This coming Monday starts the 1-year countdown clock until Election Day 2022. Here’s what’s happening in the Republican race for governor:
James Craig Can’t Get His Story Straight
Thanks to reporting from Michigan Radio and Detroit Free Press, Michiganders now know that James Craig wasn’t a certified police officer for the final decade of his law enforcement career despite his promises to become certified. While that alone warrants additional scrutiny of his record as he continues to claim on the campaign trail that he “led from the front,” it should equally concern Michiganders that he fled the scene of a suspected carjacking in 2013 and is now trying to cover it up. This week, MDP highlighted the multiple times Craig contradicted his new denials – explaining in his own words back in 2013 that fleeing is exactly what he did.
Ad Season for Garrett Soldano and Ryan Kelley
Congrats of sorts are in order to Garrett Soldano for being the first Republican gubernatorial candidate out of the gate on TV, running a five-figure ad buy that aired during the big MSU-UM game last weekend. Predictably, it lobbed plenty of barbs at Governor Whitmer for *checks notes* leading the fight against COVID-19 and featured B-roll from his widely attended election conspiracy theory rally in Antrim County. But there was some smoke for James Craig as well, unless there’s someone else that popped into Soldano’s mind as he referenced a “poll-tested politician” at the beginning of the spot.
Not wanting to be left out of the ad discourse, Ryan Kelley released an intro video a few days later, just online. MDP was fortunate enough to get a shoutout for “trying to discredit me.” If that’s the new way to describe simply pointing out that Kelley is an insurrectionist and anti-vaxxer extremist, so be it. But we aren’t the only ones. A headline from Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy says it all: Ryan Kelley’s New Political Ad is Filled With Misinformation, Unsubstantiated Claims, and Wrapped in White Supremacist Rhetoric. Nuff said.
Tudor Dixon’s Latest Election Conspiracy Theories
Just when we thought Tudor Dixon ran out of conspiracy theories to hawk, the imagination that brought you numerous baseless claims about Governor Whitmer has done it again – pulling out a top shelf stunner for her appearance on OANN on Monday. Apparently now the argument is that there *wasn’t* “widespread fraud” because that “would be very obvious.” Instead, Mark Zuckerburg in cahoots with some unspecified, nefarious ‘they’ “went into blue areas, and they…somehow mysteriously increase[d] the vote.” Dixon also implied voter fraud was responsible for Governor Whitmer’s victory in 2018.
At this point even the goal posts are getting motion sickness. Have a great weekend.
