Michigan Republicans Whip Votes to Remove Their Own State GOP Chair

Back in June, Oakland County Republican Party chairman Vance Patrick had a simple request for his state GOP chairwoman Kristina Karamo. Former president Donald Trump was coming to town for a county GOP fundraiser, and he’d like her to promote the event.

“Good morning, I was hoping you could put our Lincoln dinner event on the MiGOP web site [sic]. That’s what I wanted to discuss,” Patrick texted her on June 6, according to messages reviewed by National Review. One day later, he texted her again: “Good morning Amber sent over our flyer a couple weeks ago for our TRUMP event. Who specifically should she be sending it to to get it on the MIGOP calendar.”

Those texts, along with follow up messages pleading with her to promote the event, went unanswered. 

Vance and other Michigan Republicans frustrated by her leadership say this par for the course with Karamo, whose ten months on the job have been rocked by a lack of communication, party infighting, spiraling debt, and even physical altercations.

A growing number of Michigan Republicans have spent weeks circulating a petition in support of removing Karamo, who was elected chairwoman three months after losing Michigan’s secretary of state race to Democrat Jocelyn Benson by 14 points. In interviews, Karamo’s critics — many of them former allies of the chairwoman — say she is alienating independent voters in the already blue-leaning battleground, ill-equipped to organize a statewide field operation ahead of a presidential year, and leading the party toward a treacherous state of debt that already exceeds $500,000.

Even those who were skeptical about Karamo’s election-fraud-obsessed candidacy from the start were hopeful that she could fire up the state’s grassroots Republican donors.

“Obviously, she dissed the establishment donor class,” says Saul Anuzis, who previously served as both’s Michigan state GOP chairman and Republican National Committeeman. “So by definition, that means she had to develop her own donor class, and she wasn’t able to do that.”

Trump endorsed Karamo’s 2022 secretary of state bid, but backed her challenger Matt DePerno in the February state GOP chairman race. It’s unclear whether Trump will support efforts to remove her now ten months into her tenure, when the state party is in dire straits financially. Karamo is suing for control over the party’s former headquarters that are now owned by a trust run by donors and former party officials, in hopes that she can sell the property and then settle the more than half a million the party owes to Comerica Bank. 

Problems with Karamo’s tenure extend well beyond the party’s disastrous financial situation. Typically, the Michigan Republican will send field representatives to the counties beginning late summer or early fall to start preparing for upcoming elections and to serve as a resource for the county parties, volunteers and candidates, says Anne DeLisle, Michigan GOP’s eighth congressional district chair.

“We don’t have any of that. There’s nothing,” DeLisle says. “I do not know of anything coming from the state party to help Republicans get elected.”

As a result, many local Republican officials say they’re picking up the slack ahead of a 2024, when Michigan Republicans are hoping to capture an open U.S. Senate seat and potentially flip a number of congressional districts. “There’s no assistance,” says Vance Patrick, the Oakland County GOP chairman who is planning to launch a campaign for state GOP chair Karamo’s seat after the holidays, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The whip count and timeline for Karamo’s potential removal remained unclear as of this week, though state committee member Bree Moeggenberg has requested a special meeting take place December 27 to consider a vote for her removal. Others predict an official ouster vote is more likely to take place early next year.

For the anti-Karamo coalition to succeed, half of the state committee members must first sign on to a petition requesting a vote. Once that signatory threshold is met, she can be removed by 75 percent of the state committee’s “present and voting at any meeting of the committee, provided there is a quorum present,” according to Michigan Republican state committee bylaws. Some Republicans worried about reaching that threshold have begun privately floating the idea of suspending those rules by amending the state committee bylaws, which only requires a two-thirds majority.

Michigan Republicans say it’s possible to win competitive statewide elections without a unified or effective state party. Last cycle, for example, Nevada Democrats held incumbent senator Catherine Cortez Masto’s seat after working around a state party apparatus that had been overtaken by the Democratic Socialists of America.

And even if Karamo is removed, Michigan Republicans acknowledge it will be difficult for her successor to undo damage she has inflicted to the party’s reputation and financial status.

“Her leadership has pushed away every other faction of the Republican Party and along with every faction of our voters,” says Moeggenberg, one of many state committee members pushing for Karamo’s ouster. “What she should have been doing was embracing all of the differences in the factions linking arms with the old guard or collaborating with them to build a wider voter base.”

Karamo did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Intra-party efforts to potentially remove Karamo come as Trump — who remains competitive in a general election match-ups against Biden in Michigan — looks well-positioned to lock up the 2024 Republican nomination ahead of next month’s first early state contests in Iowa and New Hampshire. As those contests draw near, Michigan — which swung to Trump in 2016 and back to Biden in 2020 — once again finds itself in a 2020-election-related news cycle: The Detroit News reported Thursday evening that Trump told two members of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers on a post-election phone call not to certify the 2020 presidential election results, saying it would make them look “terrible” if they certified the results after initially pledging to oppose them. 

Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel was also on the November 17, 2020 phone call, according to the Detroit News, and reportedly told the the board of canvassers members: “If you can go home tonight, do not sign it. . . . We will get you attorneys.”