Meet the First Israeli American Elected to an RNC Position

The first ever Israeli American was elected to a Republican National Committee (RNC) position on January 16.

Attorney Sigal Chattah, who ran for state attorney general in 2022 and lost, was elected by the Nevada Republican Central Committee by a vote of 222-147, beating out Pauline Lee to serve as Nevada’s Republican National Committeewoman. Lee was the preferred choice of newly elected Republican Governor Joe Lombardo. 

“Lombardo’s candidate was an establishment-type candidate,” Chattah told the Journal in a phone interview. “Nevada Republicans are just not establishment. They don’t like the establishment. The establishment has sold them out over and over and over again.”

Chattah said that she ran after her best friend, Michele Fiore, was appointed to a county judicial position, thus prompting Fiore to resign from her position as committeewoman. Fiore urged Chattah to run as her replacement.

She went onto say that it’s “amazing” to be the first ever Israeli to server in the RNC. “The Republican Party has gotten such a bad rap for being the party of antisemitism, and I think it’s just so wrong to call Republicans antisemitic because they’re not,” Chattah said. 

Chattah’s first action as committeewoman was to co-sponsor a resolution condemning all forms of antisemitism and opposing “any antisemitic elements that seek to infiltrate the Republican Party.” “It’s almost like the hand of God,” she said. “I’m the first Israeli-American to serve [and] the first resolution that comes across my desk to co-sponsor is a resolution denouncing antisemitism on behalf of the Republican Party.”

Chattah also aims to strengthen Nevada’s ties to the RNC, viewing herself as an ambassador of sorts between Nevada Republicans and the RNC, maintain a strong brand for Nevada Republicans, and be able to fundraise for Republican candidates in the state.

The 2022 election saw a Republican (Lombardo) unseat an incumbent Democrat (Steve Sisolak) in Nevada’s gubernatorial race, whereas the Republican senate candidate (Adam Laxalt) narrowly lost to incumbent Democrat Senator Catherine Cortez Masto. “What we saw in Nevada was a mixture of a failure to have a ground game that was comparable to the Democrats because the Democrats have been ballot harvesting for many, many years,” Chattah said, adding that Republicans haven’t been able to keep up with the Democrats’ ground game with regard to universal mail-in ballots. However, “a lot of it had to do with a secretary of state that did nothing to clear the voter rolls,” she said. “There were a lot of moving parts as to what happened in Nevada.” 

Chattah said she is backing attorney and RNC member Harmeet Dhillon to replace Ronna Romney McDaniel as the head of the RNC. “All I could go by is what I saw last election,” she said. “I ran for close to two years and I never once met Ronna. There was absolutely no support from the RNC directly to the America First candidate. We were completely marginalized by consultants that worked for the RNC.”