Two Conventions

or, the Chamber of Commerce Strikes Back

The paper-pushing Republicans gathered in the Midtown Parking Lot on Thursday, Aug. 11 for the Hillsdale County GOP’s convention. Not three hundred yards away, the insurgent Republicans convened for the same event inside SoZo, a concrete-block Evangelical Church guarded daily by the heavenly host. On this night, two armed guards also stood to keep “disavowed” Republican precinct delegates, who won election in the Aug. 2 primary, from entering the convention and ousting the current leadership in a counter revolution.

The settings fit each faction. The Chamber-of-Commerce Conventioneers deliberated on their asphalt empire, their equivalent of a Roman amphitheater, and prayed to Democracy. The Patriots groaned inside and found themselves worse off than the out-of-town unhoused people at SoZo’s Warming Center—homeless in their own party. They lost their organization to the parking-lot party, despite having raised it from irrelevance to triumph in two years.

Manual laborers, Constitutional scholars, ex-felons, stay-at-home moms and other undesirable elements currently control Hillsdale County Republican Party after taking it from the local ruling class during a downtown coup following the 2020 August primary elections. After orchestrating the takeover, the rednecks led the party into prosperity and influence. They proved effective at taking and wielding the party’s power, but they overplayed their hand and failed to build a coalition that could maintain their power. 

As the 2022 August primary neared, the insurgent faction realized that the elite faction had enough precinct delegate candidates to retake the party, even if they performed well in the elections. To prevent the elites from cutting the redneck rebellion short, the party’s current leadership—Daren Wiseley, Lance Lashaway, Jon Smith, Jon Rutan, and Josh Gritzmaker—with the consent of the full Executive Committee tried to stop unfriendly precinct delegates from taking their seats at the convention. 

They used a little-known and ill-defined tool called “disavowment.” Found in Article 7, Section 4 of the Hillsdale County Republican Party Executive Committee’s bylaws, it gives leadership the right to “endorse, support, or disavow” candidates in the Republican Party’s primary—in this case for the unusually contested precinct delegate races. The redneck Republicans, despite their penchant for strict Constitutional construction, decided to interpret the word “disavow” as liberally as possible to mean that the disavowed candidates cannot take their place within the party’s leadership even if they prevailed in the election. But they had not forgotten the appearance of justice: they would allow the disavowed candidates to appeal their sentence, which was reached in absentia and with no evidentiary standards, before an inter-party tribunal. The interpretation means, in essence, that any Executive Committee, upon securing victory in a single election, could disavow all their opponents in future precinct delegate elections and establish permanent party dominance. That’s the right mindset in the Current Year; it is their tactics, not their bold strategy, that I must disavow. 

They proceeded with the plan and disavowed not a few establishment favorites but every precinct delegate of unknown or questionable loyalty. Such is an action to take only with absolute certainty of a fortified position and superior firepower, but they had neither. The unenforceable power play led inevitably to a massive, spontaneous opposition. The pushback extended so far that even vitriolic Andrew Fink haters and those in the libertine, watch-the-world-burn-with-low-taxes GOP faction attended the asphalt convention. 

The open-air convention attracted more than 60 precinct delegates, while the indoor convention drew about 30, giving the subsidy-seeking, cigar-smoking faction a clear majority that will make it difficult for the Michigan GOP to rule in favor of the anti-establishment wing. The asphalt convention limited its proceedings to the election of delegates to attend the Michigan GOP’s August Nominating Convention. There were rumors that the SoZo convention, acknowledging its defeat, never elected delegates. But the leadership has confirmed that the convention also elected a slate of delegates. Now, the Hillsdale County Republican Party has two slates of delegates for the August Nominating Convention, and seemingly the Michigan GOP must choose between them.

The Patriot Convention enforced party discipline and elected a like-minded slate of candidates, while the asphalt convention praised Diversity and Inclusion and agreed to elect No One in Particular to the August Nominating Convention. Our inchorence is our strength! Delegates ranged from Robert Socha, a gentlemanly and virtuous administrator, to Penny Swan, an opportunistic libertarian. They erected a tent so broad that no one could locate its legs.

One hope remains for the seemingly defeated 2020 insurgents: the blunders of the local GOP’s power brokers. The notables violated the convention’s rules as much as—probably more than—the deplorables, but it is difficult to tell because the Michigan GOP allows a good degree of local control. 

First, both sides failed to invite all duly elected precinct delegates. Fink’s faction invited about two-thirds of the delegates, from the Review’s scientific estimate, while the current GOP leadership seems to have invited about half of them. This puts both factions in potential violation of the convention’s rules and in clear violation of the logic of elections: the winner should take the seat that he or she won. To do so, the winners must know when and where they can take their seat. 

Second, and more alarming for the country-club faction, Hillsdale County Clerk Marney Kast—a delightful woman with an immense aptitude for bureaucratic Realpolitik (according to some, she had the key role in the counter-coup)—sent notifications to all victorious precinct delegates. These slips informed them that the Hillsdale County Republican Party’s August Convention would be held at SoZo Church on Aug. 11 at 7 p.m. Yet, Kast herself attended the asphalt convention without notifying delegates in her official capacity of a change of location. 

These two factors appear to indicate that both factions held rump conventions on Aug. 11—not that a new convention would give the insurgents a better chance at defeating the elites. The Michigan GOP can ignore these electoral irregularities as long as its donors agree with the outcome. Unarmed dissidents must always remember that their opponents can discard the rulebook; they must meditate on it.

—Anatolio