Republican delegates from throughout the 7th Congressional District will elect their new chairperson on Feb. 17. The two people running so far are well-known to local Republicans: One is Dan Wholihan, the three-time former chair of the Livingston County GOP, a longtime political insider who knows how to work the system; the other is Mike Detmer, the three-time failed primary election candidate, a flame-thrower who seems to want to blow up the system.
The current chair of the 7th District Republicans is Norm Shinkle, who isn’t running for re-election. Shinkle is the lone member of Michigan’s Board of State Canvassers to not vote (he abstained) to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election.
The job of the new chairperson of the 7th District will be to fashion the upcoming campaigns after the miserable Republican showing in Michigan’s midterms, in which state voters put Democrats in charge of everything. And here in the 7th District, in addition to carrying the cities of Brighton and Howell, moderate Democratic U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin won Eaton County, the home of her Republican opponent, former state Sen. Tom Barrett.
It was a tough loss for Republicans, and now the two people in the race to right the political ship are both from Livingston County. But that’s where their similarities seem to end. Make no mistake: while both candidates are right of center, one teeters a lot closer to the edge than the other: Wholihan says “we all know Democrats are bad and why they are bad, but we need to communicate better what Republicans do right”; Detmer, an election denier who first got a lot of attention for his mask-less selfie with members of the Proud Boys at an Operation Lockdown/pro-Trump rally in Lansing just a few weeks into the pandemic shutdown, claims that “election fraud” would “necessitate firing squads.”
In dueling social media posts, the two outlined why they should be put in charge of the 7th Congressional District Republicans.
“We had an extremely rough year in 2022 and need to make changes overall based on the results of the past three elections in Michigan,” Wholihan wrote in his announcement. “As the former Livingston County GOP Chair, we WON statewide in two of my three terms. We also defeated two incumbent Democrats in their re-election. All factions within our party had a seat at the table and were treated fairly. We focused on elections and getting results.”
Wholihan blamed the Republican losses on a lack of campaign funding and poor messaging, and urged his fellow party members to embrace the recent voter initiatives, including early voting.
“I don’t like (it) and didn’t vote for (it), but we need to embrace early voting, both in person and absentee,” Wholihan said. “Florida showed the way, as did GOP Congressional candidates in Orange County, CA (and Mike Garcia in LA). What did they do right that others did wrong?”
Wholihan also cautioned that political campaigns aren’t “won on Facebook, at road rallies, at meetings, or with signs in right of ways.”
“We need to communicate effectively with non-political people and earn their support,” Wholihan said.
What Wholihan isn’t saying out loud is that the extreme right-wing takeover of the district’s Republican party did not serve it well in 2022. Or 2020. Or 2018, for that matter.
Check out the map of Livingston County’s vote totals in the 2022 gubernatorial election:
Consider that in Livingston County’s midterm voting for governor, just 3 of Livingston County’s 16 townships — or 18.75% — were solidly red. And there were some important pockets of blue, including the cities of Brighton and Howell.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s percentage of Livingston County votes increased by 3% — from 39.7% against Bill Schuette’s 56.58% in 2018 to 42.75% against Tudor Dixon’s 55.58% in 2022 — while the share of votes her Republican opponent won dropped by a point.
Whitmer lost in Livingston County by 16.88 points against Schuette in 2018, and by 12.83 points against Dixon in 2022, which means she did 4.05 points better with the community’s voters over 4 years. (Click here for more.)
The Wholihan/Detmer match-up in the 7th District mirrors the schizophrenic nature of today’s Livingston County Republican Party. The leadership just flipped from long-time operatives and business-friendly community movers-and-shakers to an executive committee minted nearly entirely with political newbies from groups like Moms For Liberty and Unmask Livingston. These groups sprang to life to fight pandemic restrictions and are now fighting culture wars and teacher unions, and denying the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Consider that at Thursday’s county convention, nearly all establishment Republicans currently in office stayed away from what was said to be a haphazard, chaotic event to elect delegates to the 7th District convention. After having to shut down voting three times because they couldn’t figure out how to use the software, some of the new executive board members even took to the microphone to blame the former executive board members and former county chair Meghan Reckling for the problems they were having.
This is not the sign of a healthy local political party.
With all we’ve learned from the past few elections, Wholihan appears to be better than Detmer at reading the current political tea leaves.
Don’t believe me? Consider the numbers.
Moderate Democrat Slotkin won the district over conservative Republican former state Sen. Tom Barrett, who left military service over its Covid vaccine mandate at the time, and she even won Eaton County, where Barrett lives.
Here in Livingston County, while Slotkin didn’t win, she lost better than she did in 2020: She increased the percentage of votes she won to 41.16%, and increased the number of precincts she won, too. She won the City of Brighton by 6%, and even took the City of Howell by 13 votes, the first time in recent history that a Congressional Democrat carried Howell.
Despite the recent elections in which voters said they wanted moderates in power, Detmer feels the district needs more radicals in the running.
If he’s put in charge, Detmer said the 7th District will “implement an organized plan to recruit true America First Republican candidates who pledge to put God above all, uphold the Constitution and who will stand up against the Woke Left and their special interest masters.”
In closing his announcement, Detmer wrote: “We have a mountain to climb and the journey will be difficult but as bleak as it seems to many, all hope is not lost. But we MUST take a different approach and have new vision and leadership.”
A week before the local GOP convention, Detmer took to Facebook to take down state Reps. Bob Bezotte and Ann Bollin:
Sounds like I was right when I recently wrote about the gains Democrats have made in Livingston County over the past several elections: “Once thoroughly red, Oakland County has steadily trended to the left and is now ‘reliably’ blue. In response to the Blue Wave in Michigan, Oakland County’s Republicans decided that in order to have any hope of regaining control of their county, they need to become more moderate and business friendly and move toward the center. Here in Livingston County, the Republicans apparently looked at the election results, asked for volunteers to hold their beer, and doubled down in the culture wars by moving way, way, right.”
There’s a big asterisk on all of this thinking about the 7th District should U.S. Rep. Slotkin be the Democrat running to replace Sen. Debbie Stabenow, who has announced her retirement in 2024.
The question remains: which person will be a better fit to lead the fractious 7th District Republicans?
While the buzz coming out of Thursday’s county convention makes me think the “new” Republican leadership is making Democrats feel pretty good right now, the question seems to be how long Livingston County’s new radical Republican regime will hold.
As always, in the end, the voters will have their say.
