I fully agree with Kai here. And I would like to add something.
The Eclipse project handbook says:
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Each project is entitled to define how it evaluates "[people] who have
the trust of the Project’s Committers … [through] contributing and
showing discipline and good judgment". This definition needs to be a
transparent and public document on the project’s website (the top-level
project charter may provide this). It is extremely important to publish
these criteria to avoid any issues around cliques or "the in-crowd"
preventing others from joining a project.
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Having personal conversations with a committer, not sharing work, doesn't really help as an argument in favor IMHO. The problem for me would be, how would other contributors be nominated in a similar fashion then? As Kai mentioned, there is no public record, which would make the decision transparent to others.
I also think something sounds a little odd here, if 3 project leads and 4 committers are inactive on the project, but still vote. I would of course understand if all (but one) committer are inactive and won't be involved in the project in the future. Then we might think about declaring the project dysfunctional (not in a technical sense of course) and reset the committer base. Things like this happen and there is a solution for that.
Otherwise I think it maybe helpful help us understand the current situation of the project a bit better.