GOP Chair McDaniel defeats Dhillon in leadership race

DANA POINT, Orange County — Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel won her bid Friday to lead the GOP for a fourth term of two more years, prevailing in an election that highlighted fierce internal divisions that threaten to plague the party into the next presidential season.

McDaniel, whom Donald Trump tapped as RNC chair in 2016, won the the secret ballot vote 111 to 51. The high-profile election played out inside a luxury resort on the Southern California coast as the RNC’s 168 voting members — activists and elected officials from all 50 states — gathered for the committee’s annual winter meeting.

With the victory, McDaniel becomes the longest-serving RNC chair since the Civil War. Yet friends and foes alike agree that she will not be leading the RNC from a position of strength.

While Trump privately backed McDaniel, powerful forces from within his “Make America Great Again” movement lined up behind McDaniel’s chief rival, Trump attorney Harmeet Dhillon.

Dhillon, a San Francisco lawyer, waged an aggressive challenge against McDaniel that featured allegations of chronic misspending, mismanagement and even religious bigotry against Dhillon’s Sikh faith — all claims that McDaniel denied. Above all, the case against McDaniel centered on deep dissatisfaction with the direction of the party after continuous election losses since Trump tapped her to lead the committee following his upset 2016 victory.

Ahead of the vote, Dhillon cited the Republican base’s overwhelming desire for change and threatened political retribution for RNC members who dared support McDaniel’s re-election.

“Ignoring the will of the voters in your state is a good way not to get elected again,” Dhillon told the Associated Press.

Before the vote, McDaniel pleaded with RNC members to put their differences aside after it was over.

“Coming together is the beginning. Staying together is progress. But working together is success,” she said. “We have to come together after this meeting and focus on what we have ahead of us.”

Several high-profile Trump allies publicly called for McDaniel’s ouster. Kari Lake, the failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate who has spread debunked claims of voter fraud, courted RNC members on Dhillon’s behalf this week inside the conference hotel. And from afar, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a likely 2024 presidential contender, spoke out against McDaniel on the eve of the vote.

“I think we need a change. I think we need to get some new blood in the RNC,” DeSantis said in an interview with Florida’s Voice, citing three “substandard election cycles in a row” under McDaniel’s leadership.

Meanwhile, Trump quietly supported McDaniel, a niece of Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, and dispatched a handful of his lieutenants to Southern California this week to advocate on her behalf.