ROFLMAO
I spent a night at The Nuthouse and glimpsed the future of the Michigan Republican Party



M.L. Elrick, Detroit Free Press
Sun, February 19, 2023 

LANSING — Reporters at last year's Michigan GOP endorsement convention received credentials with "Whitmer protection team" printed on them.

This year, the candidates for party chairperson should have "Democrat protection team" printed on their credentials.

If you think I'm just provoking pachyderms, consider the literature long-shot chairman and co-chair candidates Kent Boersema and Orlando Estrade distributed at the Lansing Center Saturday. The headline under a photo of the dynamic duo shaking hands says: "AT LEAST WE DIDN'T LOSE STATEWIDE."

That's a shot at Matt DePerno and Kristina Karamo, the frontrunners in the race to run the state Republican party. DePerno lost his race for Attorney General by nearly 9 percent in 2022 and Karamo lost her race for Secretary of State by nearly 14 percent (though she still won't admit it). Neither were prodigious fundraisers. And many GOP stalwarts who deserted the party in 2022 have said they won't come back until the anti-establishment, election-denier flames fanned by DePerno and Karamo burn out.

More:Kristina Karamo elected chair of Michigan Republican Party

Perhaps choosing to laugh to keep from crying, Boersema and Estrada's cheeky flyer also refers to the Democrats' 2022 takeover of the Michigan House and Senate.

"We lost everything already..." Boersema says at the bottom of the flyer, setting Estrada up for their pitch to take over the party: "... what do you have to lose?"

The back of the flyer goes on to steal lines from two Will Ferrell comedy classics. "Everybody love everybody!" from "Semi-Pro" and "If you're not first, you're last!" from "Talladega Nights." Then Boersema and Estrada endorse ballot harvesting — a scheme Republicans accuse Democrats of practicing — and "improving engagement with people who live in 'blue' areas."

But, unless you're a Democrat, there's nothing funny about the state of the once-mighty MIGOP.

As recently as 2016, Republicans boasted a governor, Speaker of the House, Senate Majority Leader, chief justice of the state Supreme Court and a dramatic photo-finish victory in the election that made Donald Trump president.

Since then, party infighting and an influx of activists who are so suspicious they don't even trust other Republicans have left the GOP in such disarray that they picked a ponderous process for counting ballots at the Saturday convention, eschewing a machine count for a hand-count, even though the hand counts they performed after the machine counts at their last convention showed no errors (and not just because Hugo Chavez or Cesar Chavez or Cesar Romero or caesar salad really IS dead and consequently unable to secure the WiFi access required to manipulate Dominion voting machines, which it turns out even Tucker Carlson didn't believe were rigged, even though he would never admit it on Fox News).

Even though party leadership changes should bear the same warning as investment opportunities — "past performance is no guarantee of future results" — I suspect Democrats were more interested Saturday in the outcome of the Michigan State-Michigan basketball game than who won the race to run the state Republican Party.

I'm not making this up

Stop me if you've heard this one before: A reporter walks into a bar hoping to meet a sore loser from Arizona who claims without evidence that she won the governor's race and who agreed to fly to Michigan to headline a shindig hosted by two losers who say they can turn their party into a winner.

Before you answer, there's more: The star of the show cancels at the last minute after yet another court found no evidence she won, leaving guests to once again stand in line for photos with Mike Lindell, the My Pillow guy, who seems to turn up at every MIGOP event and who still thinks Donald Trump was cheated in 2020, even though there's no evidence Trump won.

And it all went down at a bar called The Nuthouse.

DePerno, who won failed Arizona Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake's endorsement and promoted her visit to the Nuthouse, referenced her setback with an Arizona appeals court when asked Saturday why she did not show up to support him and his running mate, Garrett Soldano. DePerno said he understood, but was not happy about it.

Lake spokesman Ross Trumble told me in a text late Saturday that Lake had a previously scheduled event in Mohave County "and it became logistically impossible to make it to the GOP Convention." He said she "tried every angle to find a flight that would work but it unfortunately didn’t work out.“ Trumble did not respond to a follow-up inquiring why Lake scheduled an event in the desert when she was supposed to be freezing her butt off with us here in Lansing.

With Lake AWOL, fellow failed gubernatorial candidate Soldano spent most of Friday evening holding down the fort at the Nuthouse and mugging for photos with Lindell and Republican delegates.

Meanwhile, longtime Republican operative Scott Greenlee packed delegates into The Studio at 414, a spacious entertainment venue a few doors from the Nuthouse on Michigan Avenue. The highlight of the night was a video of Ted Nugent endorsing Greenlee. The sound quality was poor, but at least anyone who came to see Terrible Ted didn't leave terribly disappointed.

I couldn't find where Karamo was huddling Friday night, but there were more than a few people who enjoyed the free drink tickets and appetizers DePerno and Soldano provided who told me they might vote for Karamo on Saturday.

It could have been a bit of foreshadowing, or a sign that the way to a delegate's heart might not be through their stomach. Or it could finally give DePerno something worth investigating.
The beauty contest

Delegates arrived at the convention center around 9 a.m. Saturday to cast their votes. But first there was a three-hour debate about a proposed rules change that was so convoluted you would hate me for explaining it, even if I understood it well enough to explain.

So let's get to the good stuff!

By the time candidates got their turn to take the stage, the field had shrunk from 11 to nine. And we started with a bang.

Scott Aughney scolded delegates for missing opportunities to pick up votes in urban areas. He said he was worried about the future of the party.

"I look at the faces of you and I don't have a lot of hope," he said, calling the thousands of delegates "soulless" and only receiving applause after cutting his speech short and storming off stage.

Not long after, state Rep. Angela Rigas of Alto, who complained while nominating DePerno that Democrats had cut off her microphone on the House floor, had her mic cut off by Republicans for talking too long.

Other candidates emphasized their Christian faith, their commitment to reverse the GOP's losing streak, and their disdain for the party's traditional leadership. Drew Born disclosed that he slept with four things next to his bed: A Bible, the Constitution, his marriage certificate and a gun.

DePerno didn't speak, instead showing a video featuring Trump. Karamo told delegates the party "operated like a political mafia," guided by its "own self-serving agenda." She did not offer specifics beyond saying that the state GOP was run like a "private social club."

Then instead of looking forward, she looked back.

"There's a reason I did not concede the 2022 election," Karamo said. "Why would I concede to a fraudulent process?"

Again, she offered no specifics.

Sometimes it's what's not said that speaks volumes.

The one thing the candidates and their nominators all had in common is that none of them mentioned the massacre at Michigan State University, even though it happened less than a week ago and less than four miles down the road from where they were choosing new leadership and a new direction — if you consider denying election results and worrying about Trump a new direction.

The Donald Trumped

For a guy who promised Republicans that they would get sick of winning, Trump has got to be getting pretty sick of losing in Michigan.

After helping DePerno and Karamo win the GOP nomination for attorney general and secretary of state in 2022, he favored DePerno over Karamo for party chair in 2023. He recorded a video, sent a letter hailing DePerno as "the only candidate running who can get the job done" (oops!), proclaimed "I cannot think of anybody who I trust more and look forward to working with and WINNING than Matt" (double oops!), and held an online rally Monday for DePerno.

In a moment unimaginable just six months ago, former state Rep. Terence Mekoski of Shelby Township told delegates as he endorsed Karamo that he loves Trump, Lindell and Nugent, but added: "Do they really know Michigan, and do they really know you delegates?"

About 15 minutes later, Greenlee told delegates: "I love Donald Trump. But as chairman, I don't work for Donald Trump."

While other candidates littered the convention hall with signs, literature and free t-shirts, Karamo just soaked up votes.

She led the pack after the first vote but, because she didn't get to 50 percent, the field was winnowed down to the top three vote-getters. Karamo led DePerno and Greenlee after the second round. The third, and final, round came down to Karamo and DePerno. Karamo crushed her former ally 58-42. (In a refreshing twist, neither candidate alleged irregularities or election fraud.)

If there was any doubt true believers are now in charge of the state Republican Party, Karamo dispelled it in her brief victory speech.

"I am nothing without Jesus. I am a nobody without Jesus," she said. "We will not betray you, we will not lie to you. We are committed to every promise that we made."

There are many challenges facing Karamo, from uniting the party, growing the party and raising money to recruiting candidates.

While workers swept the convention floor, Jeff Sakwa, a former state Republican party chairman, told my colleague Paul Egan the event was "the Super Bowl of election deniers." He predicted donors would stay away.

But the biggest challenge Karamo faces may be what to do if it turns out she really was elected Secretary of State.

If that happens, perhaps Governor Lake will finally make that trip from Arizona to the Nuthouse to help swear her in…

M.L. Elrick is a Pulitzer Prize- and Emmy Award-winning investigative reporter and host of the ML's Soul of Detroit podcast. Contact him at mlelrick@freepress.com or follow him on Twitter at @elrick, Facebook at ML Elrick and Instagram at ml_elrick. Support investigative reporting and use this link to invite a friend to become a subscriber.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan Republicans gather at the Nuthouse before picking party chair