Election denier Kristina Karamo voted out as Michigan Republican party chair

Critics say the QAnon conspiracy theorist, in the position less than a year, failed to deliver on funding promises

A group of Michigan Republicans voted on Saturday to remove Kristina Karamo as state party chair after months of infighting and slow fundraising raised concerns her leadership would hurt the party’s chances in the key swing state in 2024.

Karamo, a former community college instructor and election-denying activist who was elevated to her post in February, has indicated she would not respect Saturday’s vote, setting the stage for a potentially messy court battle over party leadership.

At a special meeting called by critics of Karamo, nearly all of the state committee members present voted to remove her from her post, according to Bree Moeggenberg, a state committee member who helped organize the meeting in Commerce Charter Township.

She has failed to deliver on that promise while angering many of her supporters with what they have called a lack of transparency from her administration. Contributions from the party’s largest donors have dried up, leading to a cash crunch.

A report released last month by Warren Carpenter, a former congressional district chair and one-time Karamo supporter, said the state party was mired in debt, on the “brink of bankruptcy” and “essentially non-functional” under her leadership.

Habahnow,

Anybody know what kind of real impact this has on the election? Is it just raising money to use on candidates?

snipgan,
snipgan avatar

Well, it sounds like they were at least half a million dollars in debt.

Drove off a bunch of big donors.

Lost their original headquarters.

Burned valuable time.

Thrown the party into civil war.

And that is just the stuff we know about.

gravitas_deficiency,

Damn. Unfortunate that she got kicked out.

HopeOfTheGunblade,
HopeOfTheGunblade avatar

Well, they still have to make it stick.

rimu,
@rimu@piefed.social avatar

There are a lot of states that don't really matter because they always end up being won by the same party or because the number of electoral college votes earned by winning the state is low.

Michigan is a moderately important state to win (worth 16 electoral college votes/points) and could go either way. Trump won it in 2016 and Biden won it in 2020.

cheese_greater,

Wonder if her middle name starts with a K

trackcharlie,

Great, can’t wait to see what kind of death threats will be sent out by the incompetent retards in that jurisdiction

VikingHippie,

Karamo, an (…) election-denying activist (…) has indicated she would not respect Saturday’s vote

Wow, surprise of the century!

Also, the headline is misleading. They’re fine with her anti-democratic conspiracy theory bullshit, they just think she isn’t good enough at collecting legal (and probably some illegal) bribes for them.

badaboomxx,

My guess is that it has to do with her being a woman and not white. You know how republicans are.

VikingHippie,

Yeah, that’s probably part of it too.

psycho_driver,

Lets not get too excited. This is probably just the same crowd getting rid of her because she’s an ethnic woman.

quindraco,

She’s no more or less “ethnic” than anyone else.

TIMMAY,

on the real though, an ethnic woman in america being a GOP representative feels like the poster for futility. Like, does she know what the overall agendas are for her political party?

VikingHippie,

Like so many delusional women and minorities in the GOP before her, she thinks she’s immune from the inherent bigotry of the party because she’s “one of the good ones”.

Curious_Canid,
@Curious_Canid@lemmy.ca avatar

the only people in the modern GOP who are concerned about racial or social groups are the white power faction. Everyone else is just in it for personal gain, without concern for how “their people” are doing.

mosiacmango,

Nah, they liked that she was black and in qanon. Gave them someone to point to when they were reminded of their parties racism.

What they dont like is that she deliberately pissed off the “country club” republicans that spend the big donor bucks and didn’t pull in any of the small donor MAGA dollars she said she would make flow in. Now they have no money and have to oust the “populist” leader whose lies they loved a year ago in order to toadie up to the old donors.

Its just a money/hierarchy thing.

RedditWanderer,

How the turn tables

iknowitwheniseeit,

I listened to her in this podcast about the situation:

www.thisamericanlife.org/820/believe-in-me

One point she makes is that there is too much focus on money, and that money is not the point of a party.

I wish that were true, but it’s not, at least in the USA.

shiftenter,

I liked when the reporter asked Karamo if she could name just one example of how they’ve been fundraising and she said yes but still failed to do so.

Kristina Karamo

We’re not bankrupt. That’s not true. So the thing about it is, we are operating at a positive cash flow. So yes, it has-- have I hit the financial goals that I would like? Not at the level I would like, but we are on our way.

Zoe Chace

Well, that’s why I guess I’m asking just for any example. Is there a fundraiser in which you tapped into businesses that had been sitting on the sidelines, like you talked about in your campaign?

Kristina Karamo

Of course.

Zoe Chace

Or something like that?

Kristina Karamo

Of course.

Zoe Chace

Just any specific you can give me?

Kristina Karamo

Yeah, well, for one, yes. But I don’t know what specific you’re looking for. Because my question is, why are you so dogmatic on the notion of people who want to push the elitist narrative? That’s my question. Because I’ve answered it multiple times.

But my question to you, so why are you so aggressive on that notion? I’m not going to go through the nuts and bolts of every person who’s given $1 or $10,000 or $20,000 to our administration. I’ve answered, we’re operating at a positive cash flow.

Endorkend,
Endorkend avatar

Virtually every politician or political hopeful that is a forevertrumper is a grifter themselves, they love Trump because he's been elected as king of the grifters, they look up to him because what bigger con is there than conning your way into the presidency.

The great thing about all of them being grifters is that when tempted with all that money that flows through elections and parties, they can't but funnel as much as they can from it into their own pockets, it's pathological.

By electing all these grifters into positions of power, the republican party is ruining its own finances.

This while their actions through the decades has made money a direct equivalent to power.

There may be more billionaires on their side these days, but the type of billionaires that side with them aren't the type that'll give their own money to the cause.

Lets hope that them sabotaging themselves so persistently will be enough to offset how effective these grifters are in luring functionally retarded people to vote for them.

WashedOver,
@WashedOver@lemmy.ca avatar

Unfortunately the more I learn about these Q types, the more it seems like they want to world to burn to cleanse it to their liking.

Since that can’t really be done legally, with kindness, or humanity, they need a dictator to make these big moves and it seems she’s going to practice this for a bit.

TimLovesTech, (edited )
@TimLovesTech@badatbeing.social avatar

It sounds the the same way all of them lead, because leading isn’t what they want to do. They want to rule, NOT lead.

It will be interesting to see if she follows through on her “I’m not going to step aside” talk. Also funny how the one thing they can all rally around is not respecting a vote, unless they win it.

Edit - s/here/her

Shyfer,

I swear, half of these people are grifters, while the other half are true believers who are incompetent or unstable enough to fall for the first half’s cons.

toiletobserver,

Fe, irony!

LEDZeppelin,

HeH

mp3,
@mp3@lemmy.ca avatar

May the door hit her on her way out.

Ghostalmedia,
@Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world avatar

If you want to see the Michigan GOP lose, she was a great asset. I’m gonna miss her.

Monument, (edited )

I certainly hope she fights tooth and nail. They deserve her.

I’m not sure I’m a democrat, but I am a liberal, and her inability to raise any funds for the Michigan GOP has been great to watch. They’re way behind for fundraising for this time in the election cycle. I’ve seen some commentary/articles that say they’re hundreds of millions down, and currently on the verge of bankruptcy.

The state party being disadvantaged on funding means that even a clean ouster will would likely mean the national Republican Party will either have to abandon Michigan, or commit resources to it that they would otherwise commit to national efforts/other states. Although, I do hope it turns into an expensive 3-ring circus that exacerbates the issue.
(And I hope donors will see their money is being wasted on inter-party squabbling and mismanagement, further withholding funds.)

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