Rnc Chair Ronna Mcdaniel Highlights Fundraising Uptick On Way Out The Door

Outgoing Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel sent a letter to GOP officials Friday highlighting a recent uptick in fundraising — an effort to cast her final months as chair as a success and to counter intense criticism over the organization’s financial standing.

McDaniel wrote in the message to the RNC’s 168 members that the committee raised $22.5 million in January and February, an amount she said represents the RNC’s best first two months of any year in which the party did not occupy the White House. The sum, she added, was nearly $8 million more than what the RNC had expected to raise during that period.

“It was important to me and the staff that we reached our target fundraising goals before any transition took place,” McDaniel wrote in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by POLITICO.

“It has been a long month with lots of meetings and calls. We pushed out the noise and focused on the mission of electing a president, taking the Senate and holding the House.”

The RNC is set to meet on March 8 in Houston, where McDaniel is expected to announce that she is stepping down from the post she has occupied since 2017, when former President Donald Trump hand picked her. McDaniel, the longest-serving RNC chair in modern history, has long been a Trump ally. But the ex-president has soured on her in recent months, in part because of the committee’s lackluster fundraising. The RNC raised just $87 million in 2023 — an amount that, according to campaign finance expert Rob Pyers, was its worst in a decade — and ended the year with $8 million on hand.

Trump has endorsed North Carolina GOP Chair Michael Whatley to be RNC chair and his daughter-in-law Lara Trump to be co-chair. Whatley and Lara Trump must be elected to their posts by the 168 members, though neither of them are facing competition.