Trump said to favor 1 of 2 vying to replace McDaniel as RNC head

The disclosure that Ronna McDaniel is planning to step down this month as the leader of the Republican National Committee has set off a new round of jockeying between two of the same men who battled for the co-chair post last year.

As he did last year, Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner for the White House, looks likely to back Michael Whatley, an election-denying ally — this time, though, as McDaniel’s replacement.

But Whatley, the chair of the North Carolina Republican Party, was not successful last year. And while the former president wields broad influence over who leads the party, his power is not absolute. And Republican committee members may not be in lockstep.

“It looks like a fight is breaking out for chair with conservatives lobbying for Drew McKissick (S.C.) to take over as interim chair,” Tyler Bowyer, a committee member from Arizona, wrote on X, formerly Twitter, on Tuesday night.

It was McKissick who prevailed in the co-chair contest last year, when Whatley, who was trailing in the vote, withdrew from the contest after the second ballot. Under the party’s rules, McKissick would become the committee’s interim chair after McDaniel steps down and until her replacement is elected by the committee.

McKissick, the chair of the South Carolina Republican Party, has in recent days expressed his appetite for the job directly to Trump, several people familiar with the situation said.

Yet as Trump marches toward securing the GOP nomination, it is Whatley who is widely viewed as the heir apparent to McDaniel, according to several people familiar with the discussions.

“The nominee gets his way,” said Ed Broyhill, a committee member from Whatley’s state of North Carolina.

But McKissick has his fans. “Certainly, he would be a top choice of mine,” Oscar Brock, a committee member from Tennessee, said Wednesday. Brock, who opposed McDaniel’s reelection as the committee’s chair last year, said McKissick’s interest in the post was apparent when the two spoke Tuesday.

But even he acknowledged that Trump was getting closer to being able to call the shots.

If Trump becomes the presumptive nominee, he said, “it will probably eliminate a lot of competition.”

Robin Armstrong, a committee member from Texas, said Thursday that he had reached out to McKissick to offer his support.

“I think he’s more of a natural fit,” he said, mentioning McKissick’s previous victory over Whatley for co-chair. “I think it just makes sense. It would be a seamless transition.”

McKissick declined to comment, and Whatley did not respond to a request for comment. Neither did the Trump campaign or Jason Miller, a senior adviser to Trump who Wednesday shared on social media an anonymously sourced Fox News story about how Trump is recommending Whatley for the job.

Whatley, the current general counsel for the Republican National Committee, has gained favor with the former president by embracing his “stop the steal” mantra. And in his leadership position with the North Carolina party, he represents a key state that Trump won in 2016 and 2020.

Broyhill said Thursday that Whatley had returned the state party to electoral success and financial solvency after his federally indicted predecessor had left the organization in disarray. He said Whatley was in a strong position with Trump’s backing.

McDaniel is expected to step aside after South Carolina holds its Republican presidential primary Feb. 24.

Bill Palatucci, a committee member from New Jersey who has been critical of Trump, did not support McDaniel’s reelection last year.

“I made it clear after the miserable results of the 2022 midterms that many of us were tired of losing and needed to do things differently,” he said in an email.

He acknowledged that Trump would most likely control the process of picking her replacement.