GOP county chairs and local activists warned the party isn’t doing enough to compete in November.

Days before the Republican National Committee was set to convene here, hundreds of Republican officials gathered in a casino ballroom Monday to vent their grievances about the party — and warn that it is ill prepared for the 2024 election.

“We are at war,” one man shouted from a microphone at the event, hosted by the conservative group Turning Point Action, lifting his arm in the air. “Where are the tools? Where are all the little things that the left is doing but we don’t?”

The gathering, in the hotel next door to where the RNC will meet later this week, was the culmination of more than a year’s worth of frustration from some Republicans in and surrounding the committee — about its finances, about its struggles to match Democrats’ organizing efforts, about its four-term leader. A year ago this month, the vast majority of the RNC’s members voted in favor of keeping Ronna McDaniel on for another term as chair, despite an ugly reelection fight that exposed rifts and vulnerabilities inside the committee.

But at this point, many grassroots activists say McDaniel has lost their trust, perhaps permanently. They say they’re tired of losing. And whatever facts and figures the RNC provides to defend its record, the arguments sound to them like excuses.