Republican John Truscott: “If I were Aric Nesbitt or John James, I would fire him immediately.”
LANSING — New reporting from Michigan Advance exposes more chaos in the already messy and crowded Republican primary for governor, with one of Aric Nesbitt’s top staffers in the state Senate also working for the campaign of John James, raising ethics questions from Republicans.
Victory Field Operations is a “Republican petition signature collection firm founded by consultant Meghan Reckling, chief of staff for state Sen. Lana Theis (R-Brighton), and Jeff Wiggins, the current press secretary and senior advisor to Senate Minority Leader Aric Nesbitt’s legislative office.”
“Public data shows that Victory Field Operations has been paid throughout the cycle by the campaign of U.S. Rep. John James (R-Shelby Township) for ballot access work. Additionally, Mission Michigan, the issues-based political action committee supporting James, has paid the firm for political strategy consulting.”
The arrangement raises ethical questions, with Republican John Truscott saying, “It’s very unethical, and I would question his allegiance to either candidate.” Former Michigan Republican Party Executive Director Jeff Timmer described it like a “coordinator for one football team building a game plan during the week and then showing up on the sideline of another team on game day.”
Michigan Republicans are locked in a messy and wide-open primary for governor—and both the James and Nesbitt campaigns have been wracked by scandals, with James breaking congressional ethics rules and Nesbitt being funded by a shady network of GOP dark money groups.
Read more below on the latest instance of GOP primary chaos.
Michigan Advance: Nesbitt staffer’s firm works for James campaign, raising ethics flags in GOP governor race
- The Michigan Senate’s top Republican lawmaker is running for governor, but one of his key staffers, who moonlights as a political consultant, is working for his biggest rival in the race, a situation described as “unethical” by one major Lansing political operative.
- Public data shows that Victory Field Operations has been paid throughout the cycle by the campaign of U.S. Rep. John James (R-Shelby Township) for ballot access work. Additionally, Mission Michigan, the issues-based political action committee supporting James, has paid the firm for political strategy consulting.
- Victory Field Operations is a Republican petition signature collection firm founded by consultant Meghan Reckling, chief of staff for state Sen. Lana Theis (R-Brighton), and Jeff Wiggins, the current press secretary and senior advisor to Senate Minority Leader Aric Nesbitt’s legislative office.
- Nesbitt is also running for governor, raising questions of whether Wiggins was playing both sides of an intraparty horserace for the top seat in Michigan government.
- Two Lansing and Michigan political insiders who spoke with the Advance said the situation was a clear conflict of interest, even if it wasn’t illegal in terms of Michigan election law.
- “It’s very unethical, and I would question his allegiance to either candidate,” said John Truscott, CEO of the Lansing-based bipartisan Truscott Rossman communications firm and an expert in public relations. “You can’t get paid a government salary working for one candidate, and get a campaign salary while being paid by another one. I don’t know anybody who thinks that would be OK.”
- Jeff Timmer, formerly the executive director of the Michigan Republican Party, and now a principal of the political strategy firm Two Rivers Public Affairs, as well as a senior advisor to the Lincoln Project, said that it was certainly unethical, but the more interesting aspect, in his view, was that it was all happening out in the open.
- “This is all transparently disclosed, so it’s not like you can be sneaking around behind your boss’s back,” Timmer said.
- He also employed a sports analogy to describe the situation, noting that James hiring Nesbitt’s legislative senior advisor, and that Nesbitt would allow Wiggins to be hired by James, is akin to a coordinator for one football team building a game plan during the week and then showing up on the sideline of another team on game day.
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