A major fight for the future of the Republican Party is taking place this week in southern California at a luxury seaside resort in Orange County.
The scene of the battle: the Republican National Committee’s (RNC) annual winter meeting, where committee members will hold a secret ballot vote on Friday for the national party committee’s next chair.
The RNC showdown, their first hotly contested chair race in a dozen years, has turned into a contentious family feud as the GOP decides its leadership while the party jumps into an election cycle in which it aims to win back the White House, regain the Senate majority and hold its fragile control of the House. And it comes as the party aims to rebound from a disappointing showing in November’s midterm elections and as it debates the future of the party and former President Trump’s continued influence over the GOP.
Ronna McDaniel, who’s running for a fourth term steering the RNC, which is unprecedented in modern times, is being challenged by Harmeet Dhillon, an attorney who is also an RNC committee member from California and who served as a legal adviser for former President Donald Trump. Dhillon announced her bid for RNC chair on the Fox News Channel last month.
McDaniel is urging stability while Dhillon launched an insurgent campaign stressing that change is needed following the Republican Party’s lackluster performance in the 2022 midterms, which many in the GOP expected to be a red wave election. MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, who’s a strong supporter of Trump’s unproven claims that the 2020 presidential election was rigged and stolen, is also running as he wages a long-shot bid for chair.
McDaniel, who as Michigan GOP chair was Trump’s handpicked choice to steer the committee after he won the White House in 2016, was reelected to the post in 2019 and 2021. She has been a prolific fundraiser for the national party during her tenure leading the committee. According to McDaniel’s team, the chairwoman has hauled in record $1.5 billion during her tenure, traveled more than half a million miles and held more than 330 donor events.
"Because of our party’s proven message and support from key stakeholders, we have experienced multiple, record-breaking fundraising cycles as a committee. We cannot let up going into 2024, and we must ensure Republican candidates up and down the ballot have the resources necessary to win," McDaniel wrote in a recent opinion piece on FoxNews.com.