Kristina Karamo, who lost the Michigan Secretary of State race by more than 600,000 votes after staking her short political career on denying the legitimacy of the 2020 election, wants to lead the state Republican Party.
She is the latest conservative to announce a run for Michigan GOP chair after Republicans were swept at the top of the ticket in the 2022 election, lost control of the state House and Senate and failed in key congressional races.
“As I have campaigned around the state, I have seen massive deficiencies in the way we as a party conduct ourselves,” Karamo, who lives in Oakland County, said in a statement. “Often operating as mini gangs, instead of soldiers fighting for freedom.”
Priorities, according to her campaign website, include capturing young voters; taking advantage of new voting laws from Proposal 2; changing the public perception of Republicans; and empowering precinct delegates.
Related: Clerks face unknowns as Michigan must implement early in-person voting
Karamo, invoking the American Revolution in her announcement and saying Michigan Republicans face “tyranny,” “evil,” and “authoritarianism,” said she will “reinvigorate disillusioned activist (sic) and donors who have walked away from the party.”
But current MIGOP leadership blamed candidates like Karamo, who campaigned farther to the right with endorsements from former President Donald Trump, for driving away longtime donors.
“As a party,” chief of staff Paul Cordes wrote in a memo, “we found ourselves consistently navigating the power struggle between Trump and anti-Trump factions of the Party, mostly within the donor class.”
The MIGOP chair serves for two years, guiding its platform, messaging and fundraising so Republicans can win elections. Thousands of local delegates will vote at a state party convention in February 2023.
Karamo, a former community college instructor and 2020 Detroit poll challenger, has yet to concede her loss after running an underdog and underfunded campaign. But she inspired Michigan grassroots conservatives with election criticisms that ranged from policy differences to conspiracy theories.
She tried to stop absentee ballots in Detroit just days before the Nov. 8 election, filing a lawsuit which the judge who struck it down called a “false flag of election law violations and corruption.”
Read more: Judge ends Karamo’s ‘intolerable’ lawsuit to stop Detroit absentee ballots
Kalamazoo lawyer Matthew DePerno, another GOP grassroots favorite, announced his chair campaign last week after losing the attorney general race by more than 375,000 votes. His co-chair would be Garrett Soldano, who finished third in the GOP governor primary but has a large grassroots following on social media.
Tudor Dixon, who lost the governor race this month by 470,000 votes, and former congressman Pete Hoekstra are considering bids. Tuscola County GOP chair Billy Putman has been running since August.
Current MIGOP chair Ron Weiser, a more mainstream Republican like Hoekstra, will not run for reelection, while his Trump-aligned co-chair, Meshawn Maddock, is undecided.
Karamo, DePerno and Dixon were all endorsed by Trump and had denied the legitimacy of the 2020 election. The latter two conceded their races in 2022, but Karamo has instead claimed the election was “unlawful.”
Karamo’s running mate for co-chair is Muskegon County Commissioner Malinda Pego, who did not run for reelection this year. Pego led efforts against vaccine and mask mandates, and she sought last year to separate rural and urban parts of Muskegon County into two separate counties.
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