The Republican National Committee intervened in Michigan’s monthlong intraparty leadership debacle on Wednesday, selecting former Rep. Pete Hoekstra as the state’s GOP chairman. However, the party will need to regain its composure heading into a critical March 2 caucus that will likely play a critical role in determining who the Republican presidential nominee will be.
The RNC’s unanimous decision follows state Republicans’ vote last month to oust Kristina Karamo, who had been the GOP chairwoman since February 2023. However, Karamo stood firm on still being in charge, even after Hoekstra, who snagged former President Donald Trump’s endorsement, was voted in by an opposing faction in January, NBC News reported.
“It’s not over ’til it’s over, but we’re pretty close,” Hoekstra told the Washington Post on Thursday. “When you have the state committee having made a decision, when you have that decision affirmed by the RNC and when the president has said, ‘This is the guy that I want to work with to win Michigan’ — in normal times, that would be an overwhelming case for this to be over.”
Karamo took to the Michigan GOP’s X account, which she still controls, on Wednesday to voice her frustrations via a video regarding the committee’s decision. In the video, she says that RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel admitted to Karamo she was still the state’s GOP chairwoman and continues to act as such despite Hoekstra assuming the position. Karamo told NBC News she wasn’t worried that leadership developments would disorient people regarding the state’s two-part nominating process but that it could confuse other party members on who is running the March 2 caucuses.
“This is egregious. The RNC feels they have the authority to override the will of the state central committee and the delegates,” Karamo said in the video. “But as you began to pull back the curtain more and more, you begin to see that there was a deeply well-funded effort to sabotage this movement.”
Hoekstra told the outlet that he has not heard from Karamo since the decision but said the state party cannot suffer any more setbacks in such a critical election year.
“We’ve got eight months to do what we normally have 18 months to do,” Hoekstra said.
In addition to the presidential race, which the Michigan GOP must rally together for, there is a Senate seat that will be up for grabs after Sen. Debbie Stabenow’s (D-MI) retirement. The National Republican Senatorial Committee said in a statement it would be “aggressively” targeting the seat ahead of the 2024 election.
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Michigan Republicans must look ahead to the Feb. 27 primary and subsequent March 2 caucus, which will determine many of the state’s presidential delegates, if they are to remedy their own fracturing caused by leadership power struggles heading into an election where the state will play a pivotal role.
While the 2022 midterm elections favored Democrats after Trump’s presidency, Michigan will remain a competitive battleground for both parties.
