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Ronna Romney McDaniel is in a tough race for reelection as chair of the RNC. But it could have been worse. She knew that she would face Harmeet Dhillon, a conspiracy theorist who claims that Donald Trump won in 2020. She also knew that pillow salesman Mike Lindell had announced that he wants to be chair, despite having no qualifications whatsoever for the job. But she probably assumed he wasn't serious and in any case, would not make the ballot. She was wrong. He made the ballot. So now it is officially a 3-way race.
The electorate consists of the 168 members of the Republican National Committee, with three from each state and territory. The election will be held by secret ballot at the RNC's winter meeting in Dana Point, just south of Los Angeles, on Jan. 27. With two actual opponents now, there is a chance that the anti-McDaniel vote will split and she will end up being able to come out on top.
Dhillon is leaving nothing to chance. She will run a full-blown whip operation at the meeting. There will be nightly receptions for delegates. High-profile surrogates will fly in to push her candidacy. One of them will be Arizona gubernatorial loser Kari Lake, but others are expected. A person close to Dhillion said there is a very clear path to her winning.
As usual, there will be candidate forums. These are not debates. Instead, each candidate will get a fixed number of minutes to make his or her case to the members. In the past, some candidates have used the time to make a speech. Other have used it to answer questions from the members.
Fortunately, Republicans are foursquare against bigotry of any kind. This is important because McDaniel is a member of the LDS Church, Dhillion is a Asian-American Sikh, and Lindell is a twice-divorced evangelical Christian.
We don't think there is any polling on the race. However, over 100 members signed a letter back in November endorsing McDaniel for another term. On the other hand, several state parties have passed no-confidence motions condemning her. Because the election is by secret ballot, some of the members who endorsed McDaniel in November could vote for one of the other two candidates and later deny it.
If no candidate gets a majority, there could be multiple ballots. If this goes on for 15 ballots over 4 days, the Republicans are going to have a tough time explaining how they are a unified party. On the other hand, if nearly all of the 100 signatories to the letter vote for McDaniel and she wins on the first ballot, that may erase some of the image of a party mostly focused on devouring itself.
One side note here is that Donald Trump has not endorsed anyone in the RNC race. He handpicked McDaniel back in 2017 to run the RNC but now she is being challenged by Dhillon, who is an election denier who has backed various crazy pro-Trump lawsuits. And, of course, Lindell has a man-crush on Trump the likes of which haven't been seen since G. Gordon Liddy and Dick Nixon. (V)