Former RNC Chair McDaniel Joins DeVos Family to Focus on Michigan

BY JOHN MCCORMICK

Ronna McDaniel is getting back into the political arena to lead a new organization funded by the wealthy DeVos family, heirs to the Amway fortune, that will try to make the battleground state of Michigan more conservative.

The former Republican National Committee chairwoman has mostly been on the sidelines of national politics since NBC News canceled her on-airanalyst contract in March 2024 in what became a media kerfuffle.

The month prior, she was pushed out of the RNC by Donald Trump as it became clear he would be the party’s 2024 presidential nominee. He was unhappy with the RNC for hosting debates among his nomination rivals.

The new entity is called the Michigan Forward Network. The 501(c)(4) nonprofit won’t have to disclose its donors but will be able to spend money to influence elections.

“We need to make Michigan reliably red,” McDaniel said in an interview. “We need to become a state like Ohio.”

The Buckeye State to Michigan’s south was once also a political battleground but moved hard to the right once Trump emerged on the national stage in 2016.

The connections McDaniel built from being the longestserving RNC leader in modern history could help the new organization raise money.

“It’s going to be a permanent infrastructure,” McDaniel said of the group’s planned spending. “It’s not going to ramp up and ramp back down, with the recognition that election year is every year now.”

Her primary initial focus will be to try to win control of the Michigan Senate and keep GOP control of the Michigan House.

She declined to specify exactly how much money would initially be put behind the group but said it would be in the millions. While members of the DeVos family will be major contributors, there are other donors as well.

McDaniel said that the group would focus heavily on the issues of education and government spending and that it would be a fusion of traditional chamber-of-commerce conservatism and Trump’s MAGA movement.

Fiercely loyal

Before her departure from the RNC, McDaniel had been fiercely loyal to Trump, who helped install her in the post shortly after he was first elected president in 2016.

That loyalty wasn’t reciprocated. Trump pushed for her removal from the leadership post in early 2024 after she stuck to the RNC’s mandate of neutrality in the presidential nomination process, including by hosting debates that he didn’t attend.

Michigan was one of seven battlegrounds Trump swept in November’s election. It had the nation’s second-narrowest outcome.

The state is expected to have highly competitive and expensive races in 2026 for open seats for governor and the U.S. Senate. Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a possible 2028 Democratic presidential candidate, is term-limited and Democratic Sen. Gary Peters is retiring.

While the new group won’t initially focus on the governor’s race, McDaniel said it would work to cast a negative light on Whitmer in the state and nationally. “We want to make a referendum on Gretchen Whitmer, as she is eyeing a bid to the White House,” she said. “We want the country to see that she’s been repudiated.”

Billionaire Dick DeVos, a 2006 GOP nominee for Michigan governor, will be on the new group’s advisory board. His wife, Betsy DeVos, served as education secretary in the first Trump administration.

“With one of the highest unemployment rates in the country, underperforming schools, and a shrinking population, the challenges facing Michigan are serious,” Dick DeVos said.

‘A good relationship’

For McDaniel, the new job brings her back into the mix in a state of national political importance that happens to be her home and where she was once a state GOP chair.

McDaniel’s role in the events between the 2020 election and the attack on the Capitol by a Trump-aligned mob on Jan. 6, 2021—as well as her past support of his false claims about the 2020 election—have long made her a target for many Democrats. She triggered an on-air mutiny in March 2024 among NBC and MSNBC talent critical of her hiring.

McDaniel said she has spoken to Trump since he won in November. “We’ve had good conversations,” she said. “It’s a good relationship.”