DETROIT – Is the Michigan Republican Party determined to commit suicide? Lately, that’s how it seems to be behaving.
Last year, Republicans nominated one of the more bizarre candidates in state history for Secretary of State, the oldest, and in many ways most important of state government posts. Secretaries of state are in charge of two key areas, motor vehicle licensing and registrations and running all statewide elections.
Republicans, who won every election for that post from between 1994 and 2018, this time chose Kristina Karamo, 37, who had no discernible qualifications for the job. Normal candidates talk about how they plan to improve and streamline the efficiency of the office.
Karamo, who has a degree in Christian apologetics, and was a salesperson and part-time community college teacher, said she wanted to fight abortion and sexual perversion, topics that, to put it mildly, have nothing to do with being secretary of state. Among other bizarre claims, she has said that Beyonce is promoting Satanism, and that she believes the entertainer’s husband, Jay-Z, worships the devil.
Not surprisingly, she had great difficulty raising money or getting endorsements. The Detroit News is Michigan’s traditional Republican editorial voice, and enthusiastically endorsed the dark horse GOP nominee for governor, Tudor Dixon.
But not only did the paper refuse to endorse Karamo, they noted her false claims that the 2020 election had been stolen and said “that sort of delusional fanaticism should be kept as far away as possible from the election apparatus.”
The newspaper then took the unusual step (for them) of endorsing the Democrat, incumbent secretary of state Jocelyn Benson. Prior to that, Karamo had oddly refused to meet with the editorial board of that or any newspaper.
Predictably, on Election Day she lost by a 615,000 vote landslide, the worst any Republican running for that office has done since 1990. Both parties do sometimes nominate bad candidates. The Democrats nominated a woman for secretary of state in 1998 who refused to campaign and then lost every county in Michigan.
Normally, such losers then disappear. But what happened this time was the real shocker: Last month, Michigan Republicans elected Kristina Karamo chairman of the Michigan Republican Party.
Nolan Finley, the editorial page editor of the Detroit News, called that “a spectacular demolition derby,” adding, “bless their hearts. They have no idea what they’ve done. In electing Kristina Karamo as party chair, they’ve solidified Democratic control of the state for years to come.”
Most mainstream Republicans agreed. The problem is this: Political party chairs have two major responsibilities: Raise money, and recruit candidates who can win. There are no signs the Karamo wing can do either of those, and lots of evidence things will get worse.
Most of the time, the Michigan GOP has had an enormous fundraising advantage over the Democrats, since Republicans tend to attract more affluent donors and business interests. But after nominating a slate of unknown, Trump-supported candidates last year, most closed their wallets. The party is now so broke they required their own delegates to pay to attend their own convention.
Even then, they had to hustle everybody out of the Lansing Center where the convention was held at 8 p.m. Feb. 18, because the state GOP did not have enough money to keep the hall any longer.
That situation may only get worse. More than half of the money donated to the state GOP in recent years has come either from the DeVos family or Ron Weiser, the outgoing party chair.
But supporters of Karamo and her main rival for the chair’s position, Matt DePerno, were contemptuous of the party’s traditional funders, and have talked about replacing them with new sources of funding, though it’s not clear where that could come from.
Bill Ballenger, the dean of Michigan political pundits, was a GOP legislator back in the 1960s and has written an insightful newsletter for decades. He quoted one insider as saying the only hope for Republican candidates now is to “work around” the state party.
Ballenger also noted that “the ‘donor class’ is deserting the Republicans in the wake of the ’22 election. If the GOP doesn’t correct this in a hurry, it’s in permanent trouble.”
Given that Democrats now control every branch of state government for the first time in 40 years, trouble has already arrived. Nor is that all. Not only did Karamo’s election displease traditional Republicans, it didn’t make former President Donald Trump happy either. While he did support her when she ran for Secretary of State, he endorsed DePerno for party chair.
DePerno, a lawyer who is under criminal investigation for election fraud, ran for Michigan attorney general last year, and also lost badly, if not quite as badly as Karamo did.
The Detroit News’s Finley may have put it best. “The delegates rejected not only the party establishment, but also the Trump wing. Now there’s no place to go for money.”
Time, and the voters, will tell. But for a Republican Party that completely dominated Michigan government just five years ago, these may seem like hard times indeed.
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