March is nearly over and with it less time for our favorite Republican candidates to make some notable moves before MIGOP gathers next month to make some endorsements. Here’s what went down this week.
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It’s not a glitch, that header is as broken as James Craig’s campaign is – if one can still call it that.
But just like a bad ex, he’s swearing up and down this time will be different. While actively rolling out his 4th and 5th campaign manager (the two will be splitting the role, which we can assure you is not a thing), and admitting that he had been dodging questions for months because his MIGOP insider handlers put him in the “little box” of a campaign “neophyte,” Craig announced this week that he was in the midst of yet another campaign reboot.
At what point does waging a reboot every other month just become…the trend of a campaign?
The missteps continued for Craig this week as he drew an “absurd comparison” between his record and the bravery the world has seen from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy – who last we checked, hasn’t tear gassed and used rubber bullets on his own people.
Given these developments and the sorry state of the rest of this crowded field, Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey held his nose and endorsed opponent Tudor Dixon, issuing a knife twist release that used similar language to his July description of Craig. At the time, Shirkey used his speech introducing Craig to the Jackson County GOP to say the candidate was “a man who shares our values and principles” and predicted he would have “a very bright future in our party, our state, and our nation.” Not one that Shirkey will be lighting, it seems.
All’s fair in love and last ditch ship-jumping.
Perry Johnson Tried to Apply His Old Double-Dealing Tricks to His Ads, Fails
The ads from “prolific junk faxer” Perry Johnson have already been dinged for “inflat[ing] his own role” within the auto industry – a bizarre claim even he had to concede was “a bit much.”
This week they were also found to be relying heavily on visuals that weren’t Pure Michigan, let alone Pure This Hemisphere. Johnson turned to Russia for the backdrop of his “self-aggrandizing ads” that have backfired by only serving as a reminder to Michiganders that “no one, outside of his campaign, would say [Johnson] saved the auto industry.”
And for his ads that highlight his dangerous agenda to gut public education as we know it, Johnson shows himself walking through a school based in West Virginia.
The odd-quality guru that has already been caught manipulating both ends of quality control – “creat[ing] one company that taught businesses how to pass certification audits, and another that actually conducted those audits” – is now apparently using the same double-dealing system to pump out a slew of misleading and inaccurate ads? Say it isn’t so.
Garrett Soldano Goes After Dixon, Tries to Get Johnson on Staff
Did he ever get off it? After dragging MIGOP leadership for “putting their finger on the scale before the primary” and equating this messy gubernatorial cycle to “some gosh darn episode of Survivor” (would you look at that, something we agree on), Garrett Soldano was out for blood this week.
Soldano had some unminced words for Shirkey’s endorsement of Tudor Dixon, demonstrating yet again what a mess the MIGOP faces as their party fails to coalesce around a candidate: “Tudor Dixon just got the endorsement of anti-Trump Lansing insider Mike Shirkey. Folks, this is the same Senator, who…tried to sweep the 2020 election results under the rug and prevent a forensic audit. […] I thought Tudor was pro-Trump? I guess not.”
Fear not, there was some smoke left in the tank for Perry Johnson, who he basically dismissed as the help during one of his Facebook Live rants: “Right, the quality guru…stats are not going to win this thing. Being a quality guru is not going to be how we get Michigan out of the hole. Now, you need those type of people on your staff to give you that information. […] All the statisticians, all that knowledge can be on the team as we continue to build.”
Hear that Perry? Garrett is hiring! Don’t forget to thank him for your job.
