Less than 48 hours after polls closed and Democrats emerged from the midterm election poised to take control of every branch of state government, the Michigan Republican Party released a scathing memo blaming their electoral failures largely on Tudor Dixon, her campaign and former president Donald Trump.
There’s a forest of pointing fingers emerging as Republicans reckon with a total loss of power at the state level, and the party provided their own suggestions looking to the top of the ticket. Paul Cordes, the party’s chief of staff, wrote Dixon’s weak performance as a gubernatorial candidate — Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer won by 11 percentage points — paired with the motivation brought by abortion access and Proposal 3 doomed the party heading into the general election.
“The hole created by Tudor at the top of the ticket was too much to overcome,” Cordes said.
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Dixon posted the memo publicly on social media, writing on Facebook “this is the perfect example of what is wrong with the Michigan Republican Party” and calling for “fresh leadership.”
She singled out Cordes and the party’s co-chairs, Ron Weiser and Meshawn Maddock in particular, writing they “all refuse to take ownership for their own failures. 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.”
Maddock did not return a request for comment on the memo.
At the heart of the memo’s blame is money. They lament that Dixon’s campaign and the party both had no money to counter Whitmer’s record-shattering fundraising — largely because of Trump.
“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,” Cordes wrote.
Whitmer’s campaign strove to tie their candidate to the issue of abortion, and along with allies spent nearly $50 million in advertising in the race, while Dixon’s campaign didn’t run a broadcast ad until October due to a lack of resources.
Cordes claimed Dixon’s advertising silence even doomed conservatives’ fight against Proposal 3.
“They viewed Tudor and Proposal 3 as a package deal at the polls,” Cordes wrote, arguing “because of that, there was likely never any real chance at defeating” the proposal.
Trump’s widespread influence in the party harmed their chances at the ballot box, Cordes said, saying his prominence in the race and nomination of his “hand-picked” candidates “provided challenges on a statewide ballot, especially with independents and women in a midterm election.”
While acknowledging Trump drives enthusiasm for the party’s grassroots base, Cordes candidly acknowledged that the divisions Trump has riven in the party still fester. The party had gone to lengths to project unity throughout the campaign season.
“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,” Cordes said. “That power struggle ended with too many people on the sidelines and hurt Republicans in key races.”
Cordes said Dixon’s campaign lost “three weeks” at the end of the primary season trying to win Trump’s endorsement, a politician who Cordes noted is more disliked by voters than President Joe Biden.
He also pointed to Dixon’s emphasis on culture wars, implying Dixon would’ve been better served concentrating on the economy.
“There were more ads on transgender sports than inflation, gas prices and bread and butter issues that could have swayed independent voters,” Cordes wrote. “We did not have a turnout problem – middle-of-the-road voters simply didn’t like what Tudor was selling.”
The reaction to the memo by some in the Republican grassroots has been open revolt. The chair of rural Tuscola County’s Republican Party, Billy Putman, responded with a letter of his own, peppered with unfounded claims of election fraud and blaming the party for its lack of support. Putnam announced he was running to lead the state party in August.
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“You, Paul, as Chief of Staff, I will personally fire you on stage in February for lack of accountability and unity in the Republican party,” Putman wrote in the letter. “The grassroot patriots want change and we elected Tudor, Matt (DePerno) and Kristin(a Karamo), and you left them out in the cold.”
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