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    Inside the Battle for Control of the Republican National Committee

    Ronna McDaniel, the longtime chair of the committee, has become a vessel for discontent over the party’s losses in 2022.As anger and frustration ripple through the Republican Party over its underwhelming performance in this year’s midterm elections, Republicans are offering a number of explanations for their losses.Bad candidates. Weak fund-raising. The looming presence of Donald Trump. Election denial. The Democrats’ edge in the mechanics of running campaigns. Strategic and tactical errors by Republican leaders. Too much cultural red meat and not enough serious answers to the economic concerns of ordinary Americans.Some in the Trump wing of the party have settled on their own scapegoat: Ronna McDaniel, who has been the chair of the Republican National Committee since 2017. Coming after McDaniel reshaped the committee in the former president’s image — it was even paying his considerable legal bills until recently — this discontent is a striking turn of events.The committee’s 168 members from across the country will vote on McDaniel’s re-election in January. And the race has heated up over the last two weeks.She has already deterred one challenge from Representative Lee Zeldin, this year’s Republican nominee for governor of New York, who briefly explored a run — but pulled back days later after finding only a few dozen potential supporters within the committee.While McDaniel appears to have shored up her internal position, she is also contending with a hunger for change from outside the party’s formal structures. And the one person who might be able to secure her standing — Trump — has told aides that he is staying out of the race.Roughly two-thirds of committee members are already backing McDaniel, according to a letter circulated by her allies.The letter praises McDaniel’s investments in state parties, community centers and “election integrity units”; her decision to cut ties with the Committee on Presidential Debates, which hosts those much-anticipated events every four years; and her “ongoing investments in data, digital, and in a permanent ground game in key locations around the country.” McDaniel’s allies also credit her with raising $1.5 billion as party chair, including $325 million for the 2022 midterms, and for making gains in party registration in Arizona, Iowa, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.The race for R.N.C. chair is just one window into the Republican Party’s post-midterm demolition derby — with governors and senators leading an increasingly vocal anti-Trump chorus — but a revealing one. It’s proving especially useful for those who would prefer to change the subject from Trump, whose third presidential run has landed in the party with a mixture of trepidation and condemnation.But it would be mistaken to see this as a proxy war over Trump, party insiders say. McDaniel’s supporters include longtime Trump backers like David Bossie, a Republican operative and committee member from Maryland — and she has declined to fault the former president in recent interviews. Her critics include members like Bill Palatucci of New Jersey, who has been one of Trump’s most vocal detractors.The Aftermath of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6A moment of reflection. More