The race for Republican National Committee chairwoman is taking on the feel of a heated Senate race as supporters for three-term incumbent Ronna McDaniel spar with those of top challenger Harmeet Dhillon over who is conservative enough to run the party headquarters leading up to the next presidential election.
Different from some past races, where the issues have been who is the better fundraiser or spokesperson for the GOP, the final month of the election is focused on national issues including abortion.
Supporters of McDaniel, for example, have pushed around backgrounders that quote Dhillon being soft on abortion, supportive of the ACLU and even donating to Kamala Harris many years ago.
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Supporters of Dhillon are fighting back on all fronts while describing the Indian American lawyer as a conservative notable dating back to her teens at Dartmouth College where she joined the conservative Dartmouth Review newspaper that Laura Ingraham and Dinesh D’Souza also edited.
Others seeking to doom McDaniel have planted stories about spending abuses inside the RNC while also pointing a finger at the HQ over the party’s failure to win the Senate in last month’s elections.
As the election rushes to its Jan. 27 end, the McDaniel-Dhillon clash appears to be the talk inside the beltway as each seeks the support of the MAGA conservative wing that carries the most weight. Former President Trump likes both and has not endorsed either.
In questioning Dhillon’s credentials, critics have highlighted her donation to and support of Harris when she first ran for prosecutor in San Francisco.
They also noted her statements that appeared soft on life issues and her disinterest in fighting Roe v. Wade and her membership with the ACLU. And they have questioned her support for Trump.
Some Republicans said they would vote against her because of those past positions.
Jeff Kaufmann, chairman of the Republican Party of Iowa and RNC member, told us, “Harmeet’s statements are deeply concerning to me and they should concern every pro-life American. Our platform is clear: The Republican Party stands for life. There should be no question where the head of the RNC stands, and Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel has been a pro-life champion throughout her entire career.”
Re @GOP chair race, past comments from @pnjaban raise questions about her commitment to life issue. In 2008 she was pro-choice. In 2011 she opposed challenging Roe. Given Dem extremism post Dobbs, the defense of unborn lives and a culture of life is non negotiable.
— CatholicVote.org (@CatholicVote) December 19, 2022
Added Kyshia Brassington, RNC national committeewoman from North Carolina, “Harmeet’s comments are outright disqualifying. This is a concerning pattern for her, from donating to Kamala Harris to serving on the board of the ACLU. We need a strong pro-life conservative at the helm of the Republican Party, and Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel is exactly that.”
What’s more, SBA Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser endorsed McDaniel, calling her “the ‘gold standard’ for what it means to be a pro-life RNC chair.”
Supporters of Dhillon, and the civil rights lawyer herself, are aggressively pushing back on those claims.
Harmeet Dhillon (@pnjaban) is breathtakingly smart, ruthlessly efficient, and totally courageous. I should know—she’s one of my lawyers and a loyal friend. She’s passionately pro-life and diagnosed the ballot harvesting issue years ago.
Harmeet will make a great RNC Chair!????? https://t.co/vXfFopX8UO
— David Daleiden (@daviddaleiden) December 6, 2022
First on abortion, the frequent Fox News guest told Secrets that when she was younger, “I was less comfortable or fluent talking about this issue, but I have always been pro-life and said it.”
But since then, and after hanging her own shingle out, Dhillon has worked with key figures in the anti-abortion movement and led legal battles against Planned Parenthood. She has been the lawyer for both Lila Rose, who heads Live Action, and David Daleiden of the Center for Medical Progress, known for a series of undercover videos exposing Planned Parenthood leaders negotiating the harvesting and sale of aborted baby body parts.
“I’m one of the top lawyers for the pro-life movement in the country,” she said. “If they thought I was a liberal, I would never have risen through the ranks to the executive committee of the RNC, elected by my peers in the western region as a staunch conservative and articulate spokesperson for every conservative issue on television. How would I be the chairman of the Republican National Lawyers Association if I were some kind of, you know, wild liberal? It’s just not credible. How would 5 million Republicans in California have elected me to be their representative at the RNC? It’s just nonsense.”
On her donation to and positive talk about Harris, Dhillon said that in the early 2000s the current vice president was the toughest on crime candidate in the nonpartisan prosecutor race. In fact, it’s a platform Harris eventually used to win statewide before turning liberal on criminal reform in Washington.
And Dhillon said that she joined a California branch of the American Civil Liberties Union to push back on some of the harsher intelligence elements of the post-9/11-era Patriot Act, initially accepted by most politicians and Americans but later criticized as going too far.
She explained that her brother, also a Sikh and who wears a turban, was called Osama bin Laden at Candlestick Park once. Being a civil rights attorney, she worked with the ACLU to protect minorities attacked after 9/11. “People from my community and, frankly, all dark-skinned Americans were being attacked,” she said.
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Dhillon recalled that conservative former Georgia Rep. Bob Barr, dubbed “Mr. Privacy,” was also a member and said she joined because “the ACLU at the time was the only organization fighting back on the spying on American citizens.”
As for not being Trumpy enough, it’s her Dhillon Law Group that the Trump team hired to fend off the House Democratic-led Jan. 6 committee.
While eager to talk about reforming the RNC headquarters and conducting a financial audit of spending, Dhillon also was ready to take on critics and the similar accusations she has battled in every campaign to move up the party ladder.
“I have been a lifelong conservative,” she said. “This smear is offensive.”
