Just months before the state could play a crucial role in the 2024 election, the Michigan Republican Party is in turmoil.
Republicans in Michigan — a state the GOP nominee for president in 2024 will rely on for a much-needed boost to take down President Joe Biden — are divided on who exactly is running the state party at the moment. Earlier this month, committee members from the Michigan GOP gathered for a special meeting to vote on the removal of party chair, Kristina Karamo. Nearly 90% of those attending the special meeting voted to oust Karamo as she faces criticism for her fundraising strategy, failing to address the party’s debt, and surrounding herself with questionable advisers.
But Karamo is refusing to step down. She holds that those who voted to remove her have no authority to do so. And Karamo’s supporters continue to fight the rest of the state party, claiming she remains the rightful leader of the Michigan GOP.
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Meanwhile, the faction of Michigan Republicans who voted to oust Karamo chose Peter Hoekstra, a former congressman and Ambassador to the Netherlands under Trump, to replace her as party chair.
Hoekstra boasts the endorsement of Trump, his former boss, as he seeks to unify Michigan Republicans around him and move on from Karamo. Lawyers for the Republican National Committee chimed in on the crisis last Wednesday, writing that they had conducted an “initial review” of the fight over state chair and found that “Karamo was properly removed in accordance with the MI GOP bylaws.” The RNC lawyers, however, said their determination was not a final ruling and could change if additional information is provided, CBS News reported. The RNC later removed Karamo’s name and photo from its website, no longer recognizing her as state party chair.
United States Department of State, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
In a phone interview with The Daily Wire last week, Karamo said the opposition to her and the battle over the state party chair has distracted Republicans from their “mission.”
“We need to be focused on the mission and not ourselves,” she said. “And that’s kind of been the problem in the Republican Party. I got involved in the party in college, and since that time in the party, I’ve watched Republicans cannibalize each other repeatedly because we’re radical individualists.”
Karamo also took jabs at Hoekstra during her conversation with The Daily Wire, calling him a “goofball” who is “wasting everybody’s time because he wants to throw his own weight around.”
“Even though the majority of the committee wants me as chair, Pete [Hoekstra] doesn’t care about that. He’s got a little faction. He’s got the money people behind him, and he’s just going to attempt to keep bullying everybody until he gets his way,” Karamo added.
Karamo’s claim that she still holds a majority of the support within the Michigan GOP is the crux of her argument to remain as chair. While many of the 107 GOP committee members voted in favor of keeping Karamo during a gathering on January 13, those opposed to her leadership and the RNC’s lawyers hold that she was successfully removed from her position on January 6, making her special meeting a week later null and void.
The special meeting held on January 6 by those seeking Karamo’s removal saw 40 members of the committee vote to remove her, which represented 88% of those in attendance as many of Karamo’s supporters refused to attend the meeting. Karamo has since threatened to take legal action against the Republicans who say they have rightfully removed her as the state GOP chair.
The back-and-forth has sparked a civil war within the Michigan Republican Party as Karamo and her faithful followers argue that the effort to remove her was “illegal” while those who voted to oust Karamo, led by Acting Chair Malinda Pego, filed a lawsuit against her and requested a temporary restraining order, seeking to force her removal. The anti-Karamo faction is seeking to have its position recognized either by the courts or by the Republican National Committee, hoping to bring back donors who jumped ship under Karamo, Hoekstra said, according to Bridge Michigan.
JD Glaser, the GOP chair for Michigan’s 5th District told The Daily Wire that Karamo’s removal perfectly followed the GOP’s bylaws.
“I would stake my entire reputation that the rules were followed precisely,” Glaser said. “There were several attorneys that worked on it, several parliamentarians that worked on it. Everyone made sure that everything was done exactly by the rules.”
Karamo, a former community college teacher, took over as party chair in early 2023 following her 2022 election loss in the secretary of state race to Democrat Jocelyn Benson. During her SoS campaign, Karamo aligned herself with Trump — who endorsed her — and focused on challenging the 2020 presidential results in Michigan, arguing that Trump won the state. While she came up short in her effort to win the SoS race, Karamo won the hearts of many conservatives in the state who viewed her as a rising star in the GOP.
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Less than a year after taking control of the state party, however, the feelings toward Karamo have shifted among many conservatives, and Trump, who backed her run for SoS, wants a change. But not even a Trump endorsement of Hoekstra as Michigan GOP chair last Friday has seemed to faze Karamo in her attempt to stay at the party’s helm. Asked by Detroit News reporter Craig Mauger if Trump’s backing of Hoekstra changes her thinking, Karamo responded, “Absolutely not.”
For many of the committee members who oppose Karamo, the cracks within the Michigan GOP started to show months before the opposing meetings held on January 6 and 13. Michigan Republicans began to distrust Karamo after the former chair of the 9th district, Warren Carpenter, revealed shocking info about the Michigan GOP’s financial instability.
In September 2023, the party had invited multiple high-profile speakers — such as actor Jim Caviezel — to be featured at the Mackinac Republican Leadership Conference, but there was one problem. The Michigan GOP couldn’t afford the speakers, so it took out a loan to cover Caviezel’s $110,000 speaker fee. The Mackinac event, which the party usually relies on for a huge fundraising haul, didn’t raise any money for the Michigan GOP.
“We had a goal to raise money for that event, and unfortunately that did not occur,” Karamo said in October.
The party’s financial troubles continued as it went into debt and defaulted on a half-a-million-dollar loan. Soon, more committee members would voice their frustrations with Karamo, and it wasn’t just the party’s financial problems that had them worked up.
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Five committee members of the Michigan GOP, including Carpenter, recently sounded alarm bells, telling investigative journalist Scott McMahan with Bigger Truth Media that the controversy surrounding Karamo extends to those within her inner circle. According to the committee members who spoke to Bigger Truth Media, Karamo is being influenced by an operative named Mike Labadie, who was reportedly registered as a Democrat in California as recently as 2016 before he moved to Michigan and got involved with Republican politics.
Glaser told McMahan that, initially, he worked with Labadie on developing a curriculum for Michigan Precinct First, an organization Labadie created to help first-time precinct delegates who were elected in 2022.
Glaser said he became disillusioned after seeing how Labadie allegedly sought to exert control over those around him and alleged that Labadie created a cult-like environment surrounding Karamo.
“He’s the kind of person who doesn’t make himself known,” Glaser said, according to Bigger Truth Media. “He is really good at staying in the background. He chooses people after observing them. He’s very disciplined about it. He discards you if you don’t fit his profile.”
“That’s how he’s able to keep such control,” Glaser added.
Carpenter told Bigger Truth Media that he first met Labadie during Karamo’s secretary of state campaign. According to Carpenter, Labadie told him he “was sent here to recruit SoS candidates,” adding, “We have big plans for her,” speaking of Karamo.
“[Labadie] built her from nothing,” Carpenter said. “He was everything to her at her lowest point. He put her out there to run as secretary of state, became her number one confidante, ostracized everyone closest to her and for everyone he pushed out, he put new people in their place.”
Karamo told The Daily Wire that any claims surrounding Labadie’s control over her and the party are just “hearsay,” adding that “nobody” controls her.
Labadie did not respond to a Daily Wire inquiry.
Whether Karamo is officially forced to hand over control of the party to her opposition or she continues her fight to remain as GOP chair is yet to be seen as the party waits for the court to weigh in on the issue.
Until then, the Michigan Republican Party has a lot to figure out before a vital 2024 election.