Katon Dawson

Katon Dawson in the fourth round by two votes. It's anyone's game as of now, but Blackwell's endorsement of Steele is certainly a set-back for Dawson's abrupt rise On the sixth and final ballot Steele bested South Carolina Republican party Chairman Katon Dawson 91 to 77.

In picking Steele, who had previously served as the chairman of the Maryland Republican Party, the state's lieutenant governor, and the GOP nominee in the Maryland Senate race in 2006, the party regulars seem to be acknowledging the need for new -- and different -- faces at the top of its food chain.

After five ballots, the race came down to Steele and Dawson. Republican party strategists in attendance at the meeting openly fretted about the possibility of electing Dawson, who had acknowledged his membership in a whites-only club, and the signal it would send to a country that had just elected Barack Obama as the nation's first black president.

Michael Steele

Michael Steele triumphed over four opponents in the race for Republican National Committee chairman Friday, giving the party its first black chairman as well as a forceful communicator at a time of political weakness It is with a great deal of humility and a sense of service that I accept and appreciate and thank all of you for the opportunity to serve.

The election of an outsider, however, was not the only respect in which the race was unconventional. Usually a low-profile, inside-the-Beltway affair, the chairman’s race took on an outsized importance for the GOP this year after the party lost the White House and suffered heavy defeats on the congressional level last November.

In the last few weeks the election took a divisive turn as candidates began leveling harsh, below-the radar attacks on each others’ ethics and political track records. Dawson’s past membership in an all-white country club came under assault, as did Steele’s performance as chairman of GOPAC, Blackwell’s experience as secretary of state and Anuzis’s mixed track record winning elections in Michigan.