP’s recent electoral failings — including his role in actively discouraging Republican voters from casting mail ballots or elevating several of the cycle’s most disappointing candidates.
But Dhillon is seeking to walk a fine line as she maintains a coalition of MAGA die-hards and Never Trumpers who share an interest in ousting McDaniel. It’s meant assuming some new and nuanced positions for an attorney who, after the 2020 election, cheered Rudy Giuliani’s suggestion that he found cause to overturn Pennsylvania’s results, solicited donations for Trump’s election defense fund on Twitter, and wrote an op-ed on Townhall.com entitled “Republican lawyers are fighting to stop the steal.”
Among those backing Dhillon are such Trump diehards as activist Charlie Kirk, Arizona GOP Chair Kelli Ward and Stop the Steal organizer Caroline Wren.
Yet in the interview, Dhillon rejected Trump’s claims of a stolen 2020 election and confirmed Joe Biden as the rightful winner. She noted that she did not personally file or litigate any of the lawsuits filed by Trump allies seeking to challenge the election.
“The time to ensure the integrity of an election is before the election,” she said. “And if you haven’t prepared for that, don’t start scrambling and hiring lawyers after the fact. It’s too late.”
McDaniel, meanwhile, faces blowback from Trump skeptics who argue she doesn’t push back on Trump enough. In an email to RNC members first reported by the Washington Post, Tennessee committeeman Oscar Brock wrote that “the reality is that every time Donald Trump says jump, Ronna asks, ‘How high?’”
McDaniel has responded by pledging repeatedly to keep the 2024 primary process neutral and promising to bridge divisions inside the party. “I’m running a unity campaign, and part of that is, as party chair, not attacking other Republicans,” she said.
But Dhillon said some Republicans have told her they are already skeptical of McDaniel’s assurances, given that she tapped Trump loyalist David Bossie to run the 2024 GOP debates. McDaniel’s backers, meanwhile, have privately raised doubts about what the RNC would look like under Dhillon, who has suggested she will hire MAGA hardliners to run the organization.
The whisper campaigns have been relentless, and they have been accompanied by an effort to whip up a grassroots uprising on Dhillon’s behalf — prompting McDaniel to denounce some of the scorched-earth tactics.
One Dhillon ally published RNC members’ contact information, encouraging GOP voters to hound them to oppose McDaniel, while Kirk, a MAGA activist with a massive following, threatened in an email to RNC members last month to replace them with activists who “better represent the grassroots voice.”
“It’s intentionally inflaming passions based on things that aren’t true,” McDaniel said, warning that the nastiness bodes ill for 2024, “with Republicans attacking other Republicans to the point that we can’t come together after.”
Dhillon rejected McDaniel’s suggestion that her longshot campaign is unnecessarily dividing the party ahead of a critical presidential election. “This is not personal,” she said. “You have to point out the reasons for change. I try to do that as persuasively and civilly as possible.”
While the arithmetic appears formidable for Dhillon, she insisted still has an “excellent chance” of pulling off an upset. While POLITICO has previously reported that party insiders believe she has about 60 votes, Dhillon herself would not talk numbers.
She did, however, offer an explanation for why so few members have publicly endorsed her. Some committed to McDaniel before she entered the race and “don’t want to offend her,” she said, while others are running for leadership posts of their own and don’t want to alienate the incumbent and her supporters. And some, she suggested, fear their state party’s finances could be affected if they cross the sitting chair.
In a late bid to lower the race’s temperature, Dhillon vowed if elected to work with Republicans she has clashed with — including elected officials, such as Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, whom she has attacked at times, and even McDaniel herself.
“She’s an important leader in the party,” Dhillon said, inviting McDaniel to stay on in a leadership role. “She has a lot of skills and I’m sure she has things that could teach me.”

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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

January 25, 2023