Michigan GOP memo delivers scathing election post-mortem on Trump-backed candidates

LANSING — The Michigan Republican Party suffered historic losses on Tuesday because of poor candidates with close ties to former President Donald Trump, who turned off major donors, the party's chief of staff said in a scathing post-election memo obtained by the Free Press.

"As a Party, we found ourselves consistently navigating the power struggle between Trump and anti-Trump factions of the Party, mostly within the donor class," Paul Cordes said in the Thursday memo.

"That power struggle ended with too many people on the sidelines and hurt Republicans in key races. At the end of the day, high quality, substantive candidates and well-funded campaigns are still critical to winning elections. We struggled in both regards to the detriment of Michiganders across the state."

Republican gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon, with low name I.D., no campaign money and no political experience, had to "start from scratch" after the primary, while Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and her allies were sitting on tens of millions of dollars, which they used to attack her on her abortion position through TV ads, to devastating effect, Cordes said in the memo.

Dixon fired back on Twitter, blaming state party leaders for the election failures.

Dixon's position against abortion rights, with no exceptions for rape or incest, had support from very few voters, the memo said, and the TV ads used Dixon's own words to drive that home. Those words "doomed not just her and the top of the ticket," but efforts to oppose Proposal 3, which enshrines abortion rights in the state constitution, as well, the memo said.

"Neither her campaign nor the party had the resources to push back."

The reason?

"Donors for the most part decided against supporting Trump’s hand-picked AG (attorney general) and SOS (secretary of state) candidates from the April convention, and also withheld millions in traditional investment into the State Party, despite Chairman (Ron) Weiser’s historic contributions of more than $5 million into MIGOP, candidates and caucuses," the memo said.

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"In what many of them saw as sending a message to Donald Trump and his supporters, longtime donors to the Party remained on the sidelines despite constant warnings of the possibility of the outcome we saw come to fruition on Election Day: A statewide sweep and one-party Democratic rule in Lansing, something that has not been seen in nearly 40 years in Michigan."

The memo said that amid high Republican turnout, Dixon underperformed the base party vote by 8 percentage points. By comparison, former Attorney General Bill Schuette, the 2018 GOP candidate who lost to Whitmer, underperformed the GOP base by only 3.9 percentage points.

“Tudor’s efforts focused largely on Republican red meat issues, in hopes of inspiring a 2020-like showing at the polls,” the memo said. “There were more ads on transgender sports than inflation, gas prices and bread and butter issues that could have swayed independent voters. We did not have a turnout problem – middle-of-the-road voters simply didn’t like what Tudor was selling.”

Dixon responded on Twitter, saying the problem was one of state party leadership refusing "to take ownership for their own failures."

Dixon tweeted: "It’s easy to come out and point fingers now, but the truth is they fought against me every step of the way and put the entire ticket at risk."

Republicans around the country are questioning Trump's continued role as the de facto national party leader after GOP performance in the midterms nationally fell well below expectations.

The Michigan memo surfaced as state party leaders are themselves under fire in the wake of Tuesday's election, in which Democrats were reelected to the three top statewide offices while Democrats won majorities in both the House and Senate.

The party "experienced its worst election results in almost 40 years," former Michigan Chamber of Commerce president and CEO Rich Studley said on Twitter Thursday.

"State party leaders need to accept responsibility for this debacle; engage in serious introspection; & think about stepping aside. The Mich GOP needs less dogmatic & more pragmatic party leaders."

Studley did not identify any state party leaders by name. The Michigan Republican Party is headed by Weiser, who is chair, and Meshawn Maddock, who is co-chair.

Dixon singled out Weiser, Maddock and Cordes for criticism, in her tweet.

Contact Paul Egan: 517-372-8660 or pegan@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @paulegan