In two Upper Midwest battleground states, Election 2020 never ended. Republicans in Wisconsin and Michigan remain mired in election denial and divided over what to do about it. The question is: Will it hurt their prospects in November’s midterm elections?
2020 lives on in Wisconsin, Michigan. Will it hurt the GOP this fall?
Then-President Trump’s Justice Department in late 2020 found no evidence of widespread electoral fraud that would have changed the electoral college result.
Last week in Wisconsin, Republican House Speaker Robin Vos extended the taxpayer-funded contract of former state Supreme Court justice Michael Gableman, who has been leading, controversially, a review of the 2020 results. Vos’s decision to extend Gableman’s contract (the former justice agreed to a salary reduction) came shortly after Trump issued a thinly veiled threat of backing primary challengers to those Republicans who got in Gableman’s way, language seen as aimed directly at Vos.
This was not the first time Trump has tried to pressure Vos to investigate the election in Wisconsin, and it was not the first time Vos succumbed. A visit between the two last summer, seen as Vos’s effort to placate Trump without necessarily diving into another full review of 2020, ultimately resulted in the appointment of Gableman.
But Gableman’s work has been a series of contested intrusions into the work of local officials, missed deadlines, mistakes in information and the recent revelation that he has been looking into the backgrounds of public employees and contractors in different communities to try to figure out their partisan leanings, activity that drew a rebuke from a Republican state senator.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Patrick Marley reported recently that Gableman concluded that one such person was a Democrat because, among his observations, she played video games, colored her hair and had a nose ring. An official at the Milwaukee Election Commission told Marley that the person in question had never been seen acting in a partisan way, was principally an IT worker and had virtually no participation in the election.
This week, former Republican lieutenant governor Rebecca Kleefisch, seen as the front-runner for the GOP gubernatorial nomination to oppose Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, amped up her rhetoric by saying she believes the Wisconsin election in 2020 was “rigged.”
“I can’t honestly tell you results in Pennsylvania and in Arizona and other states where there are questions. I am focused exclusively on Wisconsin,” she said in a radio interview. “And what I can tell you about Wisconsin is that I feel like it was rigged.”
The primary contest includes one candidate, Timothy Ramthun, whose website describes him as “Wisconsin’s America First Candidate,” and who has called for the decertification of the 2020 results, which experts say cannot be done legally.
Kleefisch leads the growing field of candidates, according to a recent Marquette University Law School poll, with 32 percent support. Almost half of Republicans (46 percent) say they are still undecided. She was expected to have a relatively clear path to the nomination, and that still might be the case. But the overlay of 2020 and the bickering among Republicans has changed the character of the primary race. Some GOP strategists in the state fear that it could hinder the party’s chances of defeating Evers, who narrowly won in 2018.
All the claims of rigged elections risk raising further doubts about the integrity of elections, with implications for voter turnout and the likelihood of more contested results in future elections.
Things are, if anything, more turbulent in Michigan. Last weekend, delegates to the state Republican convention endorsed candidates for attorney general and secretary of state who are outright 2020 election deniers and who both have Trump’s backing. There is a primary in August, but unless something unforeseen happens, the two will be the GOP’s general election candidates for two critical statewide offices.
Matthew DePerno defeated a former Michigan House speaker in a runoff at the convention to become the endorsed candidate ahead of the August primary. He is the lawyer in a civil case against Antrim County, where a quickly discovered clerical error on election night was seized upon by Trump and others to promote a conspiracy theory about election fraud. The suit was recently dismissed by the Michigan Court of Appeals.
Kristina Karamo, the candidate for secretary of state, has been consistent in her embrace of conspiracy theories and false claims about what happened in Michigan in 2020, when Biden defeated Trump by nearly three percentage points and more than 150,000 votes.
The convention was a raucous affair, and outside guests included former New York mayor and Trump legal adviser Rudy Giuliani and Mike Lindell, the “My Pillow” guy. The two men have been in the forefront of spreading and promoting Trump’s false claims of widespread election irregularities.
But that wasn’t the only drama to unfold inside Michigan’s divided Republican Party. A few days ago, state Rep. Matthew Maddock was expelled from the GOP House caucus. Maddock has drawn the ire of Republican colleagues for supporting challenges to incumbent legislators by fervent Trump supporters.
Maddock’s wife, Meshawn Maddock, is the vice chair of the state Republican Party, and she, too, has been a loyal soldier in Trump’s political army. State party officials generally remain neutral in intraparty contests, but she took the unusual step of endorsing both DePerno and Karamo.
The fallout from the convention has left GOP strategists worried about the implications for November, as they hope to oust the three Democrats in the top state offices, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Attorney General Dana Nessel and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson.
The Republican primary for governor has a large field of candidates, none of whom has yet taken control of the race, a circumstance that has caused concern among national Republicans. One Michigan strategist said his reading of the situation is that many in the party are already writing off the chances of winning either the attorney general or secretary of state race.
Michigan pollster and independent analyst Richard Czuba said: “If Republicans would make this election simply about a referendum on Joe Biden, they’d do extraordinarily well. But that’s not what is happening in Michigan, because the Republicans are in complete disarray. … If they just get out of their own way, they would have a very, very strong year. But because of their preoccupation with 2020, they can’t get out of the way.”
There is, however, a counter-view, expressed by Matt Grossmann, a political science professor at Michigan State University. Acknowledging there is a “full-on fight” among Republicans, he played down concerns voiced by others that the infighting threatens the party’s chances of defeating Whitmer.
“The consensus opinion is that it will be close but that Whitmer has an edge,” he said. “Insiders agree. I do not. I think it’s going to be a very nationalized election cycle and that Republicans have the edge, and that will include in the gubernatorial race.”
He predicted that Republicans will quickly consolidate around whoever is their gubernatorial nominee, despite all the Trump-inspired divisions. “Whitmer is not that popular in Michigan, and it’s more likely to be a Republican year. … If they [Republicans] win the governor’s race, then the likelihood of winning AG [attorney general] and secretary of state is very high.”
That view cuts against the grain, and it is a reminder that a Republican Party that has been twisted and distorted by the false claims and conspiracy theories of the former president nonetheless could gain power and control government both in Washington and in the states after November’s elections.
Source: WP
