“Quick” report from the Michigan front.
The state GOP met Friday/Saturday to elect new leadership. After the 2022 loss of Matt Deperno for Attorney General and Kristina Karamo for Secretary of State, the two were now contestents for MIGOP chair position. The states Deep GOP has thrown whatever roadblocks they could to make the election go towards their selection of candidate while trying to show “imparitality”. They appeared to go the way of rank choice voting like in Alaska for getting Murkowski in, and suddenly there were 11 Chair/Vice Chair tickets to choose from. One was Trump endorsed Matt Deperno, another was Kristina Karamo.
You’d think Matt would have been a shoe-in, except for just one issue. Mark Forton. He was one of the leading voices of longtime conservative fighters in Macomb county, a large county mostly red north of Detroit which had been overrun by the Uniparty for some years. He was such a thorn in their side, that the county GOP had tried to do an end-around by somehow making a new organization called “Macomb GOP”(?) instead of “Macomb County GOP” and putting a Uniparty leader Eric Castiglia in. Forton had done a lawsuit that his removal without trial had violated party rules, and eventually won. However, the timing of this split the county precinct delegates between support of the two organizations, and the state GOP in August had told the Forton supporting delegates they wouldn’t be able to vote in the convention.
Well, this didn’t go over well with most of the state delegates that were aware of the situation (keep in mind the press in the state has been 95% left leaning for...EVER).
Fast forward to the GOP chairmanship, who had backed Eric Castiglia, and we knew that we had to have a great candidate in to turn our state and elections around. Unfortunately during this debacle, Matt Deperno’s name had come up regarding supporting the Uniparty position on Castiglia. Additionally, there were comments from him regarding doing ballot harvesting “just like the democrats” to win elections (ILLEGAL under Michigan law).
So there was an undertow effort to get Kristina Karamo supported and in place as GOP Chair. Kristina has been working in Detroit towards election integrity (the FRONT of the front!). She could speak on election law and integrity unscripted. Some of us precinct delegates have asked her to slow down when she speaks so we can keep up(!). She paired up with Melinda Page from the west side of the state and got to work.
When addressing the convention yesterday, Mark Forton was allowed to address the convention as a nominee for state GOP chair. He pointed out the mathematical skew of ranked choice voting, and promptly pointed out who should be the new chair (Kristina!).
Long story short, the convention went 12 hours and three rounds of voting. Despite just about every effort to keep Kristina out (including my noticing every time she spoke they seemed to increase her microphone volume to the point of annoying, likewise with certain frequency filters), she won every round by at least 8%.
Final nail in the coffin? Starts her victory speech with “First I’d like to thank our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ...”
EPIC.
PS-Red-pilled at least three more people over the weekend. Pretty sure I’m a triple ace with 15 “Welcome to the party, pal!” patches on the side of the cockpit.