The Chairman of the Republican National Committee Ronna McDaniel joins the podcast to talk about recruiting women to the Republican party at all levels of elected office. We discuss why so many women are throwing their hats into the political ring and discuss what it’s been like to run the RNC as a woman. I’ll also ask her how she juggles being a girl boss and working mom. Is there such a thing as having it all?

Ronna McDaniel is the Chairman of the Republican National Committee. Under her leadership, the RNC has raised record funds, built the largest grassroots campaign and political operation in history, and significantly expanded the Party’s minority engagement efforts. Chairwoman McDaniel was unanimously re-elected to lead the RNC for a third term earlier this year thanks to her record of results for Republicans nationwide. Chairwoman McDaniel is the third of seven children, received her Bachelor of Arts in English from Brigham Young University, and is married to Patrick McDaniel. Together they have two children, Abigail and Nash.


TRANSCRIPT

Beverly Hallberg:

Welcome to She Thinks, a podcast where you’re allowed to think for yourself. I’m your host, Beverly Hallberg, and on today’s episode, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, Ronna McDaniel, joins us to talk about recruiting women to the Republican Party at all levels of elected office. We’ll discuss why so many women are throwing their hats into the political ring, and discuss what it’s like to run the RNC as a female. I’ll also ask her how she juggles being a girl boss and working mom. Is there such thing as having it all? Well, before we bring her on, a little bit more about Ronna: Ronna McDaniel is the chairman of the Republican National Committee. Under her leadership, the RNC has raised record funds, built the largest grassroots campaign and political operation in history, and significantly expanded the party’s minority engagement efforts. She is the third of seven children, a graduate of Brigham Young University. She is married to Patrick McDaniel, and together they have two children, Abigail and Nash. Chairwoman McDaniel, it is a pleasure to have you on She Thinks today.

Ronna McDaniel:

Great to be with you. Thanks for having me, especially with Women’s History Month.

Beverly Hallberg:

That is right.

Ronna McDaniel:

So, it is an honor to be here.

Beverly Hallberg:

It is perfect. And you are the second woman to chair the RNC. You were the first elected female chair for the RNC, and you’ve run the RNC for three election cycles. What has this experience been like for you?

Ronna McDaniel:

It’s been a lot. I mean, it’s been wonderful. I think coming in as only the second women, if you look at the wall of all the men, it was a little daunting. You want to get it right. You want to do well. I think coming in as a mom — before, I was a stay-at-home mom before getting involved in this, making sure that I could raise the money and do the things that we needed to do, but I’m so thrilled. By the end, I think I’ll be the longest-serving chair in history. So it’s been great.

Beverly Hallberg:

That’s great. What is a day-to-day life, life in a day-to-day of you? I’m sure it depends on the season that you are in, whether it’s election time or non-election time, but is every day a little bit different, and how many hours are you working a week?

Ronna McDaniel:

Oh, I don’t think I ever stop working, but you do…. I will say this. I have time that’s just dedicated for my husband and my kids, where we’re just, no phone. We shut it off Sundays, especially. We go to church. I really try and be home on Sundays with the family. But during an average day, I’ll get up at 6:00 AM and go till 11:00 PM. A lot of fundraising calls on the phone, to make sure we have the funds to build the offices. Then yesterday, I was able to open an engagement office in Connecticut, in the fifth district there, and I had my son come with me, my 17-year-old. So I did a little skip-school, come-with-Mom, and it was great. So balancing all of that is really important.

Beverly Hallberg:

Has your family been really supportive, including your children, with you having this high-level position, and working the amount of hours that you have to work?

Ronna McDaniel:

You can’t do it if you don’t have a supportive family, and it wouldn’t be worth it. My family’s the most important thing, but I have the best husband, and he’s the one who actually encouraged me to take this job. When President Trump came and said, “Hey, you want to run the RNC?” I was like “eh” and my husband was like, “We can do this.” He is the best, and we’ve got the best kids. Five years in, we’ve got routine. I think the first year was a lot harder.

Beverly Hallberg:

Sure. Well, it’s that adjustment period.

Ronna McDaniel:

Yeah.

Beverly Hallberg:

One of the things that I think would’ve been very difficult to adjust to is how to not just handle interviews, but how to handle hostile interviews, especially with President Trump, when he was president, the questions that Republicans would get were so hard to answer. Would you be fearful headed into a media interview? Did you get, take a lot of prep or get a lot of prep? How did you approach that both mentally, and also just in the technique of it?

Ronna McDaniel:

I did, actually. Before I became elected as RNC Chair, I did media prep with Ari Fleischer, who was the Press Secretary under Bush. He came and dissected all my speeches and all my interviews, and really gave me some great advice. I’m not saying I’m great. It’s always working, but preparation helps a lot. So any big Sunday show that I do, or really tough interview, I spend a lot of time with my team preparing because we know that, if you make a mistake, it gets pushed out over and over again. There’s a lot of room for error, and if you do everything well, everybody forgets about the interview the next day.

Beverly Hallberg:

Yeah.

Ronna McDaniel:

So, you’ve got to do it right.

Beverly Hallberg:

Do you feel like, as a female — we talk about this in relation to elected women — but do you feel like there is more critique of you as a female, that women do really have a harder time when they’re in higher echelons of business and politics?

Ronna McDaniel:

Yeah, I think there’s good and bad. I think I’ve had a lot of people really supportive of me being a woman in this job, and being the second woman, and I think that’s been so great. On the media side, if you look at your comments on things, of course they attack women a lot more on superficial things, but by and large, the positives have been so good. I will say early on, when I had record fundraising, they would not attribute that to me. They would attribute that to the men in the RNC. I was like, that’s interesting. I wonder if they’ve ever attributed to a male chair, or the fundraising, to somebody else. But that has changed, which has been nice, but you did, I did have to kind of point that out to a couple reporters. Have you noticed your difference in how you reported for me versus my predecessor on really similar stories?

Beverly Hallberg:

That’s really interesting. I also think that there is this misperception that if someone is a female, they must be extremely liberal in their perspective. Of course, Independent Women’s Forum definitely has an independent mindset. We care about issues. I personally am a registered Republican, and I know sometimes people are shocked to find that I’m a female who grew up in California, near San Francisco, and am a Republican. Do you get that a lot as well? That, how can you be a female and Republican?

Ronna McDaniel:

Yeah, of course. We get that as — but I think even more kind of astounding is the gains of Republican women get ignored by the media. When you see a Winsome Sears, who just got elected in Virginia, a first in Virginia, an African American Lieutenant Governor, she’s not going to be on the cover of magazines. You see Elise Stefanik. You see some amazing women in our party who just do not get the same accolades. I think Melania Trump’s a great example of that. How was she treated versus Jill Biden and Michelle Obama? You know what? We should be championing all women who are achieving great things, and let young girls see that, despite your party differential, this is great to see women achieve. It’s sad that conservative women are not afforded that same platform.

Beverly Hallberg:

In talking about women elected to office in 2020, there was a record number of Republican women who got elected to Congress. Women in general, both Republican and Democrat, huge numbers. First of all, why are we seeing the rise of women in politics, and specifically, are you seeing a lot of women look to the Republican Party as the party that does address their concerns?

Ronna McDaniel:

When I came in as Chair, our first midterm, we went down to the lowest number of women in the House. It was down to 13, and it was depressing, and messenger matters, right? If you see women in the Republican Party, that helps you resonate, or look at that party and say, that party stands for me. So I never say vote for somebody based on anything other than their credentials, but it is important when we’re half the country that we have women in our party. So, now we have 33 women in the House, eight women in the Senate, the largest we’ve ever had. I think it’s gone into recruiting people like Elise Stefanik, who created the EPAC and other groups proactively bringing women in.

I think having a woman Chair was part of that as well. We need moms to be part of the dialogue. I think this election, we’re going to have more. We have more women who’ve already filed to run, 267, than we did last cycle. I think moms are really upset about what happened with school, with the shutdowns, with the masking, with so many issues, it’s really woken them up to the force that government plays in their lives, and the voice that they want to have in those conversations.

Beverly Hallberg:

I know so much about looking towards elections. A lot of it is about polling and figuring out where we are. Of course, people are predicting a red wave because of the low polling numbers for President Joe Biden. But it is an interesting time. We are talking about two years of COVID. We saw what happened in Virginia. We saw women vote for Glenn Youngkin, and some who were even registered different than Republican. What do you make of where we are, when we are in such a unique time? What do you think we’re going to see in November?

Ronna McDaniel:

So, I do think there’s a story from 2020 that doesn’t get told, which is the red wave actually kind of started then. We picked up 15 House seats. We didn’t lose a single incumbent seat in the House and, down ballot, we won 135 state legislative seats. So, there was a red wave. Joe Biden had no coattails. That’s continuing, and I think it’s because we look at voters as the whole voter. We know that every voter cares about the economy. We care about our national security. We care about our borders. We care about health care. Women make the majority of healthcare decisions in the home. We obviously care about education, and Republicans treat voters as the whole voter. I think that’s getting recognition as we’re seeing growth in our party, not just with women voters, but African American, Hispanic, Asian, they are seeing a home in the Republican Party, and I think that bodes very well for us heading into 2022.

Beverly Hallberg:

Do you think it’s some of those specific issues such as defunding the police, such as rising crime and bail issues? Is it also the border? What are some of the issues that are making some people who would typically vote Democrat turn towards a Republican ticket?

Ronna McDaniel:

Well, I think the economy’s a big part of it right now. The inflation that we’re seeing, the high gas prices, we’re all feeling hurt. I think the average family right now is paying an extra $260 a month right now, just because of inflation. So, that’s a lot. But absolutely, the defund the police movement that Democrats have embraced. When you see them embracing policies like cashless bail, letting people out who have committed a crime, and then seeing them go commit crime after crime, it’s demoralizing our police to keep catching these habitual offenders, and then seeing them let back out on the street to commit crimes. On top of the targeting we’ve seen on our police, people want safety. Then the education issues, we’ve already covered that. The border, but along with the border comes the massive amount of drugs that are coming across our border, and the fentanyl deaths, 100,000 deaths last year.

So, Republicans are talking about these issues that people are seeing in real time in their lives, and it feels like Democrats are talking past that. They don’t want to address it. They’re not empathetic. They say, hey, if you have a concern about your kid’s school, you’re a domestic terrorist. How does that help bring voters into a conversation? So it is really interesting how dismissive they are of real concerns. I feel like we’re talking about common-sense issues, and they’re talking past the problems the American people are feeling.

Beverly Hallberg:

Well, this week was the State of the Union address. You had President Biden, who seemed to give more of a middle-of-the-road approach to his policy issues. He said that we need to fund the police. That was one of the big lines. Do you think it’s too little, too late if he, at this point in time, claims that he’s part of the middle?

Ronna McDaniel:

Yeah, words don’t match your actions. I’ve not heard Joe Biden call out LA when they cut their police budget or any other Democrat prosecutor who…. Let’s look at the one in New York. I haven’t heard Joe Biden speak out against him, who says he is not going to prosecute violent crimes in the city of New York. So, it’s a little, okay. That’s a great soundbite, but we all know the truth, Joe Biden. Same with kids in school. I mean, Democrat governors are the ones that kept our kids out of school. I’m in Michigan. Gretchen Whitmer kept my son out of school. He did not go to school five days a week in-person for a year and a half, and that was because of our governor. There was no question that he did not learn as much. He just got to take his mask off last week, and there are issues he’s going to have, as he’s competing against kids in Florida and Republican-led states to getting into college, because he lost some significant learning. These are things that he can say, but the American people are smart. Democrats, we know you weren’t for these things, and that’s where his State of the Union, I think, got a lot of bad marks because his rhetoric’s empty.

Beverly Hallberg:

Do you think it really is the rise of the mom that we are seeing? We know that school boards are going through a lot of transition. Are you finding, maybe this is a question…. Are you finding women who never before thought about entering into any type of elected office, all of a sudden, because they experienced what you experienced with your son, saying, “No more. I have to do something.”

Ronna McDaniel:

I remember a year ago, and I went to my staff and I said, “I have to write an op-ed about how helpless I feel as a mom right now, watching my son in bed, doing school, doing virtual school, knowing how the impact on him, not being with his friends, all the things that we were dealing with, and knowing that I had nowhere to go.” I went to his principal. I went to his vice principal. I went to the school board. It was so hard as a mother, and I think a lot of moms felt that way around the country like I did. We watched kids in our communities committing suicide. We watched crime rates go up among kids, depression issues, and Democrats just would not listen to us. They wouldn’t even sit and talk to us. I think that final straw was seeing the Biden administration, in Virginia, call parents domestic terrorists.

I mean, we were on the front lines of getting our kids on those Zoom classes. We were on the front lines of figuring out how we’re going to get through this together, with the teachers, by the way. The teachers were great. So, the Democrats prioritized the unions above the kids, and they demonized the parents. And they should have been saying, “Thank you, parents. Thank you, moms, who gave up your job to get your kid through school.” I think it has created a great awakening. I said it a year ago, in one of our speeches, in one of my speeches at the RNC, long before the Youngkin race, because I’m talking to the moms in my community, and I’m like, if I feel this way, women across the country have to feel this way.

Beverly Hallberg:

So, for those women out there who, we have a lot of women who listen to this program, maybe they’re considering running for office, but they don’t know if they should. They don’t know if they’re cut out for it. There’s hesitation. They don’t know the process. What would you say to any woman who is considering?

Ronna McDaniel:

Do it. Lean in. I, honestly, women, when I was Michigan Chair, I really actively recruited women, and I had a lot of…. We’re not monolithic. We don’t all think the same. We’re 50%, we’re not a special interest group, but some of the issues I ran into…. One, family-life balance, which is understandable, the vitriol. Then, something I dealt with when I took over that job, being a stay-at-home mom and running a state party, was fundraising. I wasn’t in the boardroom. I wasn’t one of the guys on the golf course, and it was hard to raise money with business people or people who typically donate. But do it. You will find support. There are groups out there that will support you, like the Independent Women’s Forum, like Elise Stefanik. We need the voices of women in our discussion, and in our conversations, especially when it comes to education and our kids, because we’ve been on the front lines of that for the past two years.

Beverly Hallberg:

So, final question for you. Can women do it all, both work, raise a family, or is it about doing different parts of life at different times?

Ronna McDaniel:

I wish I could say I don’t carry mom guilt all the time. I do. I mean, when you miss certain things, you do. But I also a look at the benefits. Yesterday, I said, I took my son to Connecticut, and somebody said, “Do you want to speak?” He goes, “sure,” and he walked up to the mic in front of eight cameras and said something. I’m like, “wow.” I was so impressed, and that’s what he’s seen, and he’s listened to that. So, it’s a different learning, but we can have it all. It may just look a little different for some of us, but we also need to support each other and be positive voices and uplift each other, because we’re all doing the best we can, stay-at-home moms, who are non-paid working moms.

That’s how I feel. They are not, they are working moms. I never, I never like it when somebody says a stay-at-home mom’s not a working mom. Women who are in the workforce, women who are balancing at single moms, let’s just be there for each other, and we can do it all if we have that support.

Beverly Hallberg:

Well, we so appreciate just what you have done to get more women out there. Also, we thank you so much for coming on She Thinks today. Chairwoman McDaniel with RNC, thank you so much.

Ronna McDaniel:

Thanks for having me.

Beverly Hallberg:

Thank you all for joining us. Before you go, Independent Women’s Forum does want you to know that we rely on the generosity of supporters like you. An investment in IWF fuels our efforts to enhance freedom, opportunity, and wellbeing for all Americans. So, please consider making a small donation to IWF by visiting iwf.org/donate. That is iwf.org/donate. Last, if you enjoyed this episode of She Thinks, do leave us a rating or review. It does help. We’d love it if you share this episode, so your friends know where they can find more She Thinks. From all of us here at Independent Women’s Forum, thanks for watching.