Michigan GOP to tackle ‘election integrity,’ critical race theory at Mackinac conference – Detroit Free Press

Vice President Mike Pence brings first motorcade to Mackinac Island

Vice President Mike Pence leaves the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island in an eight-vehicle motorcade Saturday. It's the first automobile motorcade on the island, where cars are generally banned.

Paul Egan, Detroit Free Press

Randy "Trucker Randy" Bishop, a Republican activist and former county GOP chairman from northern Michigan, is an ardent supporter of former President Donald Trump who promotes the unsubstantiated and widely debunked viewthat voting equipment was programmed to "shave" votes from Trump and assign them to Democratic President Joe Biden.

Wendy Lynn Day is a former grassroots chair of the Michigan Republican Party who was state director of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz's unsuccessful bid for the 2016 presidential nomination. Day, of Livingston County, does not support Trump and believes the fight over the 2020 presidential election is "more of the same" of what she saw in 2016 people "willing to believe anything if it was their side saying it."

Though they have opposing views about Trump, Bishop and Day have something in common. They used to regularly attend the Mackinac Republican Leadership Conferencebut will not be at the 34th biennial event that begins Friday at the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island. Neither is attributing their absence to concerns over the coronavirus pandemic.

"I won't support that event on Mackinac in any way, shape or form," said Bishop, who views the conferenceas part of a planned "coronation" of former Detroit Police Chief James Craig as the party's 2022 nominee for governor.

Bishop will skip the conference to emcee an eventwith GOPgubernatorial candidate Garrett Soldano in Antrim County, which became ground zero for conspiracy theories about voting equipment after a Republican clerk's November error causedunofficial results to briefly show Biden getting more votes than Trump in the solidly red county.

Day will not attend despite the fact that Trump is no longer president and Cruzwill be onthe island to give the Friday keynote address.

"I'm not doing a lot of politics right now," said Day, who was stripped of her Michigan GOP post in 2016 for refusing to support Trump.

Attendance isdown from a record 2,370 registrants in 2015, and the usually fully booked Grand Hotel still had weekend rooms available on its website Thursday morning. Michigan Republican Party spokesman Gus Portela said the conference is about soliciting new ideas tohelp defeat Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and other Democrats in 2022, and that the party does not take sides in primaries. He expects late registrations will bring attendanceto around 1,500, which he said is comparable to recent years.

Attendance is down at most events during thepandemic, but several Michigan Republicans said heightened partisanship has made them less active in politics, even when they cited family or other reasons for staying away from Mackinac this year.

Among the panel discussions Bishop and Day will missare one about "election integrity" featuring Thor Hearne, a Missouri attorney who filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Trump campaign seeking tohalt the counting of absentee ballots in Detroit, and Minnesota attorney Erick Kaardal, who was referred for sanctions by a federal judgefor filinga "risible" lawsuit against former Vice President Mike Pence, seeking to block certification of theelection results.

Portela said it is important to discuss what can be done to improve election integrity, but the partly isfocused on 2022, not relitigating the 2020 election.

In addition to the speech from Cruz, a potential candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, the conference will feature:

Both former Vice President Mike Pence and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley had been announced as conference speakers, but later canceled.

Mike Bishop, an Oakland County Republican who served two terms in Congress until the end of 2018 and earlier served as majority leader in the state Senate, said he will arrive on Mackinac Island Saturday for a panel discussion on criminal justice reform and leave the same day.

Bishop, who is no relation to Randy Bishop, said the Republican Party tends to be "very good at circular firing squads" and has much work to do to "come together under our principled foundational issues" before the 2022 election.

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But Bishop does not attribute the sag in conference attendance to factional infighting or loss of interest in the wake of Trump's one-term presidency. It likely has more to do with COVID-19, he said.

As for concerns about the integrity of the 2020 election, "I don't think there's any question that there were shenanigans that went on in the electionthere always are," Bishop said.

State legislatures in Michigan and elsewhere are correct to pursue policies to ensure maximum integrity in future elections, said Bishop, who supports strict voter ID laws but said he is not familiar enough with other Republican initiatives to say whether they are reasonable and common sense.

"I don't believe it's voter suppression when you ask someone to produce some valid ID to vote," Bishop said. "But we're so tribal right now, people are at each other's throats and you propose anything that has to do with how voting is done in this country and they immediately call you a racist or some other nasty title. It really worries me about the state of our union right now."

Randy Richardville, a Monroe Republican who also served as majority leader in the state Senate, said he is busy with family obligations and will not be attending the conference, as he has in the past.

Richardville, who is vice-chairman of the Monroe County Board of Commissioners, said he has become less proactive about politicsbecause of the extreme divisiveness between the left and right, except at the local level, where he said he does not see that level ofpartisanship.

But like Mike Bishop, Richardville attributed reduced attention at Mackinac more to concerns about traveling during the pandemic than to party fractures. He said this weekend's conference will be animportant early sign of whether the party can unite around Craig as the best candidate to face Whitmer in 2022.

The 2018 split between backers of GOP gubernatorial candidates Bill Schuette, the former attorney general who won the primary, and Brian Calley, the former lieutenant governor who fought hard against him, never really healed and helped Whitmer win, Richardville said.

Contact Paul Egan: 517-372-8660 or pegan@freepress.com.Follow him on Twitter @paulegan4. Read more on Michigan politics and sign up for our elections newsletter.

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Michigan GOP to tackle 'election integrity,' critical race theory at Mackinac conference - Detroit Free Press