Ronna McDaniel Officially Announces Resignation as RNC Chair

Allen Zhong
By Allen Zhong
February 26, 2024Politics
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Ronna McDaniel Officially Announces Resignation as RNC Chair
Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel speaks during the Republican Jewish Coalition's Annual Leadership Summit at The Venetian Resort Las Vegas in Las Vegas, Nev., on Oct. 28, 2023. (Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

Republican National Committee (RNC) chair Ronna McDaniel announced on Monday that she will step down from her role on March 8.

“I have decided to step aside at our Spring Training on March 8 in Houston to allow our nominee to select a chair of their choosing,” Ms. McDaniel said in a statement. “I remain committed to winning back the White House and electing Republicans up and down the ballot in November.”

In addition to Ms. McDaniel, RNC co-chair Drew McKissick said he would also leave.

Ms. McDaniel has been the RNC chair since 2017.

She was the committee’s longest-serving leader since the Civil War.

Former President Donald Trump—who is undoubtedly the leader of the Republican Party—endorsed North Carolina GOP Chair Michael Whatley after Ms. McDaniel’s resignation was widely reported.

“I think my friend Michael Whatley should be the RNC’s next leader. Michael has been with me from the beginning, has done a great job in his home state of North Carolina, and is committed to election integrity, which we must have to keep fraud out of our election so it can’t be stolen,” Mr. Trump said in a statement on Feb. 12.

The former president also endorsed his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, to be the RNC co-chair.

Ms. Trump said later in an exclusive interview with The Epoch Times that she will launch the largest-ever legal ballot harvesting operation if she’s elected.

“We need to have the biggest legal ballot harvesting operation this country has ever seen,” she said. “It feels, for a long time, like the Democrats have been playing chess and we’ve been playing checkers,” she said.

Her goal is for the Republican Party “to be the opposite, to be steps ahead of them, and on our toes, and ahead of the game, and facing forward the whole time.”

Besides Mr. Whatley and Ms. Trump, the former president also endorsed Chris LaCivita as the chief operating officer of RNC.

Mr. LaCivita is a senior adviser to Mr. Trump’s 2024 campaign.

He “will manage the RNC’s day-to-day operations so it will become a fighting machine for 2024 and use all the tools available to win for the American people,” Mr. Trump said.

Lara Trump
Lara Trump speaks during the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at Gaylord National Resort Hotel And Convention Center in National Harbor, Md., on Feb. 22, 2024. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Trump Campaign Takeover

Ms. McDaniel, the niece of Utah Sen. Mitt Romney and a former chair of the Michigan GOP, was Trump’s hand-picked choice to lead the RNC chair shortly after the 2016 election. Her profile as a suburban mother was also considered especially helpful as the party struggled to appeal to suburban women in the Trump era.

She easily beat back criticism from opponents within the “Make America Great Again” movement to win reelection as party chair a year ago. But her opponents’ voices have since been increasing.

The party is also struggling to raise money. The RNC reported $8.7 million in the bank at the beginning of February compared to the Democratic National Committee’s $24 million.

Her resignation came after Mr. Trump won the South Carolina Republican primary and swept every contest that counted for Republican delegates including Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Mr. Trump’s remaining key opponent, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, is facing mounted pressure to leave the race but she said she’s not going anywhere.

American for Prosperity Action (AFP), a libertarian conservative organization backed by the billionaire Koch brothers, announced Sunday that they will no longer support Ms. Haley’s 2024 campaign financially.

The AFP will keep its endorsement to Ms. Haley.

The coming RNC leadership shakeup after Ms. McDaniel’s resignation could make the committee a resourceful support for Mr. Trump’s 2024 campaign as the 2020 rematch between Mr. Trump and President Joe Biden is becoming increasingly inevitable.

Some Republicans share the concern with Ms. Trump, the RNC co-chair contestant, that the Republican Party is not in a strong enough position for 2024.

“What we’ve seen from the RNC has not been sufficient to keep up with the new rules of engagement,” Andrew Kolvet, a spokesman for both Turning Point Action and its sister nonprofit organization Turning Point USA, said. “We have to get more pieces of paper in the box in a 30-day period … the way elections are run now has changed.”

Conservatives need to start viewing an election the same way left-wing organizations do, Mr. Kolvet said. It is not a one-day contest but rather a months-long effort to get voters to show up at polling places on election day and to cast their absentee or early votes before the event.

Mr. Kolvet went on to say that Turning Point wants a robust RNC, but “that’s not what we have right now.”

“We have an organization that is struggling to raise money, that has alienated a lot of big donors as well as grassroots donors,” Mr. Kolvet said. “They simply don’t have the resources or the wherewithal to get the job done.”

Austin Alonzo and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

From The Epoch Times

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