Question 1): The new Michigan Republican Party chair is conservative activist Kristina Karamo of Oak Park, the first person of color to lead the state GOP. She lost her race for Secretary of State last fall to incumbent Democrat Jocelyn Benson by 14 percentage points but recharged her batteries and defeated 10 Republican opponents at an 11-hour convention and three rounds of voting Feb. 18 at the Lansing Center.
Karamo, considered a favorite among the party’s grassroots but viewed as divisive by the so-called ‘establishment,’ beat out the Republican nominee for Attorney General, Matt DePerno, 58% to 42%, in the third round of voting. DePerno, who also lost on 11/8/22, had been endorsed by former President Donald Trump.
The Detroit News has quoted former state Rep. Aaron Miller (R-Sturgis), now a banker in the private sector, as saying that Karamo’s victory indicated some Michigan Republicans want to keep losing elections. Miller called it a sad day for the GOP.
“The Republican Party is now pretty well cemented as the party of election denying, conspiracy theories, tin hats and supporting Capitol riots,” Miller said. “I’ll pass. I’ll continue to write good people in on my election ballots. The sooner they can return to the party of sensibility and economic prosperity, the sooner they can start winning.”
While some feel there is an opportunity for Karamo to surprise political observers simply because there is nowhere to go but up after the GOP was shellacked in the general election, others aren’t so sanguine.
The News also quotes Jason ROE, a former Republican Party executive director, doubting that there is a formula for Karmo to be successful because she and her followers”burned bridges with just about everybody.” Roe said waging a “hot war” with the party’s large donor community wasn’t smart, and “You can’t spend your time kicking major donors in the teeth, and then say ‘Give me your money.’”
Roe said he doesn’t believe leadership has a grasp on how much money needs to be spent to run digital fundraising programs, recruit new donors and even just keep the lights on. “You need major donor fundraising to have the funds to do small donor fundraising,” he said, and many of the conservative activists like Karamo who speak the loudest have never given a dollar to the state party.
Several candidates for Republican state chair have complained bitterly that they didn’t receive support from the state party while running campaigns, but Roe observes that the reason the party didn’t give to those candidates was because the party didn’t have it to give. Why was that? Because major donors were freaked out by “flawed” candidates who looked like sure losers and didn’t deserve to be funded.
So, what about Karamo’s chances for success? Is she doomed to failure from the get-go? Is she an unprecedented kind of chair, with no similar predecessors? Certainly her Democratic opposition and the news media will use her as a punching bag at every opportunity, so what can she do to counter that?
ANSWER 1): Karamo needs to do two things quickly that will be very difficult for her — 1) Stop talking and hire a crack public relations team, if one can be found; and 2) Raise a boatload of money.
No, the fact that Karamo is a woman heading a party that has just been decimated in an election is not unprecedented, but Michigan’s political commentariat is ignorant and scornful of history and wouldn’t know that. With just a pinch of intellectual curiosity, they might “study up” and learn about Elly Peterson, the state’s first female chair of either political party. Like Karamo, she had been drubbed in a statewide race (for the U.S. Senate against incumbent Democrat Phil Hart) in the previous general election. When Peterson was recruited to run for and be elected chair in early 1965, Peterson inherited Republican George Romney in the governor’s office, but that’s all she could count on after the GOP was wiped out everywhere on the ballot in the 1964 election by Lyndon Johnson’s landslide win over Barry Goldwater. With Peterson at the helm, Michigan Republicans turned it all around in 1966 when they knocked off a former Democratic governor (Soapy Williams) to win a U.S. Senate seat, unseated five incumbent Democratic Congressmen, ousted a Democratic Supreme Court justice, regained control of both the state House and Senate which they had lost two years before, and swept the statewide education board races.
The problem for Karamo is that things are different now, and she has a persona and background that are nothing like Peterson’s. Peterson, who was an inspiring organizer, was ‘plugged in’ to the state party’s power elite but also was in sync with women’s groups and grass roots activists; Karamo lacks those qualities. Furthermore, back in 1966, the state party — while momentarily defeated and inpecunious — was institutionally a major factor that was more or less united with county and district committees and the legislative delegations and various officeholders and candidates and their campaigns. In those days, the state party even ran the two annual fundraising dinners for the state House and Senate GOP caucuses. That all changed beginning in the 1970s, when a slow erosion of the power of state parties began, not just in Michigan but all across the country.
Today, it would be unthinkable for the state party to control legislators’ fund-raising events. Other factors like the rise of Political Action Committees (PACs) following the U.S. Supreme Court’s Buckley decision and, later, Citizens United, have resulted in decentralized power that has increased the independence of candidates, ballot committees, billionaire donors, grass roots organizers, and the entire fund-raising apparatus. Unless the Michigan Republican Party has state chairs who are personally wealthy like Betsy DeVos, Bobby Schostak or Ron Weiser, all of whom could contribute large sums of campaign cash themselves and also raise money from major donors, it’s going to be largely feckless. It therefore must make sure it isn’t actually obstructing and hurting the various Republican groups and individual actors who are trying to win elections.
Jason Roe is right. He’s the son of another, longtime former state GOP executive director, Jerry Roe, who operated when Michigan’s was one of the most effective Republican parties in the country. Jason Roe contends that in coming months, candidates and Republicans will likely have to “work around” the state party to get things done because the Lansing HQ is no longer the centralizing mechanism in which political factions and statewide candidates would prefer to operate, but can’t.
Karamo should know that the Republican fundraising wing is estranged from other elements of the party, who have spent much of their time and energy disparaging the major sources of financial aid they desperately need to win. Already, the most recent figures on fund-raising indicate 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.
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Question 2): MPHS ENGLER INTERVIEW
Bill;
Great Report! Totally agree with Answers to Q1.
Regarding new GOP Chair Karamo, you can’t, (as Jason Roe said) kicking major donors in the teeth, and offending them one can’t expect them to come back. I doubt it. It would take a lot of miracles to pull off. We’ll see.
Best, Cheryl
Several points regarding Kristina Karamo:
(1) female delegates provided substantial support at the convention – she was the only female candidate for the chairmanship after Lena Epstein withdrew before the election;
(2) Matt Deperno’s loss was attributed to a perceived waning lack of interest by him toward the subject of election integrity – which Karamo continued to pound and preach to the precinct delegate base;
(3) Macomb GOP chair Mark Forton – who is the darling of constitutionalists and had been a declared candidate for the Michigan GOP chairmanship – e-mailed a letter to delegates just before the convention declaring his support of Ms. Karamo;
(4) Ms. Karamo – in her thirties – is the youngest Michigan GOP chair since Spencer Abraham;
(5) many delegates want big money out of the Michigan GOP and feel that grassroots activism is what wins elections not the cash of big donors
(6) one of the biggest surprises of the convention was that three vice-chair positions went to Arab Muslim candidates – and the remainder went to either female and/or black candidates – thus destroying the myth that the GOP is a party of white supremacy – the sight of Rola Makki giving a victory speech while wearing a hijab after beating two other candidates by getting 59% of the delegate vote was certainly unprecedented for a Michigan GOP convention;
(7) Karamo has had very little experience in politics – her first foray was running an unsuccessful county commissioner seat campaign in Oakland County in 2018 when she lost in the primary;
(8) the convention delegates rejected highly competent and experienced GOP insider candidates such as Scott Greenlee and JD Glaser in electing Karamo – each had decades of experience in campaign management and party organization.
The convention delegates knew who they were getting in electing Karamo – fresh blood and tossing party insiders out on their ears.
Very interesting analysis, one of the few times the comments rise above the story.
Re: “If the GOP doesn’t correct this in a hurry, it’s in permanent trouble.”
For political parties, there are no permanent victories or permanent defeats. In my time, I have seen many obituaries written for losing parties — yet they seem to spring back to viability the moment they are needed.
Game theory dictates that, with a single elected executive (President or Governor), with control of the entire executive branch awarded to the winner of a single high-stakes election, incentives drive all political actors toward forming exactly two viable parties.
Only a parliamentary system can sustain multiple stable parties.
Our two parties have shown themselves to be endlessly adaptable over more than a century and a half of American history.
Notwithstanding that both parties have strong institutional continuity going back to the Civil War and beyond, they have transformed themselves again and again. And they will continue to do so.
Bill,
Congratulations on being honored at Mott Community College. Sorry we missed it. Rich
& Marsha Reed
While the delegates to the convention may have known what they were getting when they chose Kristina Karamo as party chair, it isn’t the delegates that will choose between Democratic and Republican candidates for public office. The future of the MI Republican Party is dim right now.
Bill, Excellent micro-analysis. I agree with Leanne, Cheryl and Larry. But it’s the ISSUES, ISSUES, AND MORE ISSUES. Overwhelming need to be INTELLECTUALLY-HONEST. For example- Womens issues. On May 5, 2022, I had lunch with Peter Meijer and I talked about my wife and her stand on political issues. Peter asked me “Have we lost her”? Duh…Based on reality-its going to take a lot to bring a majority of women to the Republican Party. AND NOT just women candidates. For God’s sake-enlightened men.
Next time you have lunch with Meijer, inform him that if he had a (D) behind his name, he’d still be in Congress! Of all people not to comprehend “Truth-In-Packaging” laws!!
It’s got to be moderation. Republicans have only won 2 STATEWIDE ELECTIONS in the last 25 years, with the exception of Snyder-Calley in 2010 and 2014.Moderately-conservative is the PATH-keep young people here and appeal to reasonable, enlightened senior citizens. Read, “Michigan GOP needs real policies” by Rusty Hills REALITY-PEOPLE. IT’S ALL ABOUT REALITY.
Excellent analysis by Bill Ballenger AND several excellent and insightful readers’ comments, especially that of Leanne. It is rare nowadays to read a balanced and thought-provoking commentary, with the bonus of thoughtful and respectful readers’ comments.
I would only add that most political commentators predicting disaster for the Michigan Republican Party for selecting a non-rich, not well-connected insider for chair, are a part of the problem for modern American politics. Yes, the Party needs money, lots of it, but how much money did establishment chairs raise and how many elections were won with that money?
Let’s pray that Kristina Karamo surprises the establishment. Give her a break. She can’t do much worse than her predecessors. I am still looking for a major Republican win in 2022.
I was a Republican convention delegate in Lansing and I love both Kristina Karamo and her running mate Malinda Pego. The only all-female slate running at the convention.
Kristina is young, intelligent and articulate. She can relate to young people, minorities, and women very well. She is from Oak Park and was embraced by Oakland County precinct delegates. She attended many GOP events the last 3 years locally and ingratiated herself with the GOP grassroots.
There was mudslinging against Kristina during the arduous campaign – but she survived and prevailed.
Frankly, all eleven candidates were good people and dedicated conservative Republicans – but in the end young, female, and MAGA-crazed delegates tipped the balance in favor of Kristina.
Scott Greenlee and Matt Deperno were expected to make the final two candidates in the final round – but when Greenlee finished third and did NOT endorse Deperno as JD Glaser had done after being eliminated in the second round – we knew Kristina had a shot at winning the final round.
Billy Putman – the other candidate for chair that survived the first round – likewise made no endorsement upon being eliminated in the second round.
We knew going into the convention that it was going to be historic and hard-fought.
Kudos on a fabulous article, as always! In all my races, I found State Party to be unfamiliar with my area and district. They never gave me any support, they all were constantly begging ME for money. Top leadership was good, but the staffers were all very young Grand Valley grads who were clueless southeast of Williamston, if not Okemos. Later, as ideologues came to dominate the Party scene, I found running AGAINST State Party a major campaign asset in my district.
“We’re the Grassroots!” they’d say.
“Great! if you’re the Grassroots, where’s the grass?”
Nice article, Bill, as usual. Sorry for the late comment, but this is the fourth rewrite and a wee bit on the long side. Maybe I need an editor? I especially appreciate the comments from Leanne and Larry Kestenbaum. I hope my comments pass muster.
People should know my comments come from a retired, long-term (40+ years) state employee who was also a chief steward at work. I am not a Republican. Experience taught me that state workers get stabbed by both parties. The GOP stabs us more often, but usually in the front. The Democrats stab us less often, but mostly in the back. An example of this is appointing anti-labor arbitrator Gail Wilson to the Civil Service Commission. It’s something I would have expected from Tudor Dixon. Thanks Gretchen.
You’re right Bill on what Karamo needs to do: shut-up, hire good PR staff and raise money. The latter will be the most difficult as the GOP appears to be heading into a confessional war between its “establishment” and the populist-social conservative-Trumpian (for lack of a better term) wings of the party. The fight is over what is the GOP’s version of the “True Faith”.
THE GOP CONFESSIONAL WAR As has been noted in prior TBRs, the GOP has, broadly speaking, two conflicting wings. And confessional war is more accurate that civil war. Civil wars are mostly political. Confessional wars are more – religious. What does the GOP believe in? Who is the true believer? The underlying beliefs of the two camps are at the very antagonistic if not antithetical. Each side accuses the other of some sort of heresy. The opponents are RINOs.
But this is not new. It did not begin with Donald Trump, or with Speaker McCarthy getting ticked off at the Chamber of Commerce for endorsing more than a dozen Democrats in 2020 and 2022 (keeping him out of the Speakership in 2020), or even when elements of the GOP were ticked off at corporate America, i.e. Delta Airlines, Coca-Cola, Disney and others, when they engage in “woke” politics. This struggle between corporate America and the GOP actually began back in the Clinton Administration when Bill Clinton and Bob Rubin basically told corporate America that if they side with the Democrats on social issues, they won’t tax the snot out of them. In fact, with the help of Newt Gingrich and the GOP Senate, they lowered capital gains taxes to a level even Ronald Reagan would have thought as too low. And to add insult to injury, they repealed the McFadden and Glass-Stegall Acts, setting us up for the sub-prime disaster.
The schizophrenia found in the MIGOP is not limited only to Michigan, nor is it a recent event.
In this struggle, the establishment wing champions low taxes (especially on business and income), right-to-work legislation, privatizing state government services and deregulation – among other similar things. Anything that benefits business. They have all drunk the Kool-Aid from the Club for Growth and Americans for Prosperity, and at times they appear to have had one drink too many seven drinks ago. They stray from pure Libertarian views only in that they like subsidies as long as their tax bills don’t go up. They demand almost worshipful fealty to their principles. As Dave Waymire has pointed out in several of his comments to earlier TBRs, they’ve mostly succeeded. The Tax Foundation (a right of center group) reports that Michigan now has the fifth lowest state/local tax burden in the country. Their champions in the present MIGOP are the elected state senators and representatives. Just look at their votes so far. Not a populist amongst them. I seriously believe that if Gretchen leaves “right-to-work” alone and does not raise their taxes, many of these people would be perfectly happy to throw the “populists” under the bus and run over them a few dozen times. Hell, they may even attend the Democratic state convention.
It is not clear exactly how populist the populist-social conservative-Trumpian wing of the party actually is, or will be. Populism, broadly speaking, is insular in its approach (take care of us first and other places later) in dealing with national affairs; and believes that when the government intervenes in the economy or politics, it should be on the side of the little guy. They certainly seem to have the first one down, but as for the second part of populism, we just don’t know yet. It is unclear if they are willing to restore the old regulatory regime (and the resultant tax hikes to fund it); stop waging war on unions; shift taxes from consumption to income, change the laws that benefit larger companies to benefit smaller companies and undo some of the state court decisions that have gutted consumer protection. Although they have organized the GOP (convention delegates and the like), they haven’t raised money yet, nor established a clear philosophy of what they want. In short, they need a plan. And that plan will make a whole lot of people quite angry.
PRESENT STATE OF THE MIGOP
Generally bad. They have no money. Large segments of the party are unhappy with other segments of the party. The donor class seemingly has abandoned the party just as they abandoned the executive office races when the establishment’s preferred candidate – The Quality Guru – using establishment approved staff somehow failed to get enough (buy) signatures to get on the ballot. That was a whole lot of money flushed down the toilet. And the money the establishment did deign to spend in 2022 went to the legislative races, with a few bucks tossed at Justice Zahra in the late hours. Though Zahra made it, we know how well they did in the legislature. Again, more money down the toilet. Their first reaction is to fix blame.
The establishment wants the “good old days” of Rick Snyder, which is odd if you really are a Republican. Those days can only be looked at as a disaster for the MIGOP. During his time in office, the MIGOP did almost no real organizing, no set fund raising outside a few sugar daddies and made no effort to “broaden” the GOP outside of rhetoric. Snyder inherited a Supreme Court majority of 5 – 2. It is now 4 – 3 for the Democrats. Recruitment of quality congressional candidates suffered, as did candidates for the state legislature. In 2014 – a good year for the GOP nationwide – he barely survived a challenge from Mark Schaurer ~51% to ~47% (note, had she not chickened out, Gretchen could have beaten Snyder). Meanwhile in Ohio, John Kasich beat his Democratic opponent 2 – 1.
The “populists” don’t. A real populist looks at the Snyder years as bad. Though business and the well off did quite well, the little guy, like city of Detroit retirees (like my now deceased father), the citizens of Flint, got screwed. Populists do not want more of the same. While the establishment rallied around Perry Johnson (with James Craig as a back-up candidate) and wasted all that money for two candidates who did not get enough valid signatures to get on the ballot, the less well-off candidates of the populist/Trumpians/social conservative wing, Tudor Dixon, Ryan Kelley, Garrett Soldano, and Ralph Rebandt just went and got signatures. Kevin Rinke, who had his own money, also got on the ballot. And for running the prelude to the campaign correctly, they were subsequently abandoned by the establishment. Methinks there is no love lost between the two groups.
This leads to the person who has to try and fix this…
MS KARAMO
Ms Karamo has a very hard job. And no one should envy her. She had to rebuild – and reshape – a political party as she managed to piss off the donor class, whose success rate in the last election was less than stellar, without replacing it. Even before her election as Chair, the donor class seemingly has abandoned the party. They abandoned the executive office races when the establishment’s preferred candidate – The Quality Guru – using establishment approved staff somehow failed to get enough signatures to get on the ballot. The money they did deign to spend in 2022 went to the legislative races, with a few bucks tossed at Justice Zahra in the late hours. And we know how well they did in the legislative races. And the establishment are quite unrepentant.
As for Ms Karamo, she hasn’t conceded. So, she is a sore loser. We need to keep in mind that she was outspent better than 20 – 1 by Jocelyn Benson. Given that she was carpet bombed financially, she did not do that badly. She is not the first, nor will she be the last, sore loser in Michigan politics (the list of those people could be the fodder for at least one TBR). This is not disqualifying. It may make her an effective leader. Or not. The GOP will have to evaluate her performance on organizing, candidate recruitment and fund raising. The only question here is how much time will she get?
She will also get flak for being an “election denier” as noted by former state Senator Aaron Miller. In this regard, she is in good, or at least somewhat large company. How many Democrats felt that George Bush the Younger was not properly elected in 2000?* The late Abner Mikva, a former congressman and DC Circuit Court of Appeals judge was so irate he wanted the Senate to not confirm any of Bush’s judicial nominees.
Or those who felt that Bush the Younger stole Ohio from John Kerry?
Or those who felt that Donald Trump stole the 2016 election with Russian help?**
Or Stacy Abrams who spent years saying she was robbed of the governorship of Georgia in 2018?
Ms Karamo should ask those who criticize her for “election denial” to treat her with the same level of disdain they held the election deniers from 2000, 2004, 2016 and 2018. Though if I were her, I would refuse any offer from CBS/Paramount to guest star as an elected official in Star Trek Discovery (its acronym of STD is well-earned) as Stacy Abrams did.***
THE FUTURE OF THE GOP
Good question. Much will depend on how Karamo works to expand – and remake – the MIGOP.
As the Detroit Free Press and Bridge Magazine noted after the election, there were some good signs for the GOP. They did well in county commission races while getting hammered state-wide. This means there are Republicans who can win in a blue wave Michigan election. Not only are they willing to run for office, they know how to win a race. These people are the MIGOP farm team.
They also did well in East Dearborn of all places. Matt DePerno, who was greatly outspent by Dana Nessel, and he beat her there. The woefully underfunded Steven Elliott also outpolled Rashida Tlaib there. Tudor Dixon and Ms Karamo both did substantially better than the GOP candidates did four years earlier, losing by only single digits. This is probably due in large part to parental outrage over some school library books the parents felt were egregiously inappropriate for their children. Those parents discovered their school board – and candidates of the Democratic Party in general – did not share their values. And those parents voted their outrage. A smart move would be to search for those parents and get some of them to run for the Dearborn School Board, and for other offices in the future. If the MIGOP helps them, odds are they just might become Republicans. They now have some officials who just might be able to pull it off. As Leanne noted in her comments, “one of the biggest surprises of the convention was that three vice-chair positions went to Arab Muslim candidates – and the remainder went to either female and/or black candidates – thus destroying the myth that the GOP is a party of white supremacy – the sight of Rola Makki giving a victory speech while wearing a hijab after beating two other candidates by getting 59% of the delegate vote was certainly unprecedented for a Michigan GOP convention.”
These voters hold many of the social conservative views of Ms Karamo and they are the people who can lead a GOP renaissance in Dearborn – and elsewhere (Hamtramck anyone) if they are funded and supported. They are working people, small business people, social conservatives and concerned parents, just the recruits a populist party needs. People who need to shower AFTER work instead of before it.
This may require some jettisoning of the Snyder era of tax cuts and deregulation, further angering the “establishment”. But if those principles the establishment lauds actually worked for all Michiganders and not just them, Michigan would be the nation’s economic powerhouse and we would be adding jobs and people instead of losing the equivalent of the population of Saginaw every three years.
As they used to say when I was a wee lad, film at 11.
*I encourage them to read Megan McArdle’s column “What if the Supreme Court Had Declined to Hear Bush v. Gore?” in the Daily Beast that was published Apr. 29, 2013 and updated Apr. 21, 2017. They should remember that the Florida Supreme Court in 2000 consisted of seven Democrats.
**These people should read the Twitter files from left-wing journalist Matt Taibbi, the reporting of former New York Times and Pro Publica reporter Jeff Gerth in Columbia Journalism Review, or the reporting of Lee Smith in “Tablet”.
***Editorial comment. New Star Trek is an abomination. They are creating a new circle in the Inferno for those responsible for it.
Great comment Tim Sullivan I read every bit of it and I am a George Romney, Bill Milliken republican who served as a state representative from 2000 to 2006 Plymouth Canton, Northville, Livonia