Top officials at the Republican National Committee want Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor, to drop out of the race for the GOP nomination so it can launch a joint fundraising committee with Donald Trump to bolster its finances, according to people familiar with the situation.
The RNC last week reported $8m in cash to spend in its year-end filing, an amount less than half of what it had when Trump was running for the presidency in 2016 and below what it needs to stand up operations as it prepares to take on Joe Biden in the general election.
The issue for the RNC has been the lack of direct revenue, with small-dollar donors seen to generally prefer to donate directly to the Trump campaign and larger, institutional donors who dislike Trump preferring to donate directly to challengers like Haley, the people said.
While the RNC was slightly buoyed with a $12m haul in January, RNC leadership has discussed in recent weeks the need for Haley to exit the race so they can as soon as possible launch a joint fundraising committee with Trump, which would allow wealthy donors to write checks larger than $800,000.
The RNC does not technically need Haley to drop out to do joint fundraising agreements – it partnered with Trump in 2016 before the former Ohio governor John Kasich dropped out – but, the thinking goes, if Haley were out, the RNC could pick up her large-dollar donors who want to support the party but not Trump directly.
RNC leadership have suggested privately they don’t have any inherent preference for one candidate over the other. But with polls showing Trump as the clear frontrunner after his wins in Iowa and New Hampshire, they see Haley as the likely loser who should take the fall, the people said.
They have also recognized that Haley may not drop out for some time, and the RNC has created a joint fundraising fund called the “Presidential Republican Nominee Fund 2024” to collect and store checks in the interim, the people said. The newsletter Puck earlier reported the fund.
Whether the RNC is taking steps to coalesce behind Trump is unclear – it is supposed to remain neutral – but even the RNC chairwoman herself, Ronna McDaniel, signalled after the New Hampshire primary that the party should coalesce behind Trump.
“I’m looking at the map and the path going forward, and I don’t see it for Nikki Haley,” McDaniel, who has been re-elected RNC chair three times since 2017 and previously vowed to stay neutral, said on Fox News.
An RNC spokesperson could not be reached for comment.
In Florida, where Trump has his campaign headquarters, allies of the former president have been wary about working in tandem with the RNC at this stage in the primary even if it would benefit from the infusion of large checks itself, a person familiar with the matter said.
The concern inside the Trump campaign has long been that the RNC is viewed as too institutional by the Maga base, which has become conditioned to distrust entities that are part of the “Washington swamp”. Trump working with the RNC could open him up to attacks from the far right.
That was also part of the reason Trump quickly distanced himself from a draft resolution proposed by the former Trump campaign manager David Bossie to name Trump as the presumptive nominee, even with Haley still in the race, a person close to the former president said.
Trump’s relationship with McDaniel has also been difficult in recent months, with the former president unimpressed by the RNC’s fundraising. Trump met with McDaniel at his Mar-a-Lago club on Monday evening and while he did not ask her to resign, he told Newsmax in an interview he thought she should step down, the person said.
The wariness could mean a joint fundraising agreement with Trump may not be as lucrative for its coffers as RNC officials might have considered. Trump could decide to split the proceeds in a lopsided manner, for instance in a 80-20 split, keeping the bulk of the money.
The disbursements were lopsided in the previous election cycle, with the Trump Make America great again joint fundraising committee, where the RNC received roughly $25m for every $100m raised before expenses, according to the then RNC chief of staff, Richard Walters.
Trump’s advisers have also suggested that they have been ambivalent about the RNC because, in their eyes, they have done little to support his candidacy even with all the public chatter from McDaniel of coalescing around him that has drawn complaints from Haley’s team.
One of the key priorities for the Trump campaign – something they think the RNC should be pursuing more aggressively – has been to stand up an election integrity team, with staffers in key battleground states, to prevent perceived election fraud by Democrats, which is exceedingly rare.
