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The 168 members of the Republican National Committee are talkative when they gather for their winter meetings.
With this year’s meeting dominated by a moody contest between Ronna McDaniel and Harmeet Dhillon for the presidency, they intrigued at the Waldorf Astoria Monarch Beach bar over the vote count, traded gossip about the candidates and how and why the midterms they went wrong.
But there’s one thing they won’t talk about: Donald Trump.
Although it remains the biggest force in the party, they steered questions into the business of the RNC’s election.
The shadow of Donald Trump looms over the winter meeting of the Republican National Committee in California, even if members are reluctant to talk about him.
Harmeet Dhillon is running to remove Ronna McDaniel as president. Both are Trump-adjacent and the result has been a moody contest.
“I’d like to see who runs,” Wisconsin committee member Maripat Kreuger of the 2024 race said before picking up the conversation about the RNC election. “I’m just kind of concentrating on this.”
Ben Proto, president of Connecticut, whose role he made clear meant he had to remain neutral in the nomination race, offered a similar view.
“I wish we had a very good option,” he said. “And I think we’re going to, I don’t think it’s a foregone conclusion, that a single person has finished this in January 2023.”
Trump is the only declared candidate. This week, polls have him the favorite to win the nomination and the winner of a hypothetical 2024 showdown with President Joe Biden.
The Republican National Committee has to remain neutral in the primary race. Which offers some useful coverage to members who clearly don’t want to have to get into the ins and outs of the former president.
But some offered a more candid assessment in private.
“He is the elephant in the room at this meeting,” said one. “We know the midterms were a disaster, and we’re talking about what went wrong without even talking about his role in it all.”
A poll this week gave Trump a three-point lead over President Joe Biden in a hypothetical 2024 presidential race. Trump is so far the only Republican to announce a run.
Dhillon’s supporters say the choice of the luxury California resort for the annual winter meeting shows that the current leadership of the NCR is out of touch with ordinary Americans.
It’s just about getting along as a family, said Oscar Brock, a member from Tennessee, which sometimes meant not talking about such a polarizing figure.
“That guy over there could be a great Trump guy, next to someone who isn’t,” he said. But we still have to be friends.
On Friday they will vote for a president who will oversee the party’s fundraising and grassroots play until the 2024 election. And that ticket comes with enough tension weeks after House Republicans tore apart to choose a new speaker.
McDaniel, who is seeking a fourth term as president, ascended to the position as an ally of Trump.
But his critics say he presided over disappointing elections in 2018, 2020 and 2022, losing the Senate, the White House and barely winning back the House last year.
Challenger Dhillon, a lawyer who worked for Trump, says the RNC has grown complacent, shelling out funds to his friends’ consulting firms and failing to match the Democrats’ impressive field game to get out the vote.
Both have ties to Trump, and the MAGA movement has split to align behind rival candidates.
Former White House adviser Kellyanne Conway and former chief of staff Reince Priebus will be on McDaniel’s unofficial spanking team, according to the Associated Press. Dhillon can count on Kari Lake, the Trump-backed Arizona gubernatorial candidate.
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Dhillon’s spokeswoman, Caroline Wren, who represented her in a televised debate boycotted by McDaniel, framed the presidential election as a pivotal moment.
“I think the Republican Party is facing an existential crisis right now,” he said.
“And if you don’t listen to the grassroots and what they want, which is to change the leadership, we will lose our party.”
That kind of rhetoric has been accompanied by aggressive tactics. Members have found their phone numbers and email addresses posted, bringing a flood of messages highlighting the men and women on the committee who pride themselves on operating in a less confrontational manner than other parts of the party.
The result is intriguing in the Waldorf Astoria bar.
Kari Lake and cowboy hat-wearing country singer John Rich were operating in tandem to lure members to Dhillon’s side, insisting she could nullify McDaniel’s apparent advantage.
Charles Moran, chairman of the Log Cabin Republicans, said that left little oxygen to talk about Trump when there was already a “messy” fight over the RNC presidency.
“It’s a conversation that had to happen,” he said, “about how we operate as a party.”