Ronna McDaniel’s tenure as chair of the Republican National Committee has seen its share of downturns. As regular readers know, after Donald Trump chose her for the RNC role in 2017, McDaniel’s first election cycle was rough: The party lost 40 House seats and its majority in the chamber.
The party also saw its share of struggles in 2019 and 2020. The 2022 midterms weren’t exactly great for Republicans, either.
Making matters slightly worse, the 2024 cycle isn’t exactly going the RNC’s way, either. McDaniel pleaded with Donald Trump to participate in the party’s presidential primary debates, and he ignored her. The RNC urged other leading presidential hopefuls not to participate in a recent Family Leader forum in Iowa, and they ignored the party, too.
Earlier this month, after Democrats fared unexpectedly well in key races in Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio, CNBC reported that some on Team Trump were beginning to blame the RNC chair for the party’s difficulties, and the former president himself had grown “increasingly sour” on McDaniel, despite the fact that he chose her for the role.
If so, Trump isn’t McDaniel’s only prominent Republican critic: At one of the recent presidential primary debates, Vivek Ramaswamy called on McDaniel to resign.
At least the Republican National Committee’s finances are in decent shape, right? As it turns out, no. The Washington Post reported this week:
The Republican Party’s finances are increasingly worrisome to party members, advisers to former president Donald Trump, and other operatives involved in the 2024 election effort, according to 10 people familiar with the matter.
McDaniel pushed back against the reporting, arguing that there’s nothing unusual about national parties having less money in the bank in between major election cycles. Perhaps, though the details matter. The Post’s report noted, for example, that the Democratic National Committee, as of the end of last month, had nearly twice as much cash on hand as its Republican counterparts. The same article added: The Republican National Committee disclosed that it had $9.1 million in cash on hand as of Oct. 30, the lowest amount for the RNC in any Federal Election Commission report since February 2015. That compares with about $20 million at the same point in the 2016 election cycle and about $61 million four years ago, when Trump was in the White House.
The Post went on to note that RNC donors “have not cut as many large checks” in recent years, and the party’s small-dollar program “has also suffered.” Election Day 2024 is still nearly a year away, but it appears safe to say the Republican National Committee isn’t exactly in a strong position at this point in the cycle.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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