LANSING (Feb. 11, 2020) — A week ago, rumbling fissures within the Michigan Republican Party (MRP) were blown open. Then-chair Laura Cox sent an email to party insiders, alleging the former chair Ron Weiser, who was running for a third term in the role, had in 2018 used $200,000 in party funds to pay a candidate for secretary of state, Stan Grot, to leave the race.
One senior MRP official, speaking on the condition of anonymity due to the party’s turmoil, told MCFN, “I think that many times you enter these conventions and the delegates are concerned that the establishment is playing games with the votes. And typically they're not. This time they were.”
The payments had come from the party’s administrative account, a secretive source of funds that can accept corporate contributions and has no requirements for public disclosure. Now it's been alleged the account provided party leaders the leverage to unilaterally influence major Republican party decisions while hiding the move from nearly all its members.
Weiser called the allegations “baseless'' in a statement, though he didn’t directly deny the assertion Grot had dropped out as a condition of the payments. Grot told The Detroit News he left the race in 2018 because he “didn’t have a chance to win,” and noted the work he did for the party afterward. Days later, Weiser was reelected as chair with two-thirds of party delegates supporting him.
Though the true impetus behind the payments remains an open question, the allegations have highlighted an unsavory reality: multiple experts told the Michigan Campaign Finance Network that in Michigan it’s likely legal to pay a candidate to abandon their bid for office.
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