I went to what I expected to be another GOP family feud, and a political convention broke out.
This was not what I anticipated when I left my home later than I had hoped on Saturday, March 28. The Michigan Republican Party State Endorsement Convention was scheduled to start at 10 a.m. in Novi, which is about 40 minutes from my east side Detroit digs. I was running more than an hour late, but I still figured I had time to drop some styrofoam off at a recycling center in the New Center.
Because of construction, what should have been a five-minute detour, took nearly 20 minutes.
Nevertheless, I seriously considered stopping for a donut on the way without fear of missing anything. And that’s because the last couple of MIGOP conventions I’ve been to started with hours-long disputes over which delegates should get credentials, how votes should be counted (and recounted), and concerns that if the line at the front of the convention center got any longer, someone might fall off the edge of the earth.
So, imagine when I showed up (ahem) two-and-a-half hours late — and delegates had already cast their votes!
Counting them took some time, but there were no calls for a recount because someone thought a dead Venezuelan dictator had rigged machines. No self-proclaimed election experts insisted on checking the ballots for traces of bamboo. No supporters of the losing candidates stormed the stage and tried to grab the microphone, shouting “Point of order! Point of order!” And no wild-eyed weirdos with a hairdo inspired by the Unabomber and homemade jackets made of red, white and blue duct tape stomped around accusing Hunter Biden of killing JFK and JFK Jr.
The Vibe Credit Union Showcase convention floor was filled with the same assortment of candidates, elected officials, campaign volunteers, vendors flogging MAGA gear, and delegates and alternate delegates wearing red hats and cowboy hats, though I didn’t see as many tin foil hats this time. Perhaps coincidentally, Rudy Giuliani and My Pillow Guy Mike Lindell weren’t there, either.
But after the vote totals were announced, with decisive margins of victory for the winners, the newly-minted nominees got on stage, posed for photos with party poohbahs, friends and family, shook hands with well-wishers, and the meeting was adjourned — without recriminations or sore losers muttering as they receded into the parking lot.
This year, as in the past, attendees paid a registration fee (it was $50 this year). Delegates got to vote on the party’s nominees for Attorney General, Secretary of State, Supreme Court, state Board of Education and the boards of the University of Michigan, Michigan State University and Wayne State University. (In Michigan, political party members pick the candidates who will run for every statewide office, but governor. Democrats will choose their statewide office nominees at their convention at Huntington Place in Detroit on April 19. Voters will choose the political parties’ gubernatorial nominees during Michigan’s Aug. 4 primary.)
The only races with more candidates than spots on the ballot Saturday were for Attorney General and Secretary of State, which may have sped things up.
Still, those races were vigorously contested, with candidates working the crowd; signs and literature plastered on walls, covering tables and chairs as well as the floor; and campaign volunteers urging their fellow delegates to support their choice for AG or SOS.
Eaton County Prosecutor Doug Lloyd and Birmingham attorney Kevin Kijewski competed for AG.
Macomb County Clerk Anthony Forlini, Clarkston School Board member Amanda Love, and businesswoman and Oakland County Republican Party board member Monica Yatooma vied for Secretary of State.
Kijewski, Love and Yatooma took a page from every successful candidate at recent Republican confabs and ran as outsiders.
But another adjective also applied to that last batch of candidates: Losers.
This time, instead of nominating someone for Attorney General who was being prosecuted, delegates chose a prosecutor.
Instead of nominating someone who questioned the validity of elections, delegates chose a clerk who affirmed that election results were valid.
President Trump’s decision not to endorse any candidates may have been a factor, but I suspect incumbent Democratic Attorney General Dana Nessel’s nearly 9% victory over Matt DePerno in 2022; and incumbent Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s nearly 14% victory over Kristina Karamo in that same election, heavily influenced delegates as well.
Other factors may have been a video Love’s sister recently posted calling her a “truly evil person” who would do “anything to anyone to gain power and control,” and a 2020 domestic violence charge against Kijewski in which his then-wife said she discovered “a type of sex coupon book made by another woman” in his car. The domestic violence charge against Kijewski was eventually dismissed. But for a party that once made character and “family values” top priorities, Love and Kijewski’s domestic dramas concerned some delegates.
Trump’s blessing may have caused delegates back in 2022 to overlook the controversies swirling around DePerno and Karamo when they ran against more establishment candidates — aka “Lansing insiders.” The war with Iran and soaring price of gas have made the president’s imprimatur less valuable today, but you’ll still have to look far and wide to find a Republican candidate in Michigan who wouldn’t prefer to run with Trump’s support.
Still, Lloyd and Forlini didn’t mention Trump in their literature I found in the convention hall. And there was no use of the rhetoric that had served previous GOP candidates so well, such as threatening to use their position to root out election fraud and prosecute political opponents.
Lloyd, a square-jawed career prosecutor, is precisely the kind of conventional, experienced candidate Republicans routinely favored before they got MAGA fever.
Forlini, a soft-spoken former state representative, appealed to the party’s still numerous suspicious minds by making “election integrity” one of his themes. But he also emphasized his record of winning elections.
Forlini’s literature referenced one of his boldest moves as Macomb County Clerk — commissioning a forensic audit in October 2021 to address concerns about election results, at a time when MAGA supporters were hurling 2020 election fraud allegations like Trump chucking rolls of paper towels in Puerto Rico after a hurricane.
Calling for an audit at a time when Trump supporters accusing the late Hugo Chavez of tampering with vote tabulators didn’t require bravery. Declaring after the audit was completed that there had been “no outside interference” in Macomb County’s elections, did take some courage. And Forlini ended up telling the Detroit News he had no reason to doubt the election’s results.
State Sen. Jim Runestad, a White Lake Republican who is the state party chairman, seemed delighted delegates chose Lloyd and Forlini. Money has been a problem for MIGOP for the past several years, and political parties without cash in their kitties rarely need to worry about saving dough to throw victory parties.
“I have been hearing from donors from across the spectrum that if the right candidates are elected, we’ll step up,” Runestad told reporters after Lloyd and Forlini were declared winners on the first ballot.
Even before the Republican convention adjourned, however, Michigan Democratic Party Chairman Curtis Hertel tried to tether both nominees to the president.
“Anthony Forlini is just another MAGA extremist who would do Donald Trump’s bidding, endanger Michiganders’ right to vote, and undo the progress that has been made at the Secretary of State’s office in reducing wait times and modernizing services,” Hertel said in a statement emailed to reporters. “Michigan’s elections are free, fair, and secure, and yet Forlini has still been peddling debunked claims that have been easily disproven. If elected, Forlini would put our state’s elections at risk at a time when Trump has already threatened to take over Detroit’s elections.”
After deciding to run for Secretary of State, Forlini did seem to try a MAGA hat on for size by raising questions about whether people who were not citizens are registered to vote. But Forlini also has a track record of asking authorities to investigate potential wrongdoing — regardless of party affiliation — and resisting the temptation to lend credence to crackpot conspiracy theories.
Hertel said Lloyd is: “no different from MAGA Republicans at every level: he won’t stand up for our communities and will back Donald Trump’s dangerous, cost-raising agenda over the needs of working families every single time…Doug Lloyd would drag Michigan backwards and won’t take on big corporations or special interests.”
That’s pretty tame stuff, as partisan potshots go. And it tells me Democrats either couldn’t find any dirt on Lloyd … or haven’t started looking yet.
This has not been the case in the recent past, when there was enough dirt on the nominees laying around that Democrats needed only add water to fill their catapults with mud.
Voters will decide whether state Republican party delegates’ decision to shift away from conspiratorial-minded outsiders and save their energy for fighting Democrats was the right move.
In the meantime, I’m going to have to go back to recycling my styrofoam on Thursdays — when I’m supposed to be at my desk.
M.L. Elrick is a Pulitzer Prize- and Emmy Award-winning investigative reporter, director of student investigative reporting program Eye On Michigan, and host of the ML’s Soul of Detroit podcast. Contact him at mlelrick@freepress.com or follow him on X at @elrick, Facebook at ML Elrick and Instagram at ml_elrick.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan Republicans move toward the middle in a bid to win again
Reporting by M.L. Elrick, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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