Ronna Romney McDaniel has emerged as Donald Trump’s likely choice to lead the Republican National Committee, two sources familiar with the president-elect’s decision told POLITICO.

McDaniel, the niece of 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney, is currently chair of the Michigan Republican Party. Trump’s decision could be announced as soon as Friday, a transition official said, when he is scheduled to visit Grand Rapids in the course of his post-election “thank you” tour.


Several sources close to the decision-making process, however, said the final decision had not yet been made and it was possible that another top contender could be selected. Talks remain ongoing, with some discussion centering on who would be named co-chair.

The selection of McDaniel, 43, would be a victory for incoming White House chief of staff and outgoing RNC chairman Reince Priebus, who wants to hand over the reins to a fellow committee member.

Trump’s decision, however, remains in flux. Priebus had been battling over the pick with several other top Trumpworld figures -- including Vice President-elect Mike Pence, senior strategist Steve Bannon and GOP megadonor Rebekah Mercer -- who preferred Nick Ayers, a Georgia-based Republican strategist and RNC outsider who currently works as a top aide to Pence. And of late Thursday evening, some Ayers supporters were still hoping to sway the decision.

The two sides warring over the RNC pick represent the establishment and populist elements of Trump’s political world, and they have been jockeying over who will control the committee for nearly two weeks now.

One person close to the matter said the decision-making process had evolved into a “throwdown” between dueling populist forces, led by Bannon and Mercer, and the party establishment, led by Priebus.

Two contenders for the co-chairmanship have also emerged: former George W. Bush administration official Mercedes Schlapp, a favorite of conservatives, and RNC official Matt Pinnell, who is more aligned with the establishment.

The 168 members of the RNC’s executive committee will officially elect the party’s chair at their meeting in January, but the imprimatur of an incoming president is typically decisive -- as a number of committee members acknowledged on Thursday.

“I will support whomever the president-elect tells me to support,” said New Jersey committeeman Bill Palatucci, a longtime ally and confidant of Gov. Chris Christie.

“Normally, when the president takes control, our mission is changed. We become a political arm of the president,” said California committeeman Shawn Steel.

Trump’s choice of McDaniel would settle one of the first turf wars between the populist Bannon and the establishment Priebus, and its outcome is likely to be interpreted by GOP insiders as an indicator of which faction will have greater sway over the direction of the party in the Trump era.

The president-elect is said to have taken a personal liking to McDaniel, who speaks frequently with people close to Trump. On Wednesday, during a closed-door meeting in New York with some 800 top donors, he asked her to stand up and said there were bigger things in store for her in the future, according to two people in the room.

In the end, Preibus’ preference for a fellow RNC insider may have proved decisive.

“It’s a question whether Reince, Bannon or Pence gets their pick, but I think Trump personally likes the person Reince likes the best,” a transition aide told POLITICO before the choice was made.

“I’m making the assumption that Reince Priebus, who has the ear of the president, is pretty much going to have 90 percent of the decisionmaking about who succeeds him, because he understands how delicate and how important the vehicle is,” said Steel. “So if it’s some name I’m not familiar with, I’ll have to assume Reince endorses it and that he thinks it’s a good idea.”

Priebus has also floated the idea of a joint chairmanship in which McDaniel and Pinnell, a former Oklahoma GOP chairman who directed the RNC’s outreach to the state parties on Trump’s behalf, would run the committee. Mercer and Pence have similarly toyed with the idea of a joint chairmanship between Ayers and Schlapp, who during the campaign emerged as an enthusiastic Trump surrogate.

The two sides have even discussed a compromise that would involve a co-chairmanship between a candidate representing each faction. RNC rules dictate that any joint chairmanship must be shared by a man and a woman. Priebus currently co-chairs the committee with Florida’s Sharon Day, but historically, co-chairs have not played a major public role.

Over the past two weeks, a number of other contenders, from Christie to Trump deputy campaign manager David Bossie and Pennsylvania Republican operative David Urban – who was also spotted in Trump Tower on Wednesday – had also been floated as possible contenders.

Christie, who was leading the Trump transition until mid-November, when he was replaced by Pence, lobbied for the post last week and was quickly shot down, according to a transition aide. “He has been totally politically decapitated in a sad way,” another transition official said. “Just brutal.”

Ronna Romney McDaniel, the Michigan Republican Party chair, speaks before a Republican presidential primary debate in Detroit in March 2016. | AP Photo

Bossie, who maintains a close relationship with both Bannon and Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, is likely to wind up as the White House political director, according to multiple sources in and around the transition. Bossie did not respond to a request for comment.

The transition team is now considering Urban for other positions in the administration, according to a transition aide. Urban declined to comment.

McDaniel supported Trump during the Republican primary, breaking with her uncle, who lambasted the Manhattan business mogul as a “con man” and a “fraud” in a blistering speech in March. She went on to represent Trump as a delegate at the Republican National Convention in July, where she revealed that she had sought to change her uncle’s mind about Trump.

“We had a private conversation in D.C. a little while ago and we sat for a half hour, and we went through it and I was a Trump delegate at that point,” she told the Detroit Free Press at the time. “He understands the role that I’m in, and he’s following his conscience and that’s what he believes. But I still have hopes that we’ll turn him around.”

Josh Dawsey contributed reporting.