Karamo is excluded from the convention as the split in the Michigan Republican Party continues
Mesa Mayor John Giles: Republicans must focus on GOP principles
Republican Mesa Mayor John Giles talks about how he can help the GOP return to party principles on August 5, 2024.
FLINT — Republican activists in the state of Michigan are united behind former President Donald Trump, but strong differences of opinion remain, as a party convention in Flint made clear on Saturday.
The party had chosen its two candidates for the Michigan Supreme Court early Saturday evening, but voting and counting for the university committees and the State Board of Education continued until about 10 p.m., when the full results from the convention were announced.
Former party leader Kristina Karamo, who was ousted by party dissidents in January after less than a year in office, appeared at the Dort Financial Center and was soon escorted out of the building by security guards and local police. “Corruption,” Karamo said as she left.
Former ambassador and congressman Pete Hoekstra, who was elected to replace Karamo two weeks after the vote to oust her and has since worked to repair the party’s shaky finances, was greeted with scattered but loud boos as he took the stage to address the convention.
The convention, attended by about 4,000 delegates, alternates and guests, elected candidates for the Michigan Supreme Court, university boards and the state Board of Education. The convention’s work has been delayed by laborious manual counting — and in some cases recounting — of ballots and a lengthy dispute over delegate credentials stemming from rival groups claiming to be the legitimate leaders of the Kalamazoo County Republican Party. A similar dispute over party leadership exists in Saginaw County, where Democratic County Clerk Vanessa Guerra recently said she has recognized both groups and allowed each of them to appoint ballot challengers and poll watchers for the August primary.
Hoekstra, a former congressman from western Michigan who served as U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands under Trump, said Saturday that the ongoing discord does not worry him.
“There will always be some degree of dissent,” Hoekstra said. “I can tell you that this group is much smaller than it was five months ago.”
Hoekstra said that as long as the party stands united behind Trump and former Congressman Mike Rogers, who is running for the vacant U.S. Senate seat in Michigan – “and it is,” he said – “they don’t have to like me.”
Karamo was not elected as a delegate to the convention but was mistakenly given an “all-access pass,” Hoekstra said before she entered the convention hall and was surrounded by a group of supporters. Officials offered Karamo a guest pass that would have allowed her to watch from seats around the hall, but she declined, he said. So she was escorted out, as was another unidentified person, Hoekstra said.
Karamo said she was there to support a candidate and would not cause any disruption.
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The convention made headlines Friday night when controversial District Attorney Matthew DePerno – who lost the 2022 election for the state’s attorney general and is awaiting trial on charges related to alleged voting machine tampering – withdrew his candidacy for the Michigan Supreme Court nomination and threw his support behind Branch County District Judge Patrick O’Grady.
Michigan Supreme Court justices are elected on the nonpartisan portion of the ballot but are nominated by the two major political parties. Republican candidates would need to win both seats to break the Democratic candidates’ 4-3 margin on the court.
This is seen as a major challenge because the Democratic candidate, Judge Kyra Harris Bolden, has the advantage of being classified as an incumbent during her partial term, and because both Democratic candidates have raised far more money for their campaigns than the Republican candidates.
For the full eight-year term on the state’s highest court, filling the seat vacated by Judge David Viviano, state Rep. Andrew Fink defeated Michigan Court of Appeals Judge Mark Boonstra, despite Boonstra’s endorsement by Trump. Viviano, a Republican candidate, announced in March that he would not run for another term. The Democratic candidate for the seat is attorney Kimberly Thomas.
Bolden and Thomas have raised $1.1 million and just over $826,000, respectively, and each has more than five times as much cash on hand as all the Republican candidates combined. Only Fink had raised a six-figure sum at the time of filing preliminary reports, just over $100,000.
Fink, a Republican from Hillsdale, is finishing his second two-year term in the state House of Representatives, where he serves as the minority vice chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. The former U.S. Marine earned his law degree from UM in 2010.
Hoekstra believes that certain groups that are financially supporting the Michigan Supreme Court elections would wait to see which candidates are nominated before pulling out their wallets.
After DePerno’s retirement, there were two candidates for a four-year part-time seat on the court. There, Branch County District Judge Patrick O’Grady defeated Detroit attorney Alexandria Taylor.
O’Grady was elected judge of the 15th District Court in 2008 and has served as chief judge there several times. The former member of the US Army Reserve received his law degree from Thomas Cooley Law School in 1999.
DePerno, the unsuccessful Republican candidate for attorney general in 2022, rose to notoriety by exploiting a clerical error in Antrim County that skewed the county’s unofficial 2020 presidential election results and using it to make false claims about Dominion Voting Systems machines tampering with election results. He is awaiting trial on several counts related to an alleged conspiracy to tamper with voting machines. DePerno holds law degrees from the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law and New York University School of Law.
For the State Board of Education, delegates elected two incumbents – Tom McMillin, a former state representative, and Nikki Snyder, who is completing her first term on the board.
For the University of Michigan Board of Regents, delegates rejected incumbent regent and major party donor Ron Weiser, a former U.S. ambassador from Ann Arbor, and chose as candidates newcomers Sevag Vartanian, who works in the financial sector, and Carl Meyers, who works in investment and ran unsuccessfully for the UM Board of Regents in 2020.
Delegates elected physician Dr. Michael Busuito and entrepreneur and philanthropist Sunny Reddy as candidates for the Wayne State University Board of Directors.
Candidates elected for Michigan State University Trustees are Mike Balow, an MSU father and military veteran, and Julie Maday, a member of the Economic Development Committee and former Novi City Councilwoman.
Contact Paul Egan: 517-372-8660 or [email protected]. Follow him on X, @paulegan4.
