Michigan

Subterms

    More stories

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      Republican candidates who deny 2020 election results win key primaries

      by

      Republican candidates who deny 2020 election results win key primariesVictories underscore the continued political potency of the stolen election myth, with most significant win in Arizona Candidates who question the 2020 election results won a handful of key primaries on Tuesday, underscoring the continued political potency of the myth of a stolen election in US politics.The most significant victory was in Arizona, where Mark Finchem, who was endorsed by Donald Trump, easily won the GOP nomination for secretary of state, placing him one step closer to overseeing elections in a key battleground state.Finchem, who has self-identified with the far-right Oath Keepers, vigorously fought to block certification of Joe Biden’s legitimate victory in Arizona and has sought to overturn it ever since.He told reporters on Tuesday he received a subpoena from the Department of Justice, which is investigating the January 6 attack, about a month ago. He has also been subpoenaed by the congressional committee investigating the attack.Finchem joins prominent election deniers in Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania who have earned the Republican nomination for positions in which they would wield considerable power over elections.Kansas’ vote to protect abortion rights upends US midterm elections – liveRead moreIn the Arizona gubernatorial primary, Kari Lake, a Trump-backed former news anchor who has made election misinformation a centerpiece of her campaign, narrowly led rival Karrin Taylor Robson on Wednesday morning.Even before she took the lead in ballot counting, Lake, who has already alleged fraud in the vote, claimed victory.“There is no path to victory for my opponent and we won this race, period,” Lake said at her election night party. On Wednesday morning she led by just over 11,300 votes with 20% of the vote left to count.Blake Masters, a Trump-backed US Senate candidate in Arizona who has questioned election results also easily won the GOP primary to take on the Democratic senator Mark Kelly.Rusty Bowers, the speaker of the Arizona house who faced censure from his party and Trump’s fury after testifying in front of the January 6 committee, lost his primary for state senate to a Trump-backed challenger.There were other signs of how election conspiracies continue to dominate Arizona politics. In Maricopa county, a Republican candidate for the board of supervisors urged voters to steal pens the county provided to fill out ballots, a nod to a baseless fraud claim promoted on Gatewaypundit, a far-right website.In Michigan, Peter Meijer, one of 10 Republicans to support Trump’s impeachment, lost a primary battle against John Gibbs, who served in the Department of Housing and Urban Development in the Trump administration.In a debate last month, Gibbs said there were “mathematically impossible anomalies” in the 2020 race, which is not true. Meijer blasted Democrats for boosting Gibbs’s campaign as part of a strategy to elevate more extreme candidates who might be easier to beat in November.Michigan Republicans nominated Tudor Dixon, a conservative commentator, to take on Gretchen Whitmer for governor. Dixon has said the 2020 election was stolen in Michigan, where Trump lost by more than 150,000 votes, but has been vague about what exactly she says went wrong.In Missouri, Eric Schmitt, who lead a coalition of attorneys general urging the US supreme court to overturn the 2020 election, won the Republican nomination for US Senate. Trump endorsed “Eric” in the race, declining to say whether he was backing Schmitt or another challenger, Eric Greitens.In Washington state, two US House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump appeared to be doing fairly well as votes continued to be counted. With about half of the vote counted, Jaime Herrera Beutler and Dan Newhouse were both leading Trump-backed opponents.TopicsRepublicansThe fight to voteUS midterm elections 2022US politicsArizonaMichiganMissourinewsReuse this content More

    • 113 Shares179 Views

      in Elections

      Tudor Dixon Will Challenge Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan

      by

      Tudor Dixon, a conservative media personality with the political backing of Michigan’s powerful DeVos family, won the state’s Republican primary for governor on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press.She will advance to the general election against Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a first-term Democrat who was on the short list to be Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s running mate in the summer of 2020.In its final weeks, the primary became a race to win the backing of former President Donald J. Trump, who ultimately did endorse Ms. Dixon. But she didn’t wait for his formal support to air a TV ad of Mr. Trump praising her at a campaign rally and release internal polling showing that half the primary electorate thought Mr. Trump had already endorsed her.Ms. Dixon emerged victorious from a five-person field that lost its two best-funded candidates in May after they were disqualified by a state canvassing board for turning in forged petition signatures.A former commentator for the conservative media channel “Real America’s Voice,” Ms. Dixon, 45, was previously an actress and an executive at her family’s steel company. She has said she was roused to run for office out of her anger over Ms. Whitmer’s policies, especially pandemic shutdown orders that were among the nation’s strictest in the early months of Covid-19.Republican gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon gives her acceptance speech after securing the nomination during the evening of Primary Election Day in Grand Rapids, Michigan, U.S., August 2, 2022. Emily Elconin for The New York TimesA mother of four school-age children, Ms. Dixon favors per-pupil education funding to follow students to any school they choose, including private schools. The policy aligns with the longtime priorities of the DeVos family, including Betsy DeVos, Mr. Trump’s former education secretary.At a debate in May, Ms. Dixon raised her hand when asked if she believed Mr. Trump had won Michigan in 2020, a race he in fact lost to President Biden by 154,000 votes. But on Sunday, after securing Mr. Trump’s endorsement, Ms. Dixon backed away from that position, saying instead she was concerned about “how the election was handled.” A lengthy review by Republicans in the State Senate in 2021 debunked the claims of Trump supporters that there was widespread fraud.Ms. Dixon and the rest of the Republican field were relative unknowns in Michigan, with polling showing that two in five Republicans didn’t know or had no opinion of any of the candidates just two weeks before the election.Her top rival, the self-funding former auto dealership owner Kevin Rinke, attacked Ms. Dixon as a tool of the DeVos family when Ms. DeVos said in June that she had sought to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Mr. Trump from office after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Ms. DeVos endorsed Ms. Dixon’s campaign, and her family helped fund it, and a handwritten “Dear Mr. President” letter from Ms. DeVos to Mr. Trump last week appeared to have prompted his endorsement of Ms. Dixon.Garrett Soldano, a chiropractor who gained political attention by organizing rallies against Ms. Whitmer’s pandemic mitigation efforts in 2020, urged Mr. Trump not to endorse Ms. Dixon. He said in a video message to Mr. Trump that after Jan. 6, the DeVos family “basically abandoned you, sir.”And Ryan Kelley, a real estate broker, was arrested in June and charged with four misdemeanors for his actions at the Capitol on Jan. 6. Mr. Kelley pleaded not guilty and said he had joined rioters outside but had not entered the building. He predicted at the time that the publicity surrounding his arrest would help his campaign, though he did not raise enough money to air television ads.Of the four leading candidates, three — Ms. Dixon, Mr. Kelley and Mr. Soldano — falsely said during the May debate that Mr. Trump had carried Michigan in 2020. Mr. Rinke said that there had been fraud, but that he could not be certain it was enough to flip the state to Mr. Trump.Trip Gabriel contributed reporting. More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Abortion access, Trump’s sway and US democracy hang in balance in primaries

      by

      Abortion access, Trump’s sway and US democracy hang in balance in primariesKansas, Michigan, Missouri and Washington state vote with Arizona’s ballot being the most closely watched On one of the most consequential nights of this year’s primary season, Donald Trump’s sway in a series of Republican races remained unclear but voters in red-state Kansas resoundingly rejected an amendment aimed at restricting abortion rights.Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan risks upsetting Beijing to no advantage Read moreTuesday night’s marquee races were in Arizona, where Republicans are on the verge of tapping prominent election deniers to be their nominees in contests for governor, secretary of state and US Senate.In the governor’s race, Trump-backed Kari Lake, a former news anchor who has built her campaign around misinformation about the 2020 election, was trailing Karrin Taylor Robson, a wealthy real-estate developer who is endorsed by Mike Pence and the current Arizona governor, Doug Ducey. The winner will take on Katie Hobbs, Arizona’s current secretary of state, who was projected to win the Democratic gubernatorial nomination.Down the ballot, Mark Finchem, a close ally of Trump who aggressively sought to overturn Arizona’s election results, was on the verge of clinching the GOP nomination to be secretary of state in a four-way primary. Trump has endorsed Finchem in the contest, which typically gets little attention, boosting him to the front of the field.If elected in November, Finchem would wield considerable power over elections in Arizona, including how ballots are counted and there is a loud alarm he could use that power to throw out an election result he doesn’t like, especially given his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 race.Underscoring how deeply embedded Trump’s election lies are among Republicans in Arizona, the New York Times reported on Tuesday that two politicians involved in the efforts to overturn Biden’s victory in the state worried the scheme could “appear treasonous”.On the Democratic side, Adrian Fontes, the former top election official in Maricopa county, home to Phoenix, is vying for his party’s nomination against Reginald Bolding, the minority leader in the Arizona house of representatives.And in the US Senate race, Blake Masters, who has embraced extreme anti-immigrant positions and is backed by Trump and the tech billionaire Peter Thiel, is the frontrunner to win the GOP nomination. He will face Senator Mark Kelly this fall, who ran unopposed.Meanwhile in Kansas, a state that Trump won by nearly 15 points, voters defeated an amendment that would have paved the way for abortion restrictions and delivered an energizing win for Democrats who face tough odds in the midterms.The resounding win came as a surprise in a deeply conservative state. Republican lawmakers scheduled the vote during the partisan primaries thinking that low Democratic turnout would bolster their anti-abortion cause, but secretary of state Scott Schwab suggested that the massive voter turnout on Tuesday may match the turnout of the 2008 presidential election.The vote is viewed as a litmus test for the future of abortion access across the US. There is also a tight race in western Michigan, where the freshman congressman Peter Meijer is trying to fend off a challenge from John Gibbs, a former Trump administration official. Meijer was one of 10 House Republicans to back Trump’s impeachment and Trump has backed Gibbs in an act of retribution. The Whoever wins the district will be in a competitive race in November. Democrats have faced criticism in recent weeks for trying to boost Gibbs, calculating that the more extreme candidate may be easier to beat in November.Michigan Republicans nominated conservative media commentator Tudor Dixon, who has falsely said Trump won the state in 2020 and earned a late endorsement from the former president. She will take on Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer in November. Dixon emerged as the party’s nominee after an extremely chaotic primary during which several candidates were disqualified and one was arrested for his involvement in the January 6 insurrection.On the Democratic side, redistricting set two Democratic House incumbents against each other in Michigan. Andy Levin, a former president of his synagogue, was ultimately defeated by Haley Stevens, after pro-Israel Super Pac funded ads attacking the former and amplifying the later. Levin has been critical of Israel’s human rights record.In Washington state, representatives Jaime Herrera Beutler and Dan Newhouse, both of whom voted to impeach Trump, are hoping to survive Trump-backed challengers.In Missouri, Eric Schmitt, the state attorney general, prevailed in a competitive primary for an open US Senate seat. Schmitt trounced the state’s scandal-plagued former governor, Eric Greitens, who was attempting a political comeback. Both vied for Trump’s endorsement – and earned it – when the former president declined to choose between them. Instead Trump issued a statement on Monday announcing that he had endorsed “Eric” but did not specify which one.TopicsUS politicsArizonaKansasWashington stateMissouriMichigannewsReuse this content More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Could the G.O.P. Beat Whitmer in Michigan? Party Chaos Has Hurt Its Chances.

      by

      A handwritten letter from Betsy DeVos, last seen trying to remove Donald Trump from office, elicited an 11th-hour endorsement. But is that enough to make peace among Michigan’s warring Republicans?PONTIAC, Mich. — “Dear Mr. President,” the letter began.Donald J. Trump’s estranged former education secretary, Betsy DeVos — last seen trying to remove him from office using the 25th Amendment after the Capitol riot — took pen in hand the other day to plead with him to look past Michigan’s no-holds-barred Republican infighting and side with her powerful political family’s choice for governor.“I hear that some have implied that my family and I are working against you in Michigan,” Ms. DeVos wrote in looping cursive on personal stationery. “That is fake news. Those telling you that are doing so for their own personal gain.”She added that her preferred candidate, Tudor Dixon, a former conservative media personality, was “the only one who can stand toe to toe with ‘that woman from Michigan’” — Mr. Trump’s sobriquet for Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat whom Republicans desperately want to topple.“Your support of Tudor can make the winning difference!” Ms. DeVos closed her Wednesday letter. “Very sincerely, Betsy.”The letter worked, to an extent: Late Friday, Mr. Trump issued an 11th-hour endorsement of Ms. Dixon ahead of Tuesday’s primary. But it also highlighted what has been the fiercest, bitterest and potentially most consequential Republican infighting in the country.Betsy DeVos and her family were major donors to Donald J. Trump for years, but she broke with him over the Capitol riot.Kevin Lamarque/ReutersFor much of the spring and summer, Ms. DeVos and her billionaire relatives — the most influential Republican family in Michigan — have been at war with Mr. Trump’s followers in the state, choosing different sides in consequential primaries for the state Legislature and endorsements at the state party’s convention.The former president’s late nod in the governor’s race only compounded the confusion and heightened the suspense about what his followers would do on Primary Day. Just the day before the endorsement, eight of his chosen down-ballot candidates sent him an open letter urging him not to do political business with the DeVos family.The open hostilities have emboldened an ascendant grass roots wing of Michigan Republicans who are devoted to Mr. Trump and his agenda. And his endorsement will test the degree to which the former president has the wherewithal to lead them.All told, Republicans are in danger of bungling what earlier this year appeared to be a promising opportunity to oust Ms. Whitmer. The party’s strongest two candidates were jettisoned from the ballot because of a signature-forgery blunder. The resulting field, aside from the untested Ms. Dixon, includes one candidate facing misdemeanor charges related to the Capitol riot and another dogged by years-old lawsuits over allegations that he made racist and sexually explicit comments to employees.Key Themes From the 2022 Midterm Elections So FarCard 1 of 6The state of the midterms. More

    • 125 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      Trump Backs Tudor Dixon in Michigan’s Chaotic G.O.P. Governor Primary

      by

      Former President Donald J. Trump endorsed Tudor Dixon in Michigan’s Republican primary for governor, giving Ms. Dixon, a former media personality, a boost as the crowded field heads into the final weekend of campaigning.Ms. Dixon is one of three Republicans in the race — out of five total — who have asserted that Mr. Trump was the real winner in Michigan in the 2020 presidential election, even though he lost there by 154,000 votes.An NBC poll earlier this month showed 19 percent of Michigan Republicans backing Ms. Dixon, giving her a slight lead over Kevin Rinke, a businessman whose support was at 15 percent. Garrett Soldano, a chiropractor, had 13 percent.The winner of the Aug. 2 primary will take on Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat who is seeking her second term this fall. The Republican contest was first thrown into chaos in May, when five candidates — including the two front-runners — were disqualified because of forged signatures on their nominating petitions. Another candidate, Ryan Kelley, was arrested in June and charged with misdemeanors related to the Jan. 6 attack.Ms. Dixon is Mr. Trump’s 19th endorsement in Michigan, a clear indication of the former president’s intent to reshape the political landscape in the battleground state ahead of his increasingly likely presidential bid in 2024.“After recognizing her during my rally speech in April, her campaign took off like a rocket ship,” Mr. Trump said in a statement on Friday.Ms. Dixon has also secured the endorsement of the DeVos family, longtime power brokers in the state. More