Robert M. “Mike” Duncan is mapping out a multiple-ballot strategy for hanging onto the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee as he and several other candidates for his job prepare to make their pitches at a series of auditions this week for the leadership of an embattled Republican Party.

Though Duncan was at the helm when Republicans lost the White House, 21 House seats and as many as eight Senate seats in elections last November and December, he remains a serious contender for the job in part because no other candidate has yet to galvanize a general clamor for change among committee members.

Former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, the first African-American ever elected to a statewide executive office in his home state, got a boost for his candidacy Jan. 3 when he won the endorsement of several prominent social and fiscal conservatives, including Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, James Dobson of Focus on the Family, Phyllis Schlafly of the Eagle Forum, former Rep. Patrick J. Toomey of the Club for Growth and former presidential candidate Steve Forbes.

But it is the 168 members of the Republican National Committee, three in each of the 50 states, the District of Columbia and five other jurisdictions, who will vote.

Duncan, a Kentuckian who has strong ties to President Bush, his father, former President George Bush, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell , has told Republican insiders that neither he nor any other of the five candidates in the race will have the 85 votes needed to win outright when RNC members cast ballots during the winter meetings that run Jan. 28-31.

Missouri committeewoman Ann Dickinson said Duncan told her last week that “there would not be a majority on the first ballot.” Dickinson, like many other voters, said she has not settled on a candidate.

Duncan is “in the lead” but short of the necessary votes, according to a committeeman who is concerned about the optics of keeping Duncan at the helm after electoral losses and who wished to remain anonymous while talking about internal party deliberations.

“The politics of it just aren’t good,” the committeeman said. “It’s laughable to me that we would keep the same chairman.”

Therein lies the rub for Duncan, who is generally well-liked in Republican circles but can’t help but represent the status quo when there is considerable sentiment for a major shakeup to begin rebuilding the battered GOP.

A Jan. 7 meeting of the RNC to vet the candidates will give Duncan’s opponents an opportunity to make their cases face-to-face with voters who don’t know them as well as they know the sitting chairman.

Duncan’s challengers have developed Web sites and multi-point plans for regenerating Republicanism, while Duncan must bank on his mastery of party rules, his personal relationships, and the lack of a clear front-runner against him, according to party insiders.

None of the other announced candidates in the race — Blackwell, Michigan GOP chairman Saul Anuzis, former Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, South Carolina Republican Party Chairman Katon Dawson and Chip Saltsman, a former Tennessee Republican Party chairman who ran Mike Huckabee’s 2008 presidential campaign — appears to have gained enough traction to clearly distinguish themselves from the pack as the top alternative to Duncan.

Saltsman unintentionally made the biggest splash in the race when he mailed a compact disc of song parodies to Republican leaders that caused a stir because it included a track called “Barack the Magic Negro” sung to the tune of “Puff the Magic Dragon.”