The former president’s level of intervention in the swing state’s elections is unmatched anywhere else.
LANSING, Mich. — At a “MAGA mixer” in a banquet hall upstairs from a bowling alley on Saturday night, a room full of Michigan Republicans erupted in applause when a state House candidate said protesting outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 — and getting tear-gassed — was a “highlight of my life.”
They nodded knowingly when a state Senate candidate — who drew controversy at a previous event for telling Republicans to “show up armed” to monitor ballot counting — said he’d decided this time not to have his campaign livestream his remarks.
“Everybody in this room,” said Mick Bricker, another legislative candidate, “is running to oppose the RINOs who have taken over our House and Senate in this great state of Michigan.”
The three candidates, all of them endorsed by Donald Trump, are part of a great experiment currently taking place here. Of all the states where the former president and his allies are purging the GOP of traditionalist conservatives, Michigan has emerged as perhaps MAGA’s most critical proving ground, a place where Trump’s level of intervention up and down the ballot is unmatched.
His success — or failure — in electing his unofficial slate will serve as a measure of his clout within the GOP. But it will also signal whether he has rehabilitated his standing in a key battleground — one of the five states that flipped to Joe Biden in 2020.
“Obviously he sees the importance of Michigan as a swing state,” said Matt Marko, president of suburban Detroit’s North Oakland Republican Club, said after a candidate debate last week. “He’s trying to maintain his support.”
In Michigan, Trump has already endorsed 10 state legislative candidates, far more than in any other state. He has chosen sides in close to a half-dozen congressional races — including against the two House GOP incumbents who voted for his impeachment — and endorsed candidates for two statewide offices.
Late last month, Trump penned a letter to state party delegates on behalf of a candidate for attorney general.
His commitment to remake the state’s political order has not been lost on his supporters. Borrowing a page from single-issue advocacy groups, they are pressing candidates to answer a questionnaire that prompts them, among other questions, to “define a RINO” and say if elected officials should be “replaced for ignoring evidence of fraud.”
Trump will appear at a rally in the state on Saturday.
Following her speech at the “MAGA mixer,” Angela Rigas, the candidate proud of protesting at the Capitol (she said she did not go inside) said. “The grassroots is actually going to take back Michigan.”
If something close to that happens, it will mark a severe turn away from establishment Republican politics in one of the few states where, right after the 2020 election, the traditionalist wing of the party appeared to still have life.
It was a Republican member of the Michigan state board of canvassers who voted to certify Biden’s victory in the state, and it was GOP lawmakers here who told Trump he had no post-election path to overturn the results — and later reported finding no evidence of widespread fraud. Of the 10 House Republicans who voted for Trump’s impeachment, two were from Michigan.
Trump, at a recent fundraiser, described the state as a “laggard” in his election conspiracy crusade.
But even the old guard can see the MAGA-fication of Michigan may be unavoidable this year.
In the Michigan Republican Party of 2022, said Jason Watts, who was removed from his post as a local party treasurer in Michigan after publicly breaking with Trump, “The inmates are running the asylum.”
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Of all the states where Trump and his allies are purging the GOP of traditionalist conservatives, his level of intervention in Michigan's elections is unmatched https://t.co/Hl8tqJVBsU
— POLITICO (@politico) March 28, 2022
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