The MIGOP State Committee meeting held Saturday, April 27th provided further proof that your Michigan Republican Party has suffered a “hostile takeover” by a small but powerful faction within the Party that is inimical to the most fundamental Republican principles of rule of law, transparency and even simple fairness.

At the last SC gathering, the court-appointed, temporary Chair, Pete Hoekstra, stood up, made a speech about being the rightful Chair of the Michigan Republican Party, then simply handed off to Co-Chair Malinda Pego, who gaslit and gaveled through motions, ignoring calls for discussion and basic Robert’s Rules of order. She blithely “disappeared” a duly elected D-9 member, Barry Doherty, by first omitting him from the roll call. Then, when his absence was challenged, she coldly intoned “Barry Doherty is not a member of this committee”. It most closely resembled a meeting of the old Soviet Politburo.

Yesterday, the Grassroots members were having none of it! Fighting back from the opening gavel, they demanded that Chairman Pete Hoekstra follow the Party Bylaws and actually CHAIR the meeting himself, instead of Pego. After citing Article V, Section A, which states quite clearly: “The Chairman shall preside at all meetings of the Committee,” they were ignored. After which, many members immediately stood up and got vocal, demanding a “point of parliamentary procedure”. The parliamentarian, Jeff Litten, and the General Counsel, Mike Bishop, along with Co-Chair Malinda, reflexively denied this request (Chairman Pete had a befuddled, almost Bidenesque look on his face and didn’t seem too involved in the decision-making).

Breach of Contract

Because the body of members can overrule the Chair and Parliamentarians, patriots began calling “APPEAL THE DECISION OF THE CHAIR” causing visible confusion and consternation among the temporary MIGOP leadership onstage and fear and loathing on the face of Chair Hoekstra. This forced a vote by the full committee. The Chair’s handlers pushed to appoint tellers but a roll call vote was demanded by members, which meant names would be attached to votes – never desirable for RINO’s who wish to talk the America First talk, without walking the walk. Ultimately, to avoid the roll call, Pete relented and agreed to chair the meeting himself.

Next, there was a Credentials challenge seeking to remove Sue Allor of District 1 and to replace her with Roxanne Dufort. This failed despite impassioned pleas by District 1 members concerned that the SC was attempting to dictate to their district -- a charge repeatedly leveled against Kristina Karamo by the same crowd now doing exactly what they had falsely accused her of doing. Later in the meeting, in yet another episode in the ongoing breach of the contract by MIGOP leadership against the State Committee, a member made a motion to challenge the credentials of Michelle Donovan (whose proxy was Mark Forton). Although she has never attended an SC meeting, Donovan’s name is being used in violation of the Bylaws by Team Hoekstra to replace the rightful member from D-9, Barry Doherty. The motion got the same response from Team Hoekstra as the one received to a detailed challenge in an email sent on Doherty’s behalf on March 31st – namely, to not respond at all. The Chair simply ignored the motion, as if it had never been made and moved on. In fact, he repeatedly ignored members’ calls for division of the house and a second call for appeal of the decision of the Chair, made by Joel Studebaker, was repeated by him over a dozen times, with the Chair first ignoring him, then demanding that he be quiet, while some even called for security and removal of Joel from the meeting. These were all flagrant violations by the temporary MIGOP leadership of Roberts Rules and further evidence, much of it on video, of breach of contract by MIGOP against the Michigan Republican Party’s State Committee.

A Vote That Shocks The Conscience

The most egregious, and revealing, vote of the day came on a challenge by Billy Putman and Casey Armitage of Lori Skibo’s election to Delegate to the Republican National Convention, which she had earned on March 2nd with by far the most votes of anyone in District 9. Accused of not properly filing her application (on a technicality that would make a DC bureaucrat blush) she offered detailed documentation of her valid application – submitted with perfect adherence to the RNC rules that were passed by the SC last Fall. But the RINO Hoekstra team, along with their slavishly loyalist functionaries on the SC, were quick to run election interference against Lori Skibo and, by extension, the people she represents in District Nine.

Team Hoekstra utilized the proxy vote of a non-district SC member who no longer even lives in Michigan and is thus INELIGIBLE to sit on the committee and therefore unable to vote or submit a proxy. Neither can a proxy be submitted for her by anyone else. Under Article III, Section J of the SC Bylaws, “non-district members ’unfilled positions’ shall not be filled by any other person”.

That turned out to be the margin of victory for the anti-Lori Skibo crew of 47 members (see names below). The final roll call vote – demanded by the Grassroots and fought against by Team Hoekstra – was a tie. At least one of the tellers and several non-teller members even had Lori winning by one. A tie would mean that the Chair would have to be the tie breaker, turning the spotlight and pressure on Pete. To avoid this, the Secretary asked if any of four abstentions would like to change their votes! Nothing like putting a little pressure on the fence sitters AFTER the election. (The veiled message: “the outcome depends on YOU. Change it now should you want to remain in good standing with the regime!”). To their credit, none did.

In the end, the inept, temporary Chairman, when faced with a golden opportunity to make a bold appeal for party unity as it hurtles toward an historic election, instead took the divisive, partisan approach and granted the deciding vote to his own Team RINO, thereby disqualifying arguably the hardest working Republican in the State of Michigan on a fake technicality. With Republicans like Pete Hoekstra and the SC RINO’s, who needs Democrats? There is a pattern of disenfranchising delegates quickly developing with the Hoekstra team. Never forget that they disenfranchised 23 counties at the March 2nd convention when they refused to credential their delegates to attend and vote.