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    Trump’s Focus on 2020 Election Splits Michigan Republicans

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    The former president is trying to reshape the battleground state in his image. But his false claims about the 2020 election are driving a wedge between loyalists and those who are eager to move on.SHELBY TOWNSHIP, Mich. — The shouting in the banquet hall erupted just minutes after the Macomb County Republican Party convention was called to order.In a room packed with about 500 people, Mark Forton, the county party chairman and a fierce ally of former President Donald J. Trump, began railing against the establishment Republicans in the audience. A plan was afoot to oust him and his executive team, he said.“They’re going to make an overthrow of the party, and you have a right to know what this county party has done in the last three years,” he said as his supporters booed and hollered and opponents pelted him with objections. Republicans in suits and cardigans on one side of the room shouted at die-hard Trump supporters in MAGA hats and Trump gear on the other.The night ended as Mr. Forton had predicted, with a 158-123 vote that removed him and his leadership team from their posts.The raucous scene in Macomb County exploded after months of infighting that roiled the Michigan Republican Party, pitting Trump loyalists like Mr. Forton, who continue to promote Mr. Trump’s lies about a stolen 2020 presidential election, against a cohort of Republicans who are eager to move on. The splintering threatens to upend the upcoming Republican state convention, where county precinct chairs vote on nominees for secretary of state, attorney general and other statewide offices.Mr. Trump is all in on trying to sway those contests — and other races across the state, which he lost by 150,000 votes in 2020. The former president has endorsed 10 candidates for the State Legislature, including three who are challenging Republican incumbents, and has already picked his favorite candidate for speaker of the State House next year. Mr. Trump also has made numerous personal entreaties to shore up support for Matthew DePerno, who is running for attorney general, and Kristina Karamo, a candidate for secretary of state.Kristina Karamo, a candidate for Michigan secretary of state, belongs to a slate of “America First” candidates campaigning, in part, on distorted views of the 2020 election.Brittany Greeson for The New York TimesIn Michigan and other battleground states, Mr. Trump’s chosen candidates have become megaphones for his election claims — frustrating some Republicans who view a preoccupation with the 2020 election as a losing message in 2022.Republicans in Wisconsin and Arizona have encountered similar fractures over support for continued investigations into the 2020 election, and Mr. Trump’s attempts to play kingmaker in the Ohio Senate race is splintering Republicans there as well.The root of the rupture in Michigan can, in part, be traced to endorsements made by Meshawn Maddock, a co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party and a Trump confidante. The Republican Party leadership has traditionally stayed out of statewide races, especially before the state convention. But Ms. Maddock endorsed Ms. Karamo and Mr. DePerno.How Donald J. Trump Still LoomsGrip on G.O.P.: Mr. Trump remains the most powerful figure in the Republican Party. However, there are signs his control is loosening.Power Struggle: Led by Senator Mitch McConnell, a band of anti-Trump Republicans is maneuvering to thwart the ex-president.Midterms Effect: Mr. Trump has become a party kingmaker, but his involvement in state races worries many Republicans.Post-Presidency Profits: Mr. Trump is melding business with politics, capitalizing for personal gain.Just the Beginning: For many Trump supporters who marched on Jan. 6, the day was not a disgraced insurrection but the start of a movement.Both candidates have been vocal supporters of Mr. Trump’s falsehoods about the 2020 election. Mr. DePerno was one of the lawyers involved in Republican challenges in Antrim County, Mich., where a quickly corrected human error on election night spawned a barrage of conspiracy theories.Ms. Karamo belongs to a slate of “America First” secretary of state candidates running across the country and campaigning, in part, on distorted views of the 2020 election.Matthew DePerno, a candidate for Michigan attorney general, was involved in Republican challenges in a Michigan county where an election night error spawned conspiracy theories.Nic Antaya for The New York TimesBeyond her endorsements, Ms. Maddock has been working to help prepare convention delegates. Last month, Ms. Maddock attended a mock convention held by the Michigan Conservative Coalition and reiterated glowing praise from Mr. Trump for Ms. Karamo, Mr. DePerno and John Gibbs, the conservative challenger to Representative Peter Meijer, a Republican congressman who voted to impeach Mr. Trump over the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.“He was so fired up about Michigan,” Ms. Maddock said of conversations with Mr. Trump as she spoke during a question-and-answer session at the mock convention, according to audio of the event obtained by The New York Times. “This man cannot stop talking about Matt DePerno, Kristina Karamo, John Gibbs, who’s running against Peter Meijer.”In a statement, Mr. DePerno said he’s “proud that local and state party leaders have endorsed my campaign. Ms. Karamo’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.Republican candidates facing Mr. DePerno and Ms. Karamo were taken aback by the endorsements and were outraged at the meddling by the state party leadership before the convention. Ms. Maddock, some candidates charged, appeared to be trying to tip the scales in favor of Trump-backed candidates.Beau LeFave, a Republican state legislator who is running for secretary of state, said that he had spoken to both Ms. Maddock and her husband, State Representative Matt Maddock, “multiple times” before jumping into his race. They told him they were both rooting for him “and that they’re going to stay out of it,” he said.“So it was quite a surprise to find out that they lied to me,” Mr. LeFave said.Ms. Maddock was not available for an interview, according to Gustavo Portela, a spokesman for the Michigan Republican Party. He said that co-chairs had endorsed candidates in the past but acknowledged that the dynamic this cycle was a bit unusual.The root of the rupture in Michigan can, in part, be traced to endorsements made by Meshawn Maddock, a co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party and a staunch supporter of Mr. Trump.Ruth Fremson/The New York Times“You’ve never had a co-chair who has been this close to a former president, who arguably has a lot of influence on the convention floor,” Mr. Portela said. He added that the party believes the contested races ahead of the convention were “a good thing” that “speaks to the frustration with the direction of our country, and more importantly, the direction of the state.”The state party has struggled with other conflicts. After more than a year of hearing specious claims about vote counts and election equipment, some activists began questioning why the party would use tabulation machines. A group called Unity 4 MRP started an online campaign to pressure the party to count paper ballots by hand rather use the major brands of voting machines.“Grassroots groups would sooner stare into the glowering, red eyes of Beelzebub than to allow a Dominion, ESS, or Hart tabulator to run its lecherous paws over their sacred ballots,” another group, Pure Integrity Michigan Elections, wrote in an email to supporters, according to The Detroit Free Press.Eventually, the party leadership announced a concession: an audit of the convention vote overseen by a former secretary of state. But that didn’t please everyone.“We have state committee members who fought hard to make sure that you do not have a hand count, and you need to ask why, and you need to be angry, and you need people figuring it out,” said J.D. Glaser, an activist who attended a rally of election skeptics in February. “This is our Republican Party. They’re working against you.”The Macomb County Republican Party convention was one of 83 county meetings held Monday to pick the delegates to the statewide Michigan Republican Party endorsement convention on April 23.In the weeks leading up to the event in the Detroit suburbs, Mr. Forton, a retired autoworker and longtime political activist, had rankled prominent Republican elected officials with his conspiracy-theory-laden assertions about the election and what he has described as “a cabal” of Democrats and Republicans who have been installed to control the country.Presiding over the convention, Mr. Forton argued that his wing of Trump supporters had revived the county party, replenished its coffers and helped usher in a wave of Republican victories in the state. He slammed what he viewed as the old-guard Republicans in the room, some of whom were preparing the way to vote him out of office as he spoke.“They have been wanting to take this county party back for a long time,” he said, adding that he and his supporters were “not going away.”Some on Mr. Forton’s side of the room were attending a convention for the first time, spurred to do so, they said, out of concern for the direction of the party and outrage over the lack of audits and investigations into the results of the 2020 presidential election.“What is happening here should be calm and exciting, but what you have is a Republican Party that does not think the same,” said Tamra Szacon, who earlier had led the prayer and was decked out in a cowboy hat and glittering American flag heels. “One of our biggest things is that we believe the election was stolen — a lot of people do.”On the other side of the room, Republicans said they were frustrated with the bickering. Natasha Hargitay, a 35-year-old single mother, said she had been to more than a dozen conventions and had never been to one so contentious. She described herself as “Switzerland,” neutral in the fight. Still, she had not been pleased with Mr. Forton’s comments.“I lost a lot of respect for him when he said, ‘We are the real Republicans,’” she said. “That means you are dividing the Republican Party.”After the commotion, Eric Castiglia, who was elected the county’s new chairman, pledged to welcome all Republicans into the fold. He said he believed the state convention, with its machine and hand count election, would provide an opportunity to show election skeptics that the process could be fair.“We have to start working on what we’re going to do with our values and not be a place where every candidate is a RINO, or not a Republican enough,” Mr. Castiglia said in an interview, using shorthand for “Republican in name only.”But Mr. Forton has no intention of moving on. On Thursday, he filed a petition to state party leaders appealing his ouster. More

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      Sweet Cherries, Bitter Politics: Two Farm Stands and the Nation’s Divides

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      Opposing views of mask requirements have rippled across a Michigan County, even influencing where people buy their fruit.ELK RAPIDS, Mich. — The two farm stands lie just 12 miles apart along Route 31, a straight, flat road running through a bucolic wonderland of cherry orchards and crystalline lakes in northwestern Michigan.Yet when one stand instituted a no mask, no service rule last July and the other went to court to combat the state’s mask mandate, they set in motion a split that still ripples across Antrim County.Linda McDonnell, a retiree who began summering in the area 20 years ago, used to pop into Friske Farm Market regularly to treat herself to a few doughnuts. She loved watching them emerge piping hot from the kitchen, and delighted in their soft, chewy interiors beneath a crunchy outer layer. Then Friske’s joined the outcry against masks.“Oh my God, I do miss them, but I will not go there because of the politics,” said Ms. McDonnell, 69, a former schoolteacher. “They will not get my business.”The family that owns Friske Farm Market sued Gov. Gretchen Whitmer last summer, arguing that wearing masks should have remained a personal choice.Sarah Rice for The New York TimesOn the other side, Randy Bishop eyes the King Orchards farm stand with similar rancor.The white-bearded Mr. Bishop, sometimes called the “Rush Limbaugh of Antrim County,” abandoned long-distance trucking during the 2009 recession and currently hosts a talk radio show. He will boycott King’s forever, he said, “along with other progressive, communist business owners in this county.”Differences that had always simmered beneath the surface were inflamed by the coronavirus pandemic and pushed many people in places like Antrim County into their tribal corners. Now the molten flow of anger over the presidential election and virus mitigation measures is hardening into enduring divisions over activities as simple as where people buy their fruit.“Political divisions have infiltrated other parts of people’s lives a lot more than they used to,” said Larry Peck, 68, a retired oil company executive. “Choosing where you go, choosing where you shop, choosing all the things that your life interacts with that used to be not political now are a lot more political.”Antrim County, population 23,324, is known for its chain of 14 long, narrow, sometimes turquoise lakes spilling into Lake Michigan. The abundant water tempers the climate and, combined with the low, cigar-shaped hills, creates ideal conditions to grow fruit.Cherries in particular dominate the landscape. Sweet cherries. Sour cherries. Cherry Tree Inn. Cherry Suites Assisted Living. They populate every menu. Pie, of course. Cherry and chicken sandwich wraps. Black letters on roadside signs spell out greetings like “Have a cherry day!”Cherries dominate the landscape in Antrim County. Sarah Rice for The New York TimesFriske’s and King’s are two of the most popular farm stands — both low, red, wooden barnlike structures with white trim. Friske’s, which bills itself as “Not Your Average Fruit Stand,” features the Orchard Cafe, a bakery and a store stuffed with curios as well as everything needed to make pie. King’s is more homespun, with apples displayed in wooden baskets; customers are encouraged to pick their own fruit from the orchards.Last summer, the Friske family sued Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, arguing that wearing masks should have remained a personal choice. When the State Supreme Court nullified a series of the governor’s Covid-related executive orders in October, it effectively tossed out her mask mandate and made the lawsuit moot. Michigan’s health department issued a mask directive, which the Friske Farm Market defied until the state threatened to revoke its business license.The Friskes turned to Facebook to explain their position in videos that attracted both zealous supporters and harsh critics. An area newspaper profiling the ruckus dredged up the archconservative political past of Richard Friske, who died in 2002; he bought the family orchards some 60 years ago after serving in Nazi Germany’s Luftwaffe.Jon R. Friske, 23, a member of the third generation to run the farm, said the family anticipated being attacked for making masks voluntary. More online warriors fired nasty broadsides than regular customers, he insisted.“It is cancel culture, that is all it is — they did not agree with what we were doing so they desperately tried to muddy our reputation and discredit us,” he said. “They come after us in the comments and call us ‘Grandma killers.’ Whatever they want to throw at us frankly leaves no room for personal responsibility and personal accountability, and that is not what America is all about.”By comparison, King Orchards made masks obligatory after Ms. Whitmer issued her executive order in July. The farm stand constructed a hand sanitizer station in the gravel parking lot and distributed free masks.Juliette King McAvoy behind plastic at the cash registers at King Orchards. The Republican-led State Senate blocked her from joining the Michigan Cherry Committee.Sarah Rice for The New York TimesMonths later, the Biden campaign released a commercial about the negative effects of climate change on fruit farming that featured three generations of the King family in their orchards. (John King, the patriarch, moved to the area from downstate in 1980 to take up farming and bought the Route 31 farm stand in 2001.)“For us it wasn’t about the party line or our personal politics, it was about being an advocate for mitigating climate change,” said Juliette King McAvoy, Mr. King’s daughter. Still, the Republican-controlled State Senate took the unusual step in April of blocking her appointment to the Michigan Cherry Committee.Area regulars chose sides, arguing endlessly over freedom versus public health. Both fruit stands claimed that they gained customers, even if some stormed away, while the need to eat at home drove a sales boom. Last month, King Orchards dropped its mandatory mask policy after the state did.But matters did not end with the masks.Vocal residents had also taken sides in a nagging battle over the results of the presidential vote in Antrim County. A human error in programming some of the Dominion voting machines in the county resulted in several thousand votes for Donald J. Trump being attributed to Mr. Biden.Although the mistake was caught immediately and corrected, it prompted one of the longest-running lawsuits over the results, with Mr. Trump cheering from the sideline.While court proceedings unrolled in the background, vaccines became the next yardstick for measuring which friends to keep and which businesses to frequent as daily life inched away from the pandemic.“Our core values were not aligning at all,” Joyce Brodsky said about her unvaccinated neighbor.Sarah Rice for The New York TimesJoyce Brodsky, 69, a painter and retired art teacher, spent the pandemic at home, occasionally passing time with a neighbor, a former auto salesman, who also stayed isolated in his lakeside house, festooned with a large Trump sign.She tried to not let it irk her, telling herself that many Trump banners on barns in the area were even larger. When her neighbor attempted to rattle her by talking about politics, she steered the conversations to his photo collages or other subjects, and she felt like the two of them were secure inside their Covid-free bubble.They took regular bike rides together until he returned from a trip to Florida, when she asked whether he had been vaccinated. He would never get vaccinated, he told her, suggesting that she had no right to ask.“Our core values were not aligning at all,” said Ms. Brodsky, who stopped the bike rides at that point. “Why would you not follow the science?”At Friske’s, plenty of pickup trucks in the parking lot still sport Trump-Pence bumper stickers, and the doughnuts lure regulars for breakfast. “We got fat,” joked Brenda Coseo, 62, after she and her husband, Chris, moved into their summer home in January and for part of the spring to escape the high coronavirus numbers in San Diego, where they usually live.Red, white and blue apparel at Friske Farm Market.Sarah Rice for The New York TimesThey liked Friske’s for being more relaxed about the pandemic rules, and decried the fact that so many local restaurants took a hard financial hit because of lockdowns. “It just seemed pretty unwarranted,” said Mr. Coseo, 63. “I am not the one counting dead people from Covid, but still.”Not everyone in the neighborhood agreed. On Route 31 just south of Friske’s, Kim Cook, 53, had opened Grace: A Gallery in an old church with a distinctive bell tower to sell the work of some 60 area artists.“I never went in there after I found out that they were not requiring masks,” said Ms. Cook, who once worked at Friske’s. Her own mask requirement, however, prompted abuse from several customers, including a woman who lunged at her, so she closed the gallery.Antrim County is the kind of place where it takes decades to be considered a local. The auto executives, assembly workers, teachers and others who eventually retire to their second homes from downstate Michigan remain outsiders. Residents who survive off the short summer tourist season call visitors “fudgies” because they frequent the fudge shops, and the retirees “perma-fudgies.”The pandemic brought a new breed: younger tech-savvy entrepreneurs from as far away as California who could work from home. They arrived with families and paid for houses in cash, fueling resentments.Antrim County is known for its chain of 14 narrow, sometimes turquoise lakes spilling into Lake Michigan.Sarah Rice for The New York TimesIn this county, Republicans have long controlled virtually every elected office. Still, a local judge, a former Republican politician, dismissed the case alleging fraud in the presidential election on May 18, saying that the requested state audit had been conducted.Yet the fighting continues. The county commissioners, meeting on Zoom, spend hours listening to angry residents. At a recent meeting, one resident decried the fact that the commissioners were getting sucked into false allegations that made the county a “laughingstock.” Another said it was a proven fact that the county’s voting machines could be programmed to flip ballots.The local resident who sued and his lawyer are widely expected to appeal. Supporters organized a $20-per-head fund-raiser on Saturday. The speakers included Mike Lindell, the chief executive of MyPillow, who continues to sell the false claim that Mr. Trump won the election.The venue for the fund-raiser? Friske Farm Market. More

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      Michigan Judge Dismisses Suit Questioning 2020 Election Result

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      A Michigan state judge on Tuesday dismissed one of the last, high-profile court cases questioning the results of the 2020 presidential election, a case former President Donald J. Trump cited to claim fraud after unofficial results in one county initially assigned some votes for him to President Biden.The plaintiff, William Bailey, a local resident, and his lawyer, Matthew S. DePerno, had sought to use the case to cast doubt on the vote nationwide, suggesting that a flawed count by Dominion Voting System machines in Antrim County, Mich., meant that all such machines were open to manipulation and deliberate fraud. The suit was also an attempt to force another statewide audit.Although Mr. DePerno and the various experts he tapped to analyze the vote repeatedly said that various flaws with the voting machines left them open to hacking, they did not cite any specific evidence that it had occurred. A computer expert hired by the state also noted some security weaknesses, but said there was no indication that they had been exploited.Mr. Trump cited Antrim County in his speech on Jan. 6 in Washington claiming that the vote was corrupt and has continued to site the case as an example of “major” fraud. The critical mistake made by local election officials was readily evident right after the Nov. 3 vote. Unofficial results posted online by the county clerk indicated that Mr. Biden won the heavily Republican country with 7,769 votes versus 4,509 votes for Mr. Trump.A quick analysis by county and state election officials determined that the mistake was because of human error — a failure to update the software in some voting machines to account for new ballot lines for local issues had thrown the machine count off, with votes for Mr. Trump attributed to Mr. Biden.After several attempts at correcting the count using paper ballots, including a hand recount released last December, the numbers basically flipped, with Mr. Trump outpolling Mr. Biden by more than 3,000 votes in Antrim County. Mr. Trump lost Michigan by some 154,000 votes.Judge Kevin A. Elsenheimer of the 13th Circuit Court, a former Republican legislator in Michigan, granted the motion on Tuesday by the combined state and county legal team for a summary dismissal on fairly narrow technical grounds, saying the legal requirement for voters to request an audit had already been met.The statewide vote audit demanded by Mr. Bailey and his lawyer had already been completed by Jocelyn Benson, the Michigan secretary of state, earlier in the year, he said. The ruling did not address the issue of possible manipulation.Ms. Benson had said two audits confirmed the accuracy and integrity of the vote, with a random sample of ballots in the second one mirroring the machine count.In a statement on Tuesday, Ms. Benson said that the dismissal of the “last of the lawsuits” seeking to further the “big lie” confirmed that the election was fair and secure.Dana Nessel, the Michigan attorney general, said in a statement that she hoped the ruling would be a “nail in the coffin” for any remaining conspiracy theories surrounding the outcome of the presidential election.Mr. DePerno did not respond to a telephone call and an email seeking comment, but he is expected to appeal. The case continues to roil the waters in Antrim County, with public discussion of it taking up many hours of recent county commission meetings. Democrats have generally expressed support for the county’s explanation while Republicans demand the county clerk, a Republican, be dismissed.County officials have fretted aloud that they would have to replace all the voting machines because a significant number of voters had lost faith in them, and at their last meeting in early May decided to summon their lawyer for a briefing.“Is everybody OK with just a quick update and not 8,700 questions for four hours?” pleaded Terry VanAlstine, the chairman of the board of commissioners. More