The estranged former education secretary of Donald J. Trump, Betsy DeVos — last seen trying to remove him from office using the 25th Amendment after the Capitol riot — took up pen the other day to plead with him to look past his unacceptable Republican Michigan internally and sides with her powerful political family’s choice for governor. “I hear some have suggested that my family and I are working against you in Michigan,” Ms. DeVos wrote in curves on personal stationery. “This is fake news. Those who tell you that they are doing it for their own personal gain.” She added that her preferred candidate, Tudor Dixon, a former conservative media personality, was “the only one who can go toe-to-toe with ‘that Michigan woman’” — Mr. Trump’s phrase for Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat that Republicans are desperate to unseat. “Your support of Tudor can make a difference!” Ms. DeVos closed her letter on Wednesday. “Very truly, Betsy.” The letter worked, to a degree: Late Friday, Mr. Trump issued an 11th-hour endorsement of Ms. Dixon ahead of Tuesday’s primary. But it also underscored what has been the wildest, bitterest and potentially most consequential Republican infighting in the country. For much of the spring and summer, Ms. DeVos and her billionaire relatives—the most prominent Republican family in Michigan—were at war with Mr. Trump’s supporters in the state, choosing different sides in the ensuing legislative primaries. state body and endorsements at the state party convention. The former president’s belated nod to the governor’s race compounded the confusion and heightened suspense about what his supporters would do on Primary Day. Just a day before the endorsement, eight of his chosen candidates sent him an open letter urging him not to do political business with the DeVos family. The open hostilities have bolstered a rising wing of the Michigan Republican base devoted to Mr. Trump and his agenda. And his support will test the extent to which the former president has the wherewithal to lead them. Overall, Republicans risk fumbling what earlier this year appeared to be a promising opportunity to oust Ms. Whitmer. The party’s two strongest candidates were kicked off the ballot because of a signature-forgery blunder. The resulting field, in addition to the untried Ms. Dixon, includes one candidate facing misdemeanor charges related to the Capitol riot and another facing years-long lawsuits over allegations he made racially and sexually explicit comments to employees.
Key issues from the 2022 midterm elections so far
Card 1 of 6 The status of intermediates. We’re now halfway through this year’s midterm primary season, and some key ideas and questions are beginning to emerge. Here’s a look at what we’ve learned so far: At the same time, Michigan Republicans have elevated two Trump-backed nominees to run for attorney general and secretary of state — key posts that oversee the electoral machinery in a state crucial to the 2024 presidency. And weak candidates and intraparty chaos have given Democrats — aided by a new state legislative map drawn for the first time by an independent committee — a real chance to win control of the Senate for the first time in 40 years. That Ms. DeVos felt compelled to appeal to Mr. Trump as if January 6 had never happened was a measure of how bad things had gotten. A major backer of Mr Trump’s two presidential campaigns, the family was ostracized by the Republican base after Ms DeVos committed apostasy in seeking to remove Mr Trump from office over the rebellion on Capitol Hill, arguing that he was no longer fit to serve. Ms. DeVos said her plea was rejected by Vice President Mike Pence and she resigned the day after the attack. In Michigan, Mr. Trump and the DeVos family have endorsed opposing candidates in seven Republican primaries for state legislative seats. (Mr. Trump has endorsed a total of 11 such candidates, more than any other state.) In endorsing Ms. Dixon on Friday night, he took credit for her campaign’s success — which he attributed to his shouting during an April rally in Michigan, a moment he has memorialized in her campaign television ads. “Her campaign took off like a rocket ship,” he said.
A Republican proxy battle
Jace Bolger, a former speaker of the Michigan House who is allied with the DeVos family, said the state’s Trump loyalists had tried to “drive a wedge between Republicans,” adding: “They have to be careful because otherwise they could be helping Democrats . “ Michigan’s GOP primaries are emblematic skirmishes across the country, where Trump-inspired insurgents are fighting to wrest control from Republican power brokers who have long controlled the purse strings and the nominations. Candidates endorsed by Mr. Trump won gubernatorial primaries in Pennsylvania, Illinois and Maryland, while the establishment GOP prevailed in Georgia and Nebraska. Similar Republican showdowns will unfold in Tuesday’s gubernatorial primaries in Arizona and Aug. 9 in Wisconsin. “In the state of Michigan, especially in the Republican Party, it’s broken,” said Garrett Soldano, a chiropractor and leading Republican gubernatorial candidate who entered politics organizing opposition to Ms. Whitmer’s pandemic mitigation efforts in 2020. “We have the old guard. , the establishment, the DeVos empire putting their thumb on the scale. And we have ‘we the people’, these grassroots people standing up.” But the Republican infighting has national Democrats optimistic recently about taking control of the state Senate for the first time in generations. “There is no better legislative opportunity in America than the Michigan Senate,” said Daniel L. Squadron, a former New York state senator who heads the State Project, a Democratic group focused on winning state legislative chambers. “What we’re seeing in the primaries is how deeply Trumpism and the Big Lie have infected the Republican Party.”
“They Abandoned President Trump”
For decades, the DeVos family has been synonymous with Republican politics in Michigan. Ms. DeVos has served twice as chair of the state Republican Party, and her husband, Dick DeVos, was the party’s nominee for governor in 2006. The family, which founded and still runs the Amway multi-level marketing company, has given at least $23 million to Republican candidates, political action committees and conservative causes in the state since 2015, according to an analysis by Progress Michigan, a liberal group. In almost any recent election, a Michigan Republican would use an endorsement from the DeVoses as a badge of honor and a catapult to fundraising success. But Ms. Dixon’s opponents attacked her for socializing with the family and she found herself explaining that she disagreed with Ms. DeVos about Mr. Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021. “I’ve come out publicly and said that in this case, we don’t agree,” Ms. Dixon said in an interview, adding of the family: “They support what I want to do for the state. It’s not that I support what they’ve done in the past.” Her opponents did not find this explanation sufficient. Recent discussions have turned into a DeVos family buildup. Last week, Mr. Soldano turned to Ms. Dixon and said the DeVoses “wanted to invoke the 25th Amendment against President Trump — they abandoned President Trump.” On Wednesday in Pontiac, Ms. Dixon came under fire from Kevin Rinke, a self-funded candidate and former auto dealer who is running television ads saying that Ms. Dixon “has taken millions from the same billionaires who tried to remove Trump from office. “ “The truth hurts,” Mr. Rinke said. “Kiss.” Gustavo Portella, a spokesman for the Michigan Republican Party, said in an interview that the party is not concerned about the fractious nature of the primaries and that “at the end of the day, people are going to come together and go do whatever we can to elect a Republican this fall.” The four leading Republican candidates for governor, including Ms. Dixon, have all cast doubt on the outcome of the 2020 election and say they are staunch allies of Mr. Trump. During a debate in May, three said he was the real winner in Michigan (he lost by 154,000 votes), while Mr. Rinke said there had been fraud but that he was not sure if it was enough to overturn the election. (There is no evidence of widespread fraud.) One candidate, Ryan Kelley, a real estate agent, tried to turn the reputation of being charged with four misdemeanors for his actions on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6 into momentum for his campaign. The voters, he argued in an interview, “are sick of this rebellion.” A DeVos family-funded super PAC supporting Ms. Dixon has also criticized Mr. Rinke, calling him “simply ineligible” in a television ad. He recalls two lawsuits from the early 1990s in which he was accused of gender and age discrimination and of using sexist and racist language toward his employees. Mr. Rinke settled the cases and, in an interview, said the allegations were “absolutely false.”
Setbacks and surprises
The GOP primaries should never have been so contentious. Going into this year, Republicans had made Ms. Whitmer’s office a prime target. Party members looked to two top recruits — James Craig, a former Detroit police chief, and Perry Johnson, a wealthy businessman — to vie for the nomination. But both failed to qualify for the ballot after their campaign contractors submitted petitions with forged signatures. The DeVos wing of the party suffered major losses in April when, with the endorsement of the Michigan GOP…
