(Source: MIRS.news, Published 02/21/2023) On the Tuesday morning following the spring Republican Convention, the party’s Lansing office was all but abandoned, with a single car in the parking lot and no one answering the buzzer.
Last Saturday, convention delegates elected as its new state party chair former Secretary of State candidate Kristina Karamo, who refused to concede the Nov. 2022 election loss to SOS Jocelyn Benson. Kamaro's 57.82% convention victory after three rounds of voting was a win for conservatives who believe the party no longer serves the people.
Former Michigan Republican Party executive director Stu Sandler said Karamo had taken steps to file campaign finance reports, but otherwise not a whole lot seemed to be happening on site.
Saul Anuzis, a former Republican party chair from 2005-2009, said that isn’t necessarily abnormal, as the operation style can be very personalized to the chairperson, relationships and where the party currently sits.
He said the first few weeks start with a lot of organization issues, and questions like, “Where do they keep the paper clips. Where are the pens and how do we function?"
That includes taking care of legal aspects, changing signatures on banking accounts and rebooting operations to get to a place where the chairperson can begin building the party before an election.
Once those things are done, you can begin appointing committees, putting together a finance team and beginning to reach out to donors, Anuzis said.
He said it’s a lot of work and “nonsexy things” on top of being the public face of party operations.
Luckily for Karamo though, he said, there is a great opportunity to make strides for Republicans, as there’s “almost nowhere to go but up.”
The full Democratic majority combined with an open Senate seat means there’s lots of possibility for a comeback, Anuzis said, and it’s a “great time to be there.”
Jason Roe, another former Republican Party executive director, said there isn't any advice he can give for Karamo’s next steps.
“I don’t think there’s a formula that allows them to be successful,” he said, in part because the new leadership has 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.”
He said he doesn’t believe leadership has the 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 who speak the loudest have never given a dollar to the state party.
On Saturday, a criticism made by several candidates in their speeches was that they didn’t receive support from the state party while running campaigns.
Roe said the reason the party didn’t have the money to give to those candidates is because they were “so flawed" that donors didn’t want to donate.
Look at their own fundraising sheets, he said.
Roe said that in the coming months, candidates and Republicans will likely have to work around the state party to get things done, which isn’t the end of the world, but doesn’t allow the centralizing mechanism for all political factions and statewide candidates to operate.
“You can’t replicate that,” he said.
Roe said for a state that’s consistently had one of the most effective Republican parties in the country for decades, it’s likely that the coming months will look much different for the state party.
But Mark Forton, a 2023 GOP chair candidate who used his allotted time on stage to encourage delegates to vote for Karamo, said the MIGOP has always been corrupt, and the change in leadership is an opportunity to uncorrupt it.
They think we're going to fail, he said, and be unable to fundraise. We’re going to prove them wrong.
He added that in any other election, the 31.48% that Karamo received in the first round of voting, nearly 10% higher than the second place Matt DePerno received with 22.81%, would be a landslide victory in a field with 11 total candidates.
The convention’s system of voting is designed so the majority doesn’t win, he said, and as more candidates drop out, more delegates support the party’s approved candidate.
He said that was evident when JD Glaser was eliminated from the race and immediately began distributing colorful fliers endorsing DePerno, which he later admitted he had printed out the day before.
But despite that effort, Karamo pulled out a win, something Forton equated to delegates “waking up.”
Now, Forton said Karamo is likely very busy trying to build back trust in the party, and though he hasn’t spoken with her yet, he’s looking forward to possible collaboration.
