On Saturday, the 21-member Alabama Republican Party Steering Committee voted “no confidence” in incumbent Republican National Committee (RNC) chair Ronna Romney McDaniel. Harmeet Dhillon is McDaniel’s opponent. There are media reports that some of McDaniel’s supporters in Alabama have criticized the Steering Committee with embracing a non-Christian candidate for RNC Chair in a whisper campaign.
California RNC delegate and attorney Harmeet Dhillon is a Sikh. Sikhs are a minority religion in India, where Dhillon was born – the daughter of a doctor and granddaughter of an Indian general. Dhillon is the McDaniel challenger. Dhillon has released a statement responding to the criticism from some of her Alabama detractors.
“I would like to take a minute to address concerns that have been raised by a small handful of Alabama Republican Party activists regarding my faith and how that would impact my ability to champion our nation’s Judeo-Christian values that are encapsulated in our Party Platform,” Dhillon said.
“In our founding documents, the Founding Fathers gave us a divinely inspired charter for America and for the first time in history declared that our Creator, not government, grants us our rights,” Dhillon continued. “Our Founders recognized how important faith, and our ability to freely exercise it, would be to the long-term success of our great nation. In fact, they considered religious liberty to be so foundational that it is the very first item referenced in the very first amendment of our Bill of Rights.”
“As a civil rights and constitutional attorney for thirty years, I have been fighting the woke mob to preserve religious liberty and our constitutionally protected rights for decades,” Dhillon said. “Since 2020 alone, my law firm and nonprofit led three separate COVID-related religious liberty cases to victory at the U.S. Supreme Court, taking on Gavin Newsom and the lower courts for having violated Americans’ right to freely worship and pray together as guaranteed by the First Amendment. Let me be clear, the fact that my clients’ religion differed from my own was immaterial to me and my team’s willingness to defend their God-given right to exercise their faith free from the tyranny of government intrusion. In fact, my firm has represented over a dozen Christian and Jewish congregations and faith leaders in federal and state courts in just the last three years, and many people of faith seeking to enforce their First Amendment rights in the years before that.”
Dhillon emphasized her opposition to McDaniel.
“After overseeing three consecutive losing election cycles, the current RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel has decided to run for an unprecedented fourth term,” McDaniel said. “I’m here to offer this party an alternative. I’m here to redefine what this party sees as victory. Victory can no longer be about raising the most money, winning the most press conferences, or owning the most libs. It must be about winning the most elections, battling back the cultural Marxists, and taking back all of the hills we so shamefully sacrificed. Our party can either adapt or die. I choose adaptation. I believe I can bring the change our party needs to begin the process of taking this country back.”
The word Sikh means ‘disciple’ or ‘learner.’ The Sikh religion was founded in Northern India in the fifteenth century by Guru Nanak Dev Ji. It is a monotheistic religion that draws from both Islam and Hinduism. Sikhism stresses the equality of all men and women. Sikhs reject caste and class systems and believe in prayer and charity. Sikhism is the fifth-largest religion in the world. There are 700,000 Sikhs in the United States. Sikh men are often seen wearing turbans.
The Alabama Republican Party has expressed shock that anyone in Alabama has criticized Dhillon for her faith.
“Harmeet Dhillon’s letter came as a surprise to the committee,” an ALGOP spokesperson told the Alabama Media Group. “We had not heard anything about her faith or an issue with it before or after Saturday’s meeting.”
McDaniel, a Mormon, denied being behind the attacks on Dhillon’s faith.
“I wholeheartedly condemn religious bigotry in any form,” McDaniel said in a statement Wednesday. “We are the party of faith, family, and freedom, and these attacks have no place in our party or our politics. As a member of a minority faith myself, I would never condone such attacks. I have vowed to run a positive campaign and will continue to do so.”
The RNC, under McDaniel, has spent $900,000 with Dhillon’s law firm.
Alabama has three voting delegates on the RNC Committee that will elect the next chair later this month.
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