Michigan Republican Party leaders who hoped for an orderly state convention this weekend in Lansing now face a bitterly divided GOP delegation chosen after claims of stolen delegates and “double-crossed” convention-goers.
As muddled and contentious as this convention was, with just 59 delegates at stake, the national GOP convention in Cleveland this summer could be 10 times worse.
An 11th-hour joint effort by Donald Trump and John Kasich supporters caught the Ted Cruz camp by surprise with some hardball tactics. Cruz got the 25 delegates he expected but his supporters were outraged when the Texas senator was shut out of all eight spots awarded to Michigan on convention committees . Those committees, especially the Rules Committee, will play an outsize role in the final outcome as the prospect of a disputed convention in Cleveland seems increasingly likely.
Some of the strange happenings that led to this coup included one group of state delegates blocking the door to their caucus meeting; the election of a former felon as an alternate in the delegation headed to Cleveland; and a delegate selected to the Credentials Committee who is hoping to get his son, already rejected by party leaders, onto the national convention floor.
We also saw state GOP Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel announce that she will support Trump at the July convention – for at least the first ballot – though her beloved uncle, Mitt Romney, has served as the most outspoken member of the #NeverTrump movement.
In the end, Cruz and Kasich each received 17 delegates, though that was the only even outcome of the weekend.
The finger pointing between the Cruz and Kasich camps elevated quickly, with the Cruz team complaining that they were double-crossed by the Kasich campaign. In turn, the Kasich camp said they abandoned a plan to team up with Cruz when they discovered a scheme by Cruz & Co. to shut them out of the committee membership process.
In Trump-like fashion, Kasich’s chief strategist, John Weaver, took to Twitter to thumb his nose at the Cruz folks:
“Cruz leadership broke word in Michigan, got greedy & tried 2 screw everyone. Lost all. Rule: pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered. #Cleveland”
Saul Anuzis, a senior adviser for the Cruz campaign, chose Twitter for his heated rhetoric:
“To be clear, the Cruz campaign maintained all of their convention delegate spots today in Michigan. What’s new is that John Kasich has decided to bypass any attempt to blur his rationale for staying in the race, and is now openly auditioning for Donald Trump’s Vice President slot. That’s the only possible reason for him to instruct his campaign to join forces with Trump for votes on convention committee assignments.”
To actually be clear, after everything that has transpired in this wacky campaign season, Bernie Sanders probably has a better chance of becoming Trump’s running mate than Kasich.
Here are some of the odd highlights of the convention down at the ground level:
* In the caucus meeting of the 11th Congressional District (which encompasses parts of Oakland and Wayne counties) things got a bit out of hand. According to The Detroit News, Matt Maddock, a bail bondsman from Milford, filled the caucus with delegates loyal to his Battlecry Michigan network. A number of convention delegates walked out in protest, which gave Maddock further control of the session. He instructed the sergeant-at-arms: “Do not let anyone else in this room unless it’s an emergency.” The result? Maddock’s wife was elected as the 11th District’s Trump delegate.
* In the 1st District (northern Michigan), the caucus elected “Trucker Randy” Bishop of Antrim County as an alternate delegate for Kasich, though Bishop has a history as a two-time felon in Macomb County for real estate fraud. Best known as a bombastic talk-radio personality, Trucker Randy was applauded by his tea party cohorts in 2014 when he declared war on the Republican Party. He was especially crude in his criticism of moderates and RINOs (Republicans In Name Only). There is probably zero chance that the trucker actually supports Kasich.
* After the delegates were selected on Friday night in each congressional district, the process on Saturday of electing at-large (statewide) delegates was a bit chaotic. On the convention floor, the only clear indication of who was running for those spots apparently was an overly quick slide show. Nothing in print. Party activist Dan Wholihan of Brighton described the scene on Facebook: “There was a vote to accept the reports of the district caucuses which was basically boilerplate stuff, followed by a quick voice vote on the delegate-at-large list. What I saw quickly on that list seemed legitimate … but it (was) a rush job. … I voted ‘no’ strictly due to the process. It was a divide(d) vote that passed by voice vote, with many people not even (knowing) what was going on.
* Among those elected to serve on the Credentials Committee is longtime GOP power broker Chuck Yob. His spot on the committee puts him in position to secure the inclusion of his son, John, as a delegate from the Virgin Islands, eligible to be seated in Cleveland. The younger Yob’s bid for a delegate position was rejected by VI party leaders who declared that he was an unqualified outsider because he had declared residency on the islands just prior to the territory’s primary last month.
Photo/MSNBC screenshot