After disappointing midterm results, several candidates have emerged as possible challengers to Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, who has run the party since 2017. The RNC is set to vote on a party chair at its annual meeting this January in California, when the committee will decide who will lead the party through the upcoming 2024 presidential election.
Potential candidates are already laying the groundwork to earn the votes of the 168 committee members who will choose the next chair. Some committee members are publicly doubling down on staying with the leadership of McDaniel, who is running for a fourth consecutive term. She recently announced a postelection review of the Republican midterm campaign strategy.
Other prominent Republicans and influential donors and are calling for a change in leadership due to the disappointing election results. Grassroots activists are attempting to recruit Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y., who lost his race for governor last month. Harmeet Dhillon, an attorney and Republican committeewoman, announced she plans to run for the position. Mike Lindell, CEO of MyPillow and a supporter of former President Donald Trump, has also announced his candidacy for the RNC chair.
Ronna McDaniel has been chair of the RNC since 2017 and will become the longest-serving chair in more than a century should she win reelection to a fourth term. McDaniel was Trump’s pick to chair the RNC following the 2016 presidential election and she is considered a close ally of the former president, although after 2020 she signaled the RNC would remain neutral during the 2024 presidential primary.
Perviously she served as the chair of the Michigan Republican Party and was Michigan’s committeewomen to the RNC. She is a niece of Utah Republican Sen. Mitt Romney, who she helped during his 2012 presidential campaign.
Close allies of McDaniel told Politico that more than 100 of 168 national committee members have pledged to support her reelection. Candidates need a majority of members’ votes to win election.
Harmeet Dhillon was the first challenger to announce her campaign to replace McDaniel as the RNC chair. Dhillon announced her candidacy Monday night on Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Show.” “Republicans are tired of losing and I think that we really need to radically reshape our leadership in order to win,” she said.
Dhillon said under her leadership, Republicans would be better at capitalizing on the political realignment taking place in the country. “The party has become a populist party. The base of the party demands populist messages that speak to them and not Chamber of Commerce messages, not neocon messages, not warmonger messages. And I’m afraid that the base of our party is not getting what it needs from our leadership,” she said.
Dhillon is a RNC committeewoman from California and former board member at the American Civil Liberties Union. The conservative lawyer is the founder of The Dhillon Law Group and co-founder of Center for American Liberty. She is also a regular guest on Fox News.
Trump asked Dhillon’s law firm to represent him while facing subpoenas from the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol building. The firm also represents a number of other Trump allies such as Michael Flynn and Seb Gorka.
Lee Zeldin said he will make an announcement on whether he will launch his bid for the position on Wednesday morning. Zeldin is a Republican New York congressman who recently lost his race for governor to Gov. Kathy Hochul. His campaign for governor proved to be one of the most competitive New York has seen in a long time.
Zeldin may have come up short but his campaign is credited for helping Republican congressional candidates in New York win in traditionally blue districts. This ultimately helped Republicans win control of the House.
“We underperformed nationally. There were strategic missteps,” Texas Republican Party Chair Matt Rinaldi told the New York Post. “But in New York, Lee Zeldin went into communities that Republicans don’t traditionally go into and talked about crime and inflation. He overperformed in blue areas. He exceeded expectations.”