(C) Common Dreams
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Michigan G.O.P. Installs Kristina Karamo, an Election Denier, as Leader [1]
['Neil Vigdor']
Date: 2023-02-18
“In our state, this civil war is benefiting no one but the Democrats,” he said. “Part of what the Republican Party in the state of Michigan needs to get back to is being a broad tent. To me, the fundamental challenge is, how do you rebuild trust in the state party after losses like we saw in November?”
Democrats swept the governor’s race and other statewide contests last fall, in addition to flipping the full Legislature for the first time in decades.
“Sadly, it looks like they want an encore,” said former Representative Fred Upton, a Republican who declined to run for re-election last year after also voting to impeach Mr. Trump.
Both Ms. Karamo and Mr. DePerno had called for reinventing the party’s donor base to include more grass-roots supporters, a departure from recent history when Michigan Republicans had become reliant on prolific donors like Ron Weiser, the party’s departing chairman, and the powerful DeVos family. But the party’s financial reserves have dwindled.
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Meshawn Maddock, the party’s departing co-chair, has attributed Republican losses in the state to the lack of support from longstanding donors, saying in a private briefing in November that big donors would rather “lose this whole state” than help the party’s candidates because they “hate” Mr. Trump, The Detroit News reported. Ms. Maddock did not respond to requests for comment.
Both Mr. DePerno and Ms. Karamo were badly out-raised by their opponents in last year’s election, raising questions about their ability to mine cash from political donors.
“Donors have said, ‘we’re not buying the crazies that you’re selling,’” said Jeff Timmer, a senior adviser for the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, and a former Republican who previously served as executive director of the Michigan Republican Party.
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[1] Url:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/18/us/politics/michigan-republicans-deperno-karamo.html
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