Some Michigan Republicans aghast after Trump-picked election deniers win GOP backing for top offices
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A Michigan Republican Party endorsement convention at DeVos Place in Grand Rapids, Michigan—complete with voting irregularities—ultimately yielded two of Donald Trump’s top 2020 election deniers as party nominees for two top statewide offices.
After thousands of votes were tabulated and a “partial human audit” ensued, Matthew DePerno and Kristina Karamo emerged as the GOP endorsees for attorney general and secretary of state, respectively, according to Bridge Michigan. The GOP gubernatorial nominee will be determined in August after 10 candidates compete to take on Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in November.
But DePerno and Karamo will ensure the Michigan Republican Party is consumed with relitigating the 2020 election, which Donald Trump lost to Joe Biden statewide by more than 150,000 votes, or roughly 3 points. Their candidacies might juice turnout among Trumpers but they could just as easily backfire in the suburbs. Either way, it’s a gamble.
Trump celebrated the elevation of his conspiracy-laden candidates, saying that Karamo and DePerno will “get to the bottom of the 2020 Election Fraud.”
That seems unlikely, since there was no fraud—except perhaps for that which may have been perpetrated by DePerno himself.
DePerno’s claim to fame is floating a bunch of unfounded conspiracy theories about voting machine data from Antrim County that became the epicenter of the state’s election fraud lies. DePerno filed a lawsuit challenging the results that was summarily dismissed last year by a GOP-appointed judge; a three-judge panel unanimously reaffirmed that decision last week on appeal.
An investigation conducted last year by the GOP-led state Senate concluded there was no evidence of widespread fraud and called such claims in Antrim County “indefensible.”
The Senate Oversight Committee’s final report on the matter also urged Democratic Attorney General Dana Nessel to investigate “those who have been utilizing misleading and false information about Antrim County to raise money or publicity for their own ends.”
DePerno reportedly raised some $400,000 through crowdfunding for an “Election Fraud Defense Fund.” The missing funds are now under investigation by the Michigan Attorney Grievance Commission. It’s not DePerno’s first brush with corruption claims; he was fired from a law firm in 2005 after colleagues said he had “padded” client billings.
Still, DePerno is now the pick of both Trump and the Republican Party to be the top law enforcement officer in Michigan. He had initially struggled to win a three-way race, but an election-night endorsement from Karamo, who handily won her own race, helped pull DePerno across the finish line.
They are two peas in a pod. Despite all evidence to the contrary, Karamo—now the GOP nominee to run statewide elections—has repeatedly insisted without evidence that Trump won the 2020 election. Karamo gained notoriety as a supposed “whistleblower” after she claimed on Fox News to have personally witnessed a ballot in Detroit be fraudulently counted for Biden. That didn’t happen, and the fine print in the “incident report” Karamo filled out after Biden had been declared the winner read: “Paid for by Donald J Trump for President, Inc.”
In any case, the public speaking professor-turned-election denier is now the GOP nominee for secretary of state.
Perhaps that isn’t a surprise given that both candidates had Trump’s seal of approval, but it certainly divided the room last weekend at DeVos Place, where the nominating convention was held.
One of DePerno’s opponents, state House Speaker Ryan Berman, didn’t concede, predicting there was “a good chance” the nominee would lose his law license over twin investigations being conducted by the Grievance Commission and the Michigan State Police.
“In that case, I’m going to be ready to step up and be the nominee,” Berman told Bridge Michigan.
But he wasn’t the only attendee who was disappointed by the outcome.
“The Michigan Republican Party used to be a model for how a state party should be run, but the process today is evidence that is no longer the case,” said former political director Jonathan Duke, who supported a DePerno rival. Duke added that Republicans had now elevated “the most unelectable candidate in the best political environment for Republicans in a generation.”
Similarly, a Karamo opponent, state Rep. Beau LaFave, said he was “disappointed that [Democratic Secretary of State] Jocelyn Benson will be the Secretary of State for the next four years.”
Aaron Miller, a former state representative and chair of the House Elections Committee, flat-out said he personally would not vote for either DePerno or Karamo.
“The theories on elections that have entered the mainstream are downright scary — in this room,” Miller said.
Just one more state where Trump has exquisitely threaded the needle of dividing the state Republican Party against itself while backing candidates with dubious election credentials.