Next state Republican Party chair needs to raise money … somehow

Outgoing Michigan Republican Party Co-Chair Meshawn Maddock doesn’t want to be the next MIGOP chair. 

She does, however, have a message to whoever does win the post at next month’s convention: We need our big donors back.

In a letter to supporters that I obtained, Maddock lays out the situation at MIGOP in dollars and cents.

The MIGOP needs $1.3 million to hold the conventions and state committee meetings required by law and at least $750,000 to staff party operations over a two-year election cycle.

Then there are insurance, legal costs and utilities. Then, on top of that, the party will need a few million more to actually have an impact on winning elections, which is the whole point of having a party.

Maddock concedes that the Michigan Republican Party doesn’t have left many of the corporate big-wigs who funded its operations for decades. Outgoing Chair Ron Weiser covered up the problem last cycle by sinking as much as $7 million of his own money into the party.

With him about to be gone, he’s not dipping into his pocket for another $7 million. The new Republican Party chair, whoever it is, is stuck.

The “donor class” is not on the same page as the “grassroots.” Maddock and everyone else know it. In her letter, she points the finger at the “left-leaning” media and the “liberal elites” for shaming corporations that give a penny to Republican causes.

But we all know it goes deeper than that. When your message is stuck on unproven, widespread election fraud claims from two years ago, it’s a hard sell for those who see political donations as investments. 

Financially backing the tin-foil hat crowd doesn’t improve the business culture of corporate America. Trying to explain away the U.S. Capitol riot as a peaceful protest that was spun out of control by a few agitators and then overblown by the media and politically opportunistic Democrats doesn’t improve any company’s bottom line.

Instead, business executives who give to Republicans or passively accept conspiracy theories become political targets. 

That’s not good for business.

Unfortunately for the Republicans, however, they need these donors back. Badly.

One of the eight Michigan Republican Party chair candidates is suggesting hitting up the 2,112 precinct delegates for $1,500 a quarter. Maddock said this idea was put on the table by someone “who has clearly never done actual fundraising.”

Many of these people can’t spare an extra $500 a year to give to the Michigan Republican party, let alone $1,500 four times a year.

On his way out the door, Weiser is suggesting a new rule that all delegates at the Feb. 18 convention, where the new chair will be named, pay $50 to get in the door, according to The Detroit News. Even if all 2,112 delegates pay that amount, that yields a little more than $100,000, a mere fraction of what’s needed to fund the party.

That’s not entirely the point, though. The party activists who are steering the Republican Party into X-Files Land need to realize that their “platform” comes at a cost. And if they’re not willing to put money behind it, they can’t expect others will either.

The 2022 election should be case and point that their dog doesn’t hunt.

Most Michigan voters have moved on from 2020. They’ve moved on from the pandemic. They’re not going to be spun into believing that Trump supporters were maliciously led into the U.S. Capitol by left-leaning activists.

A majority of Michigan voters believe:

 — A ban on all abortions all the time isn’t realistic.

 — Keeping guns away from the mentally instable is realistic.

— Legal protections for LGBTQ residents are realistic.

What isn’t realistic is using book bans and gender-fluid teenagers to drum up votes. It didn’t work in 2022 and it’s not bringing in big bucks in 2023. 

The Republicans showing up to the Feb. 18 convention are not on the same page as a majority of Michigan voters and will elect a like-minded chair. It’s someone who needs to find out all too soon that money will need to be raised … somehow.