The campaign for RNC chair has not been pretty

OPINION:

As the Republican National Committee heads toward a decision about who will lead them for the next two years, the process has reminded everyone that democracy, especially in small groups where people are very much alike, can be messy.

There are 168 voters — two committee members and the state chairman from each state and six territories. To win requires an outright majority of 85 votes. At the moment, the incumbent chairperson, Ronna McDaniel, appears to have secured more than 100 votes.

For some, that’s a problem, in no small measure because it suggests a lack of accountability for the party’s underperformance in the last two cycles. There is no precedent — in either party — for a national chairperson to retain their job after presiding over the defeat of an incumbent president. Nor has any chairman remained in place after presiding over a midterm performance as underwhelming as the Republican performance in 2022.

Ms. McDaniel has run an impressive campaign to minimize her own culpability in the losses in 2020 and 2022. Recently, in an interview with this newspaper, she essentially blamed greedy consultants misleading naive candidates for the defeats in 2022 — which is a bit like P.T. Barnum complaining about the clowns at the circus.

Part of the challenge is that some committee supporters of the current chair have resolutely failed to acknowledge any of her shortcomings, often reciting how well their particular state has done in the last six years. Fair enough. But it seems reasonable to hope that the RNC committee members would have a slightly more nuanced and expansive view of the political world, and that they would be able to understand that not every state is doing as well as it should, nor is the current chairwoman directly responsible for all progress.

Part of the challenge is the sometimes counterproductive approach of the incumbent’s principal opponent. Harmeet Dhillon, a committeewoman from California, has run an aggressive social media campaign designed to activate the usual suspects in conservative social media. That, of course, has resulted in her supporters emailing and tweeting at the voters. As you can probably imagine, not all of those communications have been constructive, courteous or helpful.

Not every committee member has appreciated her sharing their email addresses. It turns out that targeting the committee voters for harassment through social media is not necessarily a sound strategy.

Moreover, the fact that her law firm has been paid $850,000 by the RNC in the past year or so indicates that Ms. Dhillon may be a bit too close to the current regime.

Having run and won three times before, the incumbent clearly understands that this election is very much a fraternity election — a small group of homogeneous voters are going to make this decision, pretty much without reference to the preferences of those who have a stake in the election (in this case, volunteers and donors of the party).

Any election in which there are few voters but many interested parties necessarily results in a situation where the many stakeholders will try to influence the few voters (think Congress). In most cases (and sometimes with respect to Congress), it’s a waste of time. For a variety of reasons, most of the voters at the RNC seem comfortable with the present arrangements; perhaps in large measure because they themselves constructed the arrangements.

After the election, the stakeholders will be left with two choices — accept the results given to them by the voters or opt out of the process and cease being stakeholders. There is no third choice.