Ronna McDaniel beat back an effort by lawyer Harmeet Dhillon to win an unprecedented fourth straight term as chair of the Republican National Committee and told Newsmax on Monday night she is looking forward to working with Dhillon to make the party better, especially on issues such as election integrity and early voting.
"I do want to work with Harmeet. Harmeet has been working with us on election integrity," McDaniel told "Rob Schmitt Tonight." "She was one of the lawyers and firms that we consulted last [election] cycle. She was key on our Google lawsuit [over allegations RNC emails were being sent to spam folders]. And she continues to be a lawyer for the RNC even through this whole process."
McDaniel, who was backed by former President Donald Trump, took flak after the party’s disappointing performance in the 2022 midterm elections. She said there was a lot to take away from the challenge by Dhillon, who was backed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, considered a rival to Trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
"You have to look at every election and say what can we do better every time," McDaniel said. "We should always be looking at ways to improve the RNC. … But I think we've got to continue to work and educate voters on the importance of mail-in balloting and banking those votes early, continue to engage in ballot harvesting.
"We've got to play on the same field as the Democrats and do it well in states like Pennsylvania and Arizona. We do it incredibly well in states like Florida and North Carolina, but how do we expand that into other states? That's going to be a lot of education. But there's always ways to improve and we have to be looking at that."
McDaniel said in the last election cycle, the RNC was engaged in 91 lawsuits regarding election integrity, including in Maricopa County in Arizona and Clark County in Nevada over information on party representation of poll workers because both counties require equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats.
"We sued and we got that taken care of, and we got that equal representation," McDaniel said.
She also mentioned a successful suit the RNC was engaged in over a New York City law that allowed noncitizens to vote in local elections. The law was struck down by the state Supreme Court.
"People probably don't realize how much we're engaging," she said. "It's the most the RNC's ever done to be in 91 different lawsuits last [election] cycle, and we want to continue to do more across the country heading into 2024."
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