Forming a committee to analyze the Republican Party’s lackluster 2022 midterm performance and hone its appeal to minorities and suburban women comes “too little, too late” to retain Ronna McDaniel as chair of the Republican National Committee (RNC), says Mike Lindell, the MyPillow CEO and avowed ally of former President Donald Trump.
“She has failed for so many years that I now call her Ronna ‘McFail,’” Lindell told The Epoch Times. “Ronna, the past three elections, you get an F, an F, an F. You should have resigned already. Ronna, resign, don’t run again, let’s get someone who can win.”
McDaniel, Trump’s pick to chair the national committee following his 2016 election, took the helm in 2017. She has been broadly criticized for the GOP’s electoral shortcomings over the past three electoral cycles, especially after a 40-year high in inflation and an unpopular Democrat in the White House failed to produce a forecast “red wave.”
Nevertheless, McDaniel is seeking a fourth two-year term as chair when the RNC convenes Jan. 25–27 in Dana Point, California. After announcing her bid, she released a letter with endorsements from 101 members, far more than the 85 necessary, making her reelection a procedural fait accompli.
Presumed Ascension Rankles Critics
Her presumed ascension has angered many conservatives, spurred demands for new RNC leadership—including high-profile leaders such as South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), and Fox News host Tucker Carlson—and induced Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.), fresh off his near-upset New York gubernatorial bid, to openly ponder a run for the RNC chair.Lindell said he’s compelled to “step into” consideration to ensure McDaniel doesn’t go unchallenged, warning that her return to the party helm would “leave the country to be run by the uni-party and the Democrats.”
Republicans for National Renewal Executive Director Mark Ivanyo and staunch Trump supporter Anthony Sabatini, whose Florida Freedom Action PAC aims to derail Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s (R-Calif.) election to speaker of the House, are among America First advocates who want McDaniel out.
“We have endorsed Lee Zeldin, but we also welcome Mr. Lindell entering the race,” Ivanyo told The Epoch Times. “Even if it’s just for the sake of reducing votes for Ronna.”
“There’s dozens and dozens of good names—Lee Zeldin is a pretty good choice; Lindell is not a bad choice—that we could be having a conversation about but there is not a discussion about that, nor questioning of it,” Sabatini told The Epoch Times.
An “honest discussion” about McDaniel’s continued suitability as RNC chair won’t happen, he said, because “the whole system is rigged.”
For example, Sabatini said, “my state national committeewoman (Kathleen King) is already supporting Ronna ‘McFail’” without gauging if fellow Florida Republicans agree.
A former Florida lawmaker who lost his 2022 Congressional bid in the August primaries, Sabatini is an attorney and a Fellow at the Claremont Institute, a conservative think-tank that works closely with Trump in advancing his election fraud allegations and in advocating for election integrity reform.
The RNC is “run by the establishment and very corrupt,” he said, and can only be changed by “empowering bottom-up leadership.”
Sabatini called on America First supporters to not stop at merely deposing McDaniel as party chair, but demand a complete overhaul of RNC and GOP leadership.
“All the leadership should be wiped out,” he said. “They should all be deported from the United States.”
Panel a Plank for Shaky Chair
On Nov. 29, McDaniel announced the formation of a 12-member Republican Party Advisory Council “to inform the Republican Party’s 2024 vision and beyond.”McDaniel said the council’s “diverse range of respected leaders” will advise the RNC on “growing the party with Hispanic, Asian, and Black voters” while “engaging with suburban women, winning the youth vote, holding Big Tech accountable, supporting law enforcement, and delivering for Americans of faith.”
McDaniel formed the panel as “an attempt to make up for her failures,” Ivanyo claimed.
Lindell agreed.
“Ronna thinks she can keep her job,” he said, calling the council cover to curry favor with the insiders resisting rank-and-file Republicans’ calls for change.
“Why do you need an advisory committee? I’ll give advice: Get someone to lead the party who can win with the big donors” as well as with grassroots conservatives, he said. “You don’t need to bring in any advisory team to know Ronna needs to be fired.”
The 12-member council includes two incumbent lawmakers—Rep. Carlos A. Giménez (R-Fla.), and Rep. Michelle Steele (R-Calif.)—and three Washington newcomers, Sen.-elect Katie Britt (R-Ala.), Rep.-elect Monica De La Cruz (R-Texas), and Rep.-elect John James (R-Mich.).
Defeated Arizona 2022 Senate candidate Blake Masters and Ohio 2022 Congressional hopeful Madison Gesiotto Gilbert are on the panel, as are former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, and Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares.
The council is co-chaired by Mississippi RNC Committeeman Henry Barbour, co-author of the party’s post-2012 “election autopsy,” and California RNC Committeewoman Harmeet Dhillon, who chairs the Republican National Lawyers Association.
The RNC comprises three members from each of the 50 states, five territories, and the District of Columbia. They are the state party chair, a national committeeman, and a national committeewoman.
Dhillon said the council will be “soliciting input from ALL Republicans, not just DC elites,” but that outreach sounds hollow unless preceded by McDaniel’s departure, critics say.
As the granddaughter of former Michigan Gov. George Romney, and niece of 2012 GOP presidential nominee, former Massachusetts governor, and current Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah)—a Trump critic—many see McDaniel as the epitome of “DC elite.”
“I’m very disappointed with the entirety of the RNC. It doesn’t represent the average Republican,” Sabatini said. “You talk to Republicans, they don’t want Ronna; even RNC members, they don’t want her either. The only ones who do are the insiders in the clubby corners of the RNC.”
“Does the RNC reflect the typical Republican voter? No, absolutely not, especially under Ronna’s leadership.” Ivanyo said. “Her ‘Mitt Romney style of leadership’” isn’t “representative of the grassroots” that fuels America First candidates and policies.
Election Integrity Suits, Suitors, Support
Lindell said that McDaniel has “not done anything for election integrity after raising money on the issue” since 2020.“Shame on you,” he said. “You collected money, solicited money, saying you were going to do stuff, and you have done nothing—zero.”
“It seems like that whole [RNC] election integrity committee was not supported at all” by leadership, Ivanyo said, noting that the panel “spent a lot of money traveling around,” but in the end, “the only people who benefitted were the operatives and consultants who got paid for it.”
RNC national press secretary Emma Vaughn didn’t directly address those assertions but provided The Epoch Times with a fact sheet and comments.
As of Nov. 8, the RNC was engaged in 80 lawsuits across 20 states “directly related to election integrity,” Vaughn wrote, adding that since 2021, the RNC has invested $30 million “into building an unprecedented Election Integrity legal and political ground game to ensure transparency at the ballot box.”
To build that “ground game,” the RNC reports since 2021, it has hired 17 in-state election integrity directors, 38 state-based election integrity counsels, conducted more than 5,300 election integrity training sessions, recruited more than 80,000 poll watchers and workers, and engaged more than 130,000 unique volunteers.
Lindell said that McDaniel opposed his 2021 effort to file a 70-page voter fraud complaint with the U.S. Supreme Court that he claims documents alleged 2020 election fraud in Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Georgia.
McDaniel even went behind his back, he said, to stymie the suit by discouraging state attorneys general from supporting it, and by then admitting publicly in November 2021 that “Biden won, fair and square.”
“Things like that are disgusting,” he said.
McDaniel spokesperson Vaughn did not readdress the claim, which has repeatedly been refuted by the committee and GOP state AGs who didn’t support the filing based on its legal paucity.
Lindell said McDaniel’s alleged ambivalence in fully prosecuting Trump’s election fraud claims cost the party the Senate and, perhaps, the Arizona governor’s race during the 2022 midterms.
With “no RNC money to support lawsuits,” such as those being filed on behalf of Arizona GOP gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, the RNC “backed out of Arizona completely” and “headed over to Georgia,” Lindell said.
“They said, ‘We got to help [Herschel] Walker,’ but the focus in Georgia was to raise money,” seeing it as a fund-raising opportunity, he said.
“[McDaniel] abandoned Arizona. If Arizona fails, we are done as a country.”
Vaughn provided a lengthy fact sheet documenting what the RNC has done in Arizona, refuting Lindell’s claims without directly addressing them.
Neither the RNC nor McDaniel have disengaged in Arizona, Vaughn said, noting that the national committee has filed 14 election integrity lawsuits since 2021 in the state that “include defending Arizona’s verification of citizenship for voter registration, its procedures for ensuring only eligible voters receive mail ballots, and its ballot curing deadlines.”
“It was also responsible for coordinating the Republican Party’s milestone win at the U.S. Supreme Court upholding the state’s ban on ballot harvesting,” she said.
The RNC committed significant resources to election integrity issues before and after the Nov. 8 election, Vaughn said.
For Election Day, the RNC reports it recruited 40 volunteer attorneys to represent the party across Arizona, with another 40 attorneys manning its Election Day war room. The RNC also trained 2,257 poll watchers and 586 poll workers in Arizona, it says.
On Election Day, the RNC, Lake, and Blake Masters campaigns jointly sued to extend voting hours after technical issues at several Maricopa County voting sites forced voters to wait to cast ballots. The suit was unsuccessful.
On Nov. 22, the RNC joined 2022 Arizona GOP Attorney General candidate Abe Hamadeh in filing a lawsuit against Secretary of State Katie Hobbs—a declared gubernatorial election winner—contesting the Nov. 8 election.
“The RNC legal team has collected approximately 40 affidavits detailing the disenfranchisement of Arizona voters on Election Day,” Vaughn said. “These accounts paint a picture of Maricopa County’s extensive failures and will be useful in any potential future legal action undertaken by Republicans.”
Lindell said that under McDaniel, the RNC also blatantly failed to fully support many Trump-endorsed America First candidates during the 2020 midterms.
“Every single candidate [who spoke about] how they were going to fix these elections, going to get all these laws put in, [was] abandoned [by the RNC], he said.
Among them, he said, were Matthew DePerno, a Trump-backed Republican nominee for Michigan attorney general, and Kristina Karamo, a Trump-endorsed candidate for Michigan secretary of state.
“Ronna didn’t even congratulate them for winning their primaries,” Lindell said.
RNC’s Vaughn didn’t respond to Lindell’s claims, but pointed out that the national committee availed its resources to all GOP candidates, including the America First, Trump-endorsed Lake.
RNC’s Arizona Victory committee knocked on more than 350,000 doors and made 1.4 million phone calls “with Kari Lake at the top of our scripts and messaging,” Vaughn wrote, noting that the RNC and Lake campaign collaborated to “push positive coverage and attack Katie Hobbs.”
As a successful businessman, Lindell said he can spearhead fundraising and focus party leadership on what rank-and-file members are telling them.
While traveling widely during the midterm primaries and elections, Lindell said he “got to know a lot of the players” involved, “spoke with every state party chair,” and witnessed widespread dissatisfaction among rank-and-file Republicans with the RNC in general and McDaniel specifically.
“The donors want change; they want results,” he said, and grassroots conservatives, including many Trump-supporting America First voters, have lost faith in McDaniel’s RNC stewardship.
“This would be so easy to fix because I know where the problems are,” he said, claiming that the most obvious “very, very fast fix” would be firing McDaniel.
Under new leadership, especially his, “We’d hit the ground winning on Day One,” Lindell said.
The RNC is “missing many bold leaders” now pushed to the periphery by establishment Republicans, Ivanyo said. There are “plenty of options” to succeed McDaniel, he said.
But with “morale already low” among conservatives, he warned, if McDaniel is reelected, “people are going to be disenchanted” with the GOP.
“There will be some thinking, ‘If it’s not a Trump America First party, I don’t want anything to do with it anymore,’” Ivanyo said.
