Ronna McDaniel was unanimously reelected as the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, easily winning a third term after using President Trump’s early endorsement to clear the field of any opposition.
Elected RNC members usually take control of the committee and vote in a new leader after a Republican president loses reelection or leaves office after two terms. But after Trump lost to President-elect Joe Biden, he moved to maintain his grip on the national party by endorsing McDaniel, signaling that he planned another White House run in 2024. The 168 voting members of the RNC, most of them loyal to the outgoing president, went along with it.
Quietly, some RNC members have been suspicious that McDaniel is a proxy for Trump and that the soon-to-be-former president will be pulling the strings of the committee in exile. McDaniel acted quickly to assure concerned Republicans that the RNC would operate independently and conduct a presidential primary that treats all candidates equally — even if Trump seeks the presidency again four years from now.
To prove her point, McDaniel invited a handful of potential 2024 contenders to speak to RNC members who gathered in Amelia Island, Florida, this week for the party’s annual winter business meeting. McDaniel, 47, was the chairwoman of Michigan’s GOP when Trump appointed her as the RNC’s chairwoman after winning the White House in 2016. Her uncle is Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, an outspoken Trump critic.
Meanwhile, the RNC’s leadership elections, held Friday, occurred amid fresh challenges for the party.
After losing the White House in November, Republicans lost control of the Senate on Tuesday when Georgia incumbents Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue were defeated by Democratic challengers in a pair of runoff elections. Democrats will assume the majority in the evenly split Senate around Jan. 20, the day Biden is inaugurated, courtesy of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris’s tie-breaking vote.
The Republican Party also is reeling from the violent siege of the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday by Trump’s grassroots supporters, who were intent on derailing the congressional certification of Biden’s Electoral College victory. Many of Trump’s Republican allies in Washington abandoned him over the episode, blaming him for inciting the rioters and then looking the other way.
