Michigan GOP presidential election highlights divisions in party ahead of 2024

The election of a far-right election denier to head the Michigan Republican Party highlights divisions within the party as Republican leaders look to unite in 2024.

Cristina Caramo’s victory over the weekend showed the extent to which Republicans have embraced accusations of electoral fraud, even as many in the party are calling for more forward-thinking statements ahead of 2024.

While Arizona and Massachusetts — other states where former President Trump’s preferred candidates lost high-profile elections last year — have recently chosen more conciliatory votes to lead their states’ Republican parties, Karamo’s win in Michigan raises questions about the party’s prospects in major 2024 races. .

The election for chairman was to “set the tone for the party as it tries to bring Michigan back to statehood and also in the 24-year presidential election,” Ken Collman, director of the University of Michigan’s Center for Policy Studies, told The Hill. before the chairman’s vote.

Kollman said a win by Karamo or Matthew DePerno, who won Trump’s backing for chairman and finished second, would be “a big statement and a big challenge” for the GOP in 2024.

In November, Democrats defended the top offices in the state by flipping both houses of the state legislature, possibly due in part to redistricting. Karamo was the Republican nominee for secretary of state last year and held her own in that race, which she lost by 14 percentage points. DePerno was an unsuccessful Republican nominee for attorney general. Both ran with Trump’s support.

Karamo’s vision statement for the state Republican Party said that the party “failed to find remedies for systemic electoral corruption” and that it would hand over control of the party to polling delegates. “True unity,” it said, “will be achieved by “sticking to the Republican Party platform, not by people tolerating corruption.”

Michigan GOP chief of staff Paul Cordes wrote in a memo following the midterm elections that “We have been constantly facing power struggles between Trump and the party’s anti-Trump factions, mostly within the donor class.” … This power struggle ended up with too many people left out and it hurt the Republicans in key races.”

Kollman echoed these remarks in his analysis of the problems facing the Republican Party.

“There are a number of … wealthy donors who are not interested in funding the denial of the election as an important message for the party,” he said, stressing that the new chairman will act as the party’s public face, given the lack of high-ranking Republican elected officials in the state.

Outgoing Michigan GOP co-chairman Mechon Maddock instead argued that “we haven’t gone far enough” to the right, according to Washington Post. Maddock and Chairman Ron Weiser did not seek re-election.

Ronna McDaniel led the Michigan Republican Party before becoming chair of the Republican National Committee in 2017 after Trump became the first Republican presidential candidate to win the state in 28 years. McDaniel won a controversial re-election bid this year against candidates emphasizing the themes of election integrity and fraud in the 2020 election. President Biden won Michigan in 2020.

Tensions among Michigan Republicans are evident in other parts of the country as well. However, in some of these states, Republicans have decided to change course when it comes to their leadership of the state.

“We really need state party leaders who can bring people together” to win in 2024, Brian Seichik, an Arizona-based Republican strategist who has worked on previous Trump campaigns, told The Hill last week. Sejchik said there is division in the Arizona Republican Party between “hardcore Trump supporters and non-Trump supporters.”

The State Party recently elected former state treasurer Jeff DeWit, who also ran on the Trump campaign, as its new chairman. Sejchik said that DeWitt “seems to have the attention of sponsors and the kind of non-hardcore Trump types, and is also certainly credible in the Trump world.”

The partisan vote came after Democrats in Grand Canyon State defeated Trump-backed candidates and opened the offices of the governor and attorney general. Senator Mark Kelly (right) defeated Blake Masters (right) in the Senate race. Former GOP chairman Kelly Ward has been heavily involved in efforts to overturn the 2020 election results and has not sought re-election.

DeWitt said he hopes the shift to a positive tone within the party will unite factions, attract independent voters and bring back donors to the party.

In Massachusetts, Amy Carnevale defeated GOP Chairman Jim Lyons 37-34 last month, calling the election in an interview with CommonWealth Magazine “a signal that our party is about to go a different path.”

“We are a divided party,” Lyons told the same publication. “The past is trying to cling to what we have captured and do not want to let go. I think that in the future, the people of Massachusetts should decide if they want to see a conservative Republican Party.”

Sixty percent of Massachusetts voters are unregistered and allowed to vote in party primaries. Nine percent are registered Republicans. The Republican Party currently makes up about 15 percent of the state legislature. Former Governor Charlie Baker (right), who had one of the highest approval ratings in the nation, decided not to seek re-election. Trump-backed Jeff Diehl won the Republican primary and lost to the general by a landslide.

Jennifer Nassour, who led the Massachusetts Republican Party from 2009 to 2011 and co-founder of a nonprofit supporting center-right women candidates, attributed the 2022 losses to Lyons’ contentious relationship with Baker and a focus on social issues instead of financial conservatism in an interview. Nassur supported Carnival in a chair.

Trump “looms over a lot of these party apparatuses,” Milea Kromer, director of the Sarah T. Hughes Center for Politics at Goucher College, told The Hill. In Maryland, former limited-term governor Larry Hogan (right), like Baker, enjoyed high approval ratings in the blue state. The Trump-backed gubernatorial candidate won the primary and lost to the general there by a wide margin.

Former state GOP chairman Dirk Hare lamented the divisions between the Trump and Hogan camps, telling central committee members that he hoped they “find a way to work together to get all of our Republican candidates elected and stop doing counterproductive and petty nonsense,” The Baltimore The Sun reported it.

three killed, including a child and a journalist, in a shooting in Florida; Schumer, a suspect in custody, criticized McCarthy for providing Fox News with footage from January 6.

Kromer said the party’s weak fundraising and lack of a prominent flag bearer will create problems for its post-2022 rebuilding efforts.

In December, the party elected Nicole Beus Harris as chairman. Harris promised a “rebrand” of the party and hired campaign specialist Adam Wood as executive director, saying his work “with both Tea Party/Freedom at Home conservatives and moderate Republicans in the GOP/Tuesday Caucus will promote communication.” and unity within the party. party.”

Party chairmen are “almost generals leading an army into battle,” Nassour said. The direction of the party in the states and the unification of its forces would depend in part on the newly elected leadership.

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