McDonald faces 2 challengers for state GOP chairmanship

The contest to determine the next chairman of the Nevada Republican Party is heating up, as longtime incumbent Michael McDonald finds himself facing a pair of challengers bent on using the party’s 2018 losses to oust him.

The party’s central committee will gather in Winnemucca next week for its fall meeting, to elect officers for the 2020 election cycle and potentially adopt a resolution that will pledge the state’s delegates to President Donald Trump more than a year before the election.

Two challengers have emerged as rivals to McDonald, the longest-serving chairman in state party history — Mesquite Councilwoman Annie Black and former Clark County Republican Party Chairman David McKeon. Both Black and McKeon say they don’t have a personal vendetta against McDonald, but contend he’s not doing enough to push the party forward with fundraising, training programs and voter outreach.

“Under the current leadership, there have been over 80 Republican losses in the last two cycles,” Black said. “If this were the private sector, there would have been a meeting by now and a change would have been made.”

McKeon, who worked with McDonald on previous elections, said the state leader must accept responsibility for 2018 on the eve of “the most important election in Nevada’s history,” which will decide the presidency and shape redistricting in 2021.

McDonald said the party “did everything right” in 2018, raising money and opening more offices across the state. The national party “had incorrect data” which hurt multiple states in the midterms – not just Nevada.

“Sometimes you lose for all the wrong reasons,” McDonald said.

High stakes

The leadership vote is set for Sept. 7, and the stakes are high. After 2018, Republicans hold just one statewide office (Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske was narrowly re-elected) and one federal office (Rep. Mark Amodei ultra-safe 2nd District). Democrats gained control of the governor’s office for the first time in 20 years, took four other constitutional offices, won a super-majority in the Assembly and were just one vote shy of another in the state Senate.

Trump also narrowly lost the state in 2016.

McDonald appears to be the clear favorite. Apart from his long tenure and past record of easily turning away challengers, he carries the endorsement of Trump’s re-election campaign and most of the Republican elected officials in Nevada.

The chairman said he remains confident that Nevada Republicans can win in 2020 and deliver the state for Trump through a combination of grassroots organizing and a reinvigorated national party. Trump campaigned in the state several times in 2016 and will do so again next year, the party has maintained.

Serving at the pleasure of the president

McDonald said he is continuing to serve as chairman based on the president’s wishes. After the state’s heavy losses in 2018, he said he took responsibility and offered to resign from the party post. (McDonald said he was considering running for his old seat on the Las Vegas City Council.) Instead, McDonald says he was asked by former Republican National Committee co-chairman Bob Paduchik to stay on as chairman.

McDonald also contends Nevada would have lost its early Republican caucus to Texas, Arizona or Colorado if any other person had held the chairmanship. He said the party was in ashes when he took over in 2012 and has seen big wins under his leadership. (In 2014, Republicans won every statewide office and both houses of the Legislature.)

He cautioned his challengers not to sew disunity in a party that must instead focus its efforts on defeating Democrats, whom he said avoid messy public squabbles under a system built and run by former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Rebuilding the party

Black is a relative newcomer to Nevada politics, having won her council seat in 2018. She comes from a real-estate background and has been heavily involved in Republican women’s groups prior to mounting the challenge to McDonald.

She said she is not running to advance her own career, but rather to rebuild a party that should be boosting its donor networks while increasing outreach to communities of color, women and other demographic groups currently courted hard by Democrats.

Former Nevada Controller Ron Knecht has signed on as possible co-chairman. Knecht, a former assemblyman and university regent, lost a bid for re-election as state controller in 2018.

He said the party must do a better job at regaining big-money donors, who he said have soured on McDonald, as well as narrowing the turnout gap between Democrats and Republicans in Clark County.

Black has also earned the support of former Clark County Republican Chairman Chuck Muth, who said McDonald’s acceptance of political hires dictated to him by the national party has soured his 24-year support for the chairman.

Muth claims McDonald absorbed several staffers from the failed 2018 campaign of Sen. Dean Heller, whom he said were responsible for Heller’s defeat and thus the defeat of other Republicans below Heller on the ticket. Keith Schipper, one of the staffers named by Muth and now the state party’s spokesman, said in response that Muth “attacks more Republicans than the Nevada Democratic Party.”

“By continually challenging the president’s preferred candidates, he has proven himself to be the biggest Never Trumper in Nevada,” Schipper said.

Muth denied that he does not support the president, pointing to a summer 2015 column he wrote in support of Trump while still working with a super PAC affiliated with early Republican challenger Ben Carson.

Black said she, too, is a staunch supporter of Trump. When asked about running against someone who seems to have the president’s full backing, she said Trump’s support for the state party would easily transition to her leadership. “The only thing he hates more than Democrats is losers,” Black said.

McDonald called that “a naive statement from a naive candidate.”

Fixing the albatross

Former Clark County GOP chairman McKeon said he is running to bring back a culture of harmony and professionalism to the state party.

He said his record of delivering winning efforts in Clark County during the 2014 election is needed to return the state to Republicans.

“Clark County is the albatross,” McKeon said. “It’s going to take Clark County to turn Nevada red.”

Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than 136,000 active registered voters in Clark County.

McKeon is also hoping to increase fundraising efforts and outreach to Democrats and groups targeted by Democrats in an effort to lure them into the Republican Party. He also looks to increase the support and autonomy of county parties, while increasing transparency by holding regular statewide meetings between the county and state parties.

Washoe County Republican Party co-chairman Michael B. Jack is running alongside McKeon.

The election has seen stories of a nasty divorce coupled with a domestic violence allegation against McKeon by his former wife resurface. McKeon has denied these accusations, posting a lengthy rebuttal on his website featuring court documents from several states in an attempt to refute the claims.

McKeon said he was an early supporter of Trump, having introduced then-candidate Trump at his Oct. 8, 2015, rally back when other Republican elected officials “weren’t returning the Trump campaign’s calls.”

Also on the agenda for consideration is a process whereby the central committee could vote to pledge the party’s delegates to Trump.

The party’s February caucus would still take place as scheduled, but only to select delegates to attend county conventions.

If the resolution is approved, Trump will have locked in the votes of Nevada’s delegations to the Aug. 24-27, 2020, Republican National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., regardless of who may challenge him for the nomination. Former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld and former Illinois Congressman Joe Walsh have both announced long-shot bids to challenge Trump.

Contact Rory Appleton at rappleton@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0276. Follow @RoryDoesPhonics on Twitter.