Ronna McDaniel's Tarheel State Loser

Fresh off defeats in Virginia, Kentucky, and Ohio, at the November 8 GOP presidential debate, Vivek Ramaswamy invited Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel to tender her resignation on stage.

For grassroots Republicans, Ramaswamy’s invitation made sense. After all, CEOs of companies drowning in red ink lose their jobs. Why not Ronna?

Republican politics is different. Letting your base down is a virtue, not a career-ending vice. Here in my home State of North Carolina, I have learned this firsthand.

From the Beltway’s vantage point, Ronna is not a failure. She has executed her duties well. Do not let her title, RNC Chairwoman, deceive you. Ronna does not serve the members of the Republican Party; she functions as a lobbyist to State GOPs on behalf of Uniparty Donors who control the RNC.

The RNC is structured as a bottom-up organization.  Any registered Republican can become a Precinct Committeeman, and these committeemen elect their County, District, and State leadership. This includes three RNC Members: the State Chairman, National Committeeman, and National Committeewoman. The 168 RNC members from each state and territory then elect the RNC Chairman every two years.

RNC Membership is not easily influenced by financial contributions. Members are elected by a small group of highly active and well-informed Republicans who often personally know the candidates. However, once elected, State GOP Chairs typically become their state party’s chief fundraiser, a role many are ill-equipped to perform.

Before Ronna, RNC financial support of state GOPs was consistent. From 2002 to 2018, the RNC provided an average of $29.59 million, or 9.67% of revenue, to state GOPs. The highest contribution was $39 million, or 10.1% of revenue, in 2012.

In the 2020 election cycle, the RNC raised a staggering $833.51 million, 2.67 times the 2002-2018 average. Remarkably, it contributed $329.03 million to state GOPs, 11.12 times the 2002-2018 average.

At a high level, one could argue that the RNC believed that sending 11 times more money than ever before to state GOPs was the best use of funds to elect more Republicans. However, a closer look at just one state, North Carolina, reveals signs of corruption.

According to a December 2022 Trafalgar poll, only 5.6% of likely Republicans supported the re-election of Ronna. Despite this, all three votes allocated to North Carolina were cast for Ronna McDaniel. NCGOP Chairman, Michael Whatley, went so far as to sign a letter of support for McDaniel, as NBC reported:

“This has really been kind of member-driven,” said Michael Whatley, the chair of the North Carolina GOP, who said he signed the letter without hesitation because McDaniel has been responsive to state party leaders' needs. "For me, it was not a close call. Every single time I called her, the answer was yes."

Why would a state party chairman subvert the will of 94.4% of their constituents? In the case of Michael Whatley, the answer is money and self-advancement.

Money Matters:

Michael’s North Carolina operation is dependent on Ronna’s charity  In the 2021-22 fundraising cycle, the RNC contributed $2,490,385 to the NCGOP, surpassing the $2,483,412 contributed by 5,357 North Carolinians over the same period.

Self-Advancement:

On February 28, 2023, Ronna tapped Michael Whatley as the RNC General Counsel. In the press release, Ronna described Michael as “An accomplished lawyer with a wide breadth of experience at every level of the political process, Chairman Whatley will bring election integrity expertise, strong grassroots ties, and a winning record to the General Counsel’s office.”

Virtually every word in this quote is a lie.

Outside of working as a law clerk to a judge, Michael Whatley has never practiced law. He has never argued a case or filed a brief. In fact, his law license was inactive from January 27, 2017, to May 23, 2023. That means for 84 days, the General Counsel of the RNC was practicing law without a license.

Michael Whatley has election integrity expertise in the same way that Katie Hobbs, Brad Raffensperger, and Ruby Freeman have election integrity expertise. In my run against him for NCGOP Chairman, I got an up close look at Michael’s effort to protect the ballot.

As the incumbent NCGOP Chairman, Michael was responsible for the 2023 NCGOP Chairman election. Instead of having the roughly 1,650 delegates vote using paper ballots, the election for NCGOP Chairman was conducted on a mobile app developed by a former employee of the Charles Koch Foundation with no app development experience. There was no paper trail, no ability to audit the purported results. The voting app was used exclusively for the Chairman election, while voting on all other business was conducted by voice or standing. The NCGOP admitted in court filings that votes were illegally cast: votes were cast off the floor in violation of convention rules (as far away as Wisconsin), non-delegates downloaded the voting app and cast votes, and multiple counties recorded over-votes.

The left has an evil genius named Marc Elias with an unlimited war chest attacking our election systems at every turn. Against this and political machines in places like Philadelphia and Fulton County, Ronna turned the RNC General Counsel position over to a non-attorney who was incapable of conducting a single election between two candidates with fewer than 2,000 voters all in the same room. Michael Whatley does not have what it takes to take on these challenges, much less clear the way for President Trump to compete in a free and fair election in 2024.

The RNC is a captured organization. Cutting off the head of the snake of a captured organization never works; it merely serves as the bridge of false hope over which its next corrupt leader walks into power. Ronna McDaniel’s scalp will not fix the RNC any more than the firing of FBI Director James Comey fixed the FBI. Rest assured, the self-interested oligarchs who financed the likes of Chris Christie, Mike Pence, and Ron DeSantis have the RNC’s Christopher Wray in the bullpen - his name may be Michael Whatley.