Miranda Alam / Special to the Sun
Las Vegas City Councilwoman Victoria Seaman, right, speaks alongside Sigal Chattah, planning commissioner for Ward 2 during a town hall meeting at the Sahara West Library in Las Vegas on Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2019. Chattah was selected to the Republican National Committee on Saturday, Jan. 14.
Monday, Jan. 16, 2023 | 4:17 p.m.
Sigal Chattah, the conservative attorney who last year lost a bid for Nevada Attorney General, has been elected by the state Republican Party to serve as a national committeewoman, giving her an outsize role in selecting conference leadership ahead of a pivotal 2024 election season.
According to multiple media reports, Chattah bested retired attorney Pauleen Lee, 222-147 at a Nevada Republican Party meeting Saturday. In her new role, Chattah will aid statewide and national fundraising efforts as well as assist conservatives in future elections in the Silver State against their Democratic counterparts.
“The NVGOP intends to preserve its brand and strengthen its ideology,” Chattah said in a social media post sharing news of her new position. “It (the Nevada GOP) is accountable to Republicans not to politicians. This weekend was a testament of that.”
Chattah was not immediately available for comments. The Nevada Republican Party did not respond to a request for comment.
The national committeewoman post appeared after predecessor and former Las Vegas Councilwoman Michele Fiore was appointed as a justice of the peace in Nye County. She will join fellow Republican national committeeman Jim DeGraffenreid, also of Nevada.
Chattah, of Las Vegas, was beaten handily by Democratic incumbent Aaron Ford by roughly 77,000 votes, or 7.9 percentage points. Though endorsed by some noteworthy conservatives nationally like U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), Chattah was unable to garner the same level of support Gov. Joe Lombardo, also a Republican, did en route to his win over Democrat Steve Sisolak.
Republicans at virtually every level of government largely underperformed during November’s midterm elections. Democrats were able to withstand a so-called “red wave” to retain control of the U.S. Senate, and narrowly lost the U.S. House. In Nevada, Democrats gained a supermajority in the state assembly and held onto control of the state Senate.
Aside from Lombardo, Nevada Republicans found some success last November through two state executive offices: former Las Vegas councilman Stavros Anthony was elected Lieutenant Governor, and former assemblyman Andy Matthews was elected Nevada Treasurer. Incumbent U.S. Rep. Mark Amodei (R-Reno) was the only Nevada Republican to win a seat in Congress.
Chattah’s win comes days before the RNC will convene Jan. 27 to vote on a new committee chair. Current RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel faces challenges from Mike Lindell, the CEO of MyPillow and a staunch ally of former President Donald Trump, and Harmeet Dhillon, a national committeewoman from California.
In a separate Tweet posted Monday, Chattah said she will vote for Dhillon because “for years I’ve watched her vertically integrate policy, law and fundraising and that makes her best qualified for the job. We can all rest assured that she will protect our GOP brand.”
In that same Nevada GOP meeting Saturday where Chattah was elected national committeewoman, a floor vote of no confidence for McDaniel was attempted, but ultimately, the resolution failed, according to The Nevada Globe.
