Trump Endorsed Michigan Candidate Loses In New Humiliation

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Trump’s candidates just keep losing.

Now, the candidate he supported to helm the Michigan state Republican Party has been defeated. Trump and other prominent Republicans backed Matthew DePerno, an attorney who joined challenges against the outcome of the 2020 election and later unsuccessfully ran for the state position of attorney general, but in the final round of voting held at a state party gathering on Saturday, Kristina Karamo won the post. This case didn’t involve those more committed to reality beating the Trump wing of the party. Karamo, who unsuccessfully ran for Michigan’s Secretary of State position in the 2022 midterm elections on the same ballot with DePerno, has also supported baseless claims about the electoral process and wouldn’t even concede after she lost by a margin well into the double-digits, although such isn’t legally required.

Karamo also has a history as a podcast host and has claimed, among other oddities, that yoga constitutes a demonic ritual. Before the midterms, Karamo also got involved with a lawsuit that, although it went through multiple iterations, sought to compel residents of Detroit to vote either at an in-person polling place or via an absentee ballot personally picked up from local authorities. In very direct terms, her push could have invalidated the votes of tens of thousands who already received absentee ballots in the mail, besides impacting those living a long distance away but still legally eligible to vote in Michigan, like members of the military. The lawsuit also raised preemptive claims about authorities’ expected conduct on Election Day, specifically in the reporting of votes, although Election Day hadn’t even happened yet.

Michigan Republicans didn’t have a great record in the midterms, a slew of losses potentially helped along by the serious primary contenders for governor struck from the ballot amid a scandal involving the submission of fraudulent signatures associated with those contenders getting on the ballot at all. That left Republicans with a woman named Tudor Dixon as their eventual nominee for governor, who lost by a huge margin to incumbent Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a frequent target of the Right. Democrats took total control of both chambers of the legislature in the state as well. Also on the ballot last year was an amendment to the state Constitution bolstering abortion rights in the state, and, like voters in California and Vermont, Michiganders approved it. Residents of New York will vote on a similar measure next year, further establishing these protections in settled law and making it more difficult to ever undo the allowances.