In battle for RNC chair, candidates conflict over spending

Harmeet Dhillon, left, and Ronna McDaniel

Harmeet Dhillon, left, and present RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel. (Photograph illustration: Yahoo Information; images: Brian Cahn/ZUMA Press Wire, Laurence Kesterson/AP)

On the middle of the struggle for who will management the Republican Nationwide Committee by the 2024 election is a dispute over who’s drawing cash from the social gathering and whether or not the bills are applicable in a celebration committee that one veteran Republican guide coyly known as a “slush fund.”

Republican Get together Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, who’s vying for a uncommon fourth time period working the social gathering, and California Republican committeewoman Harmeet Dhillon, her challenger, have each been paid by the social gathering whereas overseeing its spending — and each have criticized one another’s dealing with of social gathering cash.

McDaniel, the niece of Mitt Romney and a longtime trusted confidant of former President Donald Trump, collected an elevated wage from the social gathering for the previous six years and had the social gathering put her up in a luxurious Washington house alongside the waterfront to the tune of greater than $400,000, in accordance with a overview of marketing campaign finance information.

“It’s 100% regular and routine for the committee to pay for the cheap month-to-month lease for the chairman of the RNC,” former RNC Chairman Reince Priebus mentioned in response to questions from Yahoo Information despatched to McDaniel’s group. “It is a matter that’s not even debated on the finances committee.”

Donald Trump with Harmeet Dhillon

President Donald Trump listens as lawyer Harmeet Dhillon addresses his social media summit on the White Home, July 11, 2019. (Carlos Barria/Reuters)

Dhillon, a veteran conservative operator who ingratiated herself with Trump as considered one of his lead attorneys in efforts to overturn the 2020 election outcomes, billed the committee for a complete of $1.3 million in legal work.

“It’s distinctive to say the least. I by no means keep in mind anyone making that sort of cash, or near it, who’s a member of the committee,” mentioned an RNC committee member supporting McDaniel, of Dhillon’s authorized charges. “Should you’re going to stay in a glass home, it’s finest to not throw stones.”

After Yahoo Information despatched inquiries to Dhillon late Monday evening, the RNC committeewoman responded in an e mail to the opposite RNC members Tuesday morning.

“I’ve been dissatisfied to listen to that my agency’s authorized work on behalf of the RNC is being utilized by these opposing my candidacy as a solution to disparage or discredit me,” Dhillon wrote within the e mail obtained by Yahoo Information. Dhillon argued that her agency’s charges accounted for under lower than 3% of the social gathering’s $50 million in charges paid to exterior counsel.

The struggle between the 2 will come to a head on Friday, when the 168 members of the RNC will collect to pick their subsequent chairwoman. (MyPillow government and conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell can be working, however has not acquired any noticeable assist regardless of his ardent pushing of 2020 election lies.)

Ronna McDaniel

McDaniel at a “Get Out to Vote” rally in Tampa, Fla., Oct. 18, 2022. (Chris O’Meara/AP)

It has been one of many nastiest intraparty fights in additional than a decade because the GOP decides who will lead them into the 2024 election. Dhillon’s allies have accused McDaniel of virulent racism for assaults on her Sikh religion. McDaniel’s supporters have accused Dhillon of betraying McDaniel after she helped the conservative star win plum assignments on the committee.

The social gathering chair has immense energy in figuring out who is ready to make the first debate stage — one thing which proved immensely useful to Trump in 2016 as he used main debates to tear his opponents to shreds — and finally units the foundations that determine how the Republican Get together picks its nominee for president.

The Republican Get together chair can be liable for elevating heaps of cash after which doling it out to campaigns, consultants, operatives and a slew of different items within the nationwide equipment of politics — one thing Dhillon and her supporters have latched on to within the struggle to win the chair from McDaniel.

Attorney Harmeet Dhillon

Dhillon speaks at America Fest, a right-wing occasion organized by Turning Level USA, in Phoenix, Dec. 20, 2022. (Jim Urquhart/Reuters)

Dhillon’s supporters have accused the social gathering, below McDaniel’s management, of spending lavishly on bills for McDaniel and committee employees, throughout her six years main the social gathering.

However the irony of the heated public debate is that McDaniel and Dhillon each accredited one another’s bills as members of the committee and by no means tried to dam the spending earlier than. McDaniel, as social gathering chair, accredited hiring Dhillon’s legislation agency and disbursing $1.3 million to the agency. And Dhillon, as a member of the social gathering’s government committee, reviewed the social gathering finances — together with spending on McDaniels’s posh D.C. house — yearly and by no means raised a difficulty with it, in accordance with Yahoo Information interviews with almost a dozen Republicans near the struggle.

Get together spending has lengthy been a difficulty for the GOP. In 2011, RNC members ousted former chairman Michael Steele after a raft of spending woes came to light, together with information that the RNC reimbursed a staffer for an costly evening at a BDSM-style strip membership in Hollywood.

Following the Steele spending woes, RNC members set new guidelines and pointers on how consultants are paid by the committee. Now, greater than a decade later, the members are anticipated to broaden these ethics guidelines to the members themselves, probably curbing one thing like Dhillon’s authorized work.

However that vote gained’t come till the social gathering’s subsequent assembly within the spring, lengthy after the battle for chair has been determined this week.

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