Misfits on Adam Hollier's A-Team have undermined his bids to represent Detroit in Congress

The thing I remember most about the original A-Team is how a bunch of misfits came together under an unconventional leader, took on a hopeless cause and — after an hour of high-caliber, high-octane hijnks — somehow came out on top.

After investigating Adam Hollier's two campaigns for Congress, the main similarity I see between his A-Team and the 1980s television show is the bunch of misfits.

Hollier, an Army veteran, has dubbed his campaign the "A-Team." The misfit on his 2022 edition was a former state senator who went to prison after pleading guilty to public corruption. In 2024, there are a couple candidates competing for the title. You'll learn more about them all in a minute.

What sets the two campaigns apart is Hollier's decision to drop his mentor and other local pols for a more seasoned crew who made their bones on campaigns across the country. Yet, somehow a decision that should have set Hollier up for success backfired spectacularly. In 2022, despite his campaign leadership's dodgy track record, Hollier finished less than 5% behind Shri Thanedar, who won the Democratic nomination in the 13th Congressional District, which includes a big chunk of Detroit and Wayne County, and went on to Congress. Last week, Hollier's new and improved team learned they turned in so many fraudulent and invalid petition signatures that the Wayne County Clerk ruled Hollier was not eligible to run in a rematch with Thanedar.

Hollier, unlike far too many candidates and elected officials, seldom refuses an invitation to discuss even thorny issues. But with his political future in limbo, Hollier has declined my invitations to discuss his team and what went wrong. Perhaps he's busy trying to get answers to some of the questions I've asked his spokesperson, like: Why doesn't Hollier's campaign manager seem to live where she claimed to on petitions she allegedly circulated? It may seem like a small matter, but when someone doesn't tell the truth about something so simple and easy to check, you wonder what else they might be lying about.

Hollier told several of my colleagues during a recent interview with the Free Press editorial board that the petition fiasco triggered a panic attack and left him lying on the floor in terror. He agonized over whether his decision to delegate a crucial task without reviewing the work could undo everything he has labored for over the past couple years.

Hollier has taken responsibility for his predicament. Kind of. But before we dig into what has gone wrong with Hollier's congressional campaigns, let's review how we got here — and discuss what this isn't about.

By any means necessary

I can't think of an incumbent Democratic congressman who is more disliked by Democrats than Shri Thanedar.

Thanedar, a native of India, made a fortune in business before deciding to spend a fortune trying to get elected to office — seemingly any office. In 2018, he finished third in the Democratic gubernatorial primary. In 2020, he was elected to represent a Detroit district in the Michigan House of Representatives. In 2022, after U.S. Rep. Brenda Lawrence announced her retirement, he beat Hollier and seven other candidates for the right to run as a Democrat for the 13th Congressional District seat. Because the district is overwhelmingly Democratic, Thanedar easily won in the general election.

There is plenty to debate about Thanedar's use of personal funds to get elected, his use of congressional funds to promote himself once in office and how he's serving his constituents.

But Thanedar's real problem with some of his fellow Democrats is that he is not Black.

Concerns that Detroit — one of the largest majority-Black cities in the country — would not have a Black representative in Congress were so great that in 2022, Wayne County Executive Warren Evans led an effort to whittle the field of Black congressional candidates down to one so that the Black vote would not be diluted. Hollier was the panel's choice, but only one candidate dropped out. And, as feared, Thanedar received more votes than any of the remaining Black candidates who stayed in the race.

And he has been a marked man ever since.

I provide this background because Hollier has offered a couple different explanations for why Thanedar tried to knock him off the ballot for submitting less than the required 1,000 petitions signatures from registered voters who live in the 13th District.

On May 7, a week after Thanedar asked the Wayne County Clerk to throw Hollier off the ballot, Hollier's legal team called the challenge "a thinly-disguised attempt at voter suppression."

Two days later, for those who couldn't read between the lines, Hollier's spokesman sent me a statement that called Thanedar's challenge "a bad faith effort to disenfranchise voters across the 13th District. Black voters have worked too hard for the right to vote and be represented on the ballot."

I believe the reason is much simpler: Thanedar knows his best chance to win reelection is to take out his most formidable challenger.

It's been an obvious play since at least 2022, when Democrats knocked half of the top Republican candidates for governor off the ballot by successfully challenging the validity of their petition signatures. Hollier's team should have done a better job protecting their candidate's flank. And Hollier should have put a better team together.

With friends like these ...

Even as a state senator with powerful supporters and millions of dollars in support from political action committees, in 2022, Hollier needed to put together a stellar team to win in a crowded primary field that included a millionaire who pledged to spend heavily on his own campaign.

Instead, Hollier relied on Heaster Wheeler and Bert Johnson.

Wheeler, a former executive director of the Detroit Branch NAACP, stepped down from his role as an assistant Michigan Secretary of State to help run Hollier's campaign. An engaging personality whose duties under Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson included community outreach, Wheeler did not bring a track record of electoral success to the A-Team.

As a candidate for Detroit City Clerk in 2017, his finished a distant third behind incumbent Janice Winfrey and then-largely unknown — now Lt. Gov. — Garlin Gilchrist II.

Johnson, Hollier's political mentor, had just finished serving a sentence for public corruption when Hollier announced he would run for Congress.

Johnson pleaded guilty in 2018 to conspiracy to commit theft from a federally-funded program after admitting he used taxpayer money to pay off a personal debt by putting a woman he borrowed $14,000 from on his Senate payroll without requiring her to do any work.

There were times during Johnson's political career that it didn't seem like he did much work himself. When the feds raided his state Senate storage space — the place where busy lawmakers put records and documents that won't fit in their office because they're working on new business — they were surprised to find it virtually empty. Johnson, a Highland Park Democrat, had one of the worst attendance records in the Legislature. He once skipped crucial days at the end of a session — when most of the deals get done — to be in court in Chicago, where he was being sued for stiffing his campaign consultant. The consultant later told me it was almost impossible to get Johnson to do any fundraising for his own campaign and that Johnson once told a group of donors gathered to meet him that he was only speaking to them because his consultant told him he had to.

While Johnson was successful in his campaigns for the state House and Senate, he got creamed in 2012 when he ran for Congress against longtime U.S. Rep. John Conyers. Johnson finished fourth with 10% of the vote.

It's not clear what role Johnson played in Hollier's 2022 congressional campaign, but campaign finance records show Adam Hollier for Congress paid $45,000 to Johnson's consulting firm Blue Lotus Strategies.

If Hollier returned my calls, I would have asked him how he felt about Wheeler and Johnson's performance, as well as why they are not part of his 2024 campaign. Benson rehired Wheeler in 2023 as a senior adviser. Democrat Nasser Beydoun's U.S. Senate campaign paid $22,500 to Johnson's Blue Lotus Strategies in 2023 for "strategic planning & community development consulting."

A recent poll showed Beydoun's name ID among Democratic voters at 16%.

Take two

A funny thing happened when I stopped by the west-side Detroit home Hollier's current campaign manager Jasmine "Jazz" Webb listed under her name on the petitions she allegedly circulated for Hollier.

The woman who answered the Ring doorbell told me: "No one lives here by that name, sir."

When I replied, "Any chance you've ever heard of a Jasmine Webb?" a man answered "No!"

I had a little better luck across town in Harper Woods, at the home Hollier's top petition circulator, Londell Thomas, listed on the petitions he turned in.

The woman who answered the door said she knew him and told me: "If I come in contact with him, I'll tell him to call you."

When I replied: "Is this where he stays?" She answered: "Not regularly."

If you read my most recent column, you know Thomas is at the center of multiple fraudulent petition schemes. Hollier has already disowned a stack of Thomas' petitions that are obvious forgeries. The Wayne County Clerk's election staff found many more to be phony or flawed.

During his meeting with the Free Press editorial board, Hollier seemed to be referring to Thomas when he addressed the problematic petitions: "I had a friend who I trusted to kind of get a portion of the signatures. And, obviously, there were some that were not legitimate ..."

It seems ridiculous to say it now, but Thomas and Webb were almost certainly considered an upgrade over Hollier's 2022 leadership team.

Until last month, Thomas was a well-regarded political consultant who had worked as a field director for Mike Duggan's successful 2013 write-in campaign for mayor of Detroit and for a variety of political and labor organizations in Michigan and elsewhere.

Webb's resume shows she is well-traveled with some impressive campaigns to her credit since becoming a full-time political operative in 2018.

Starting as a field organizer on Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker's first campaign, Webb moved on to the presidential campaigns of Kamala Harris and Michael Bloomberg before going to work for the Michigan Democratic Party and then a fellowship with the Blue Leadership Collaborative. In 2021, she scored a razor-thin victory in her first race as a campaign manager when Kelly Convirs-Fowler was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates by 344 votes — a measly 1% more than her Republican rival. Webb spent the next five months running Michele Rayner's congressional campaign in Florida, until Rayner withdrew to run for reelection to the Florida House of Representatives. In June 2022, she became campaign manager for Jevin Hodge, a rising star in the Arizona Democratic Party who nearly unseated an incumbent Republican congressman. Hodge raised $460,000 more than U.S. Rep. David Schweikert and lost by less than 1% in the Republican-leaning district.

Hodge was expected to challenge Schweikert again this year, but the Arizona Republic reported that in March 2023 Hodge "abruptly announced he would not be running for Congress or any other office in 2024, citing financial and emotional stress." It was later revealed that early in 2023, a woman who accused Hodge of sexually assaulting her in 2015 in his Washington, D.C. apartment contacted the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to tell them about the incident that occurred while Hodge was a student at Georgetown University.

Because Webb apparently doesn't live where she says she lives, and the Hollier campaign won't connect me with her, I don't know what she knew about Hodge's history. But campaign finance records show that by February 2023, she was working for the Congressional Black Caucus Political Action Committee. After a brief stint working for Destiny West, a congressional candidate from Maryland, Webb joined Hollier's team around Thanksgiving.

On Dec. 4, she wrote on her Facebook page: "After searching for the best possible candidate and race, I found the perfect combination in Adam Hollier. Y'all know Detroit is my second home, and this is the first time in 67 YEARS that Detroit ISN'T represented by a Black congressperson. We bout to change that come Aug 6. Detroit!! HERE WE COME!"

Webb has made a few political posts among her more common observations about life, music and entertainment, since joining Hollier's campaign. On April 15, she wrote: "Detroit so ghetto. I go to the city municipal building to ask where I go to request petitions. The lady look at me and asks, 'for child support'"

Webb didn't elaborate on why she was looking for petitions around April 15, but by then her name had been appearing for months on Hollier's petitions as a circulator.

On May 16, Wayne County election workers recommended that Hollier be removed from the ballot for not having enough valid petition signatures. Webb was listed as the circulator on 15 of the 36 pages election officials flagged.

"Most of the petitions listed above contained similar handwriting or clear indications that the signatures were not genuine and contained elements indicative of fraud," election workers wrote.

The blame game

Among the biggest challenges a candidate faces is hiring the right people and delegating, because candidates who try to do everything rarely get anything done.

Hollier said he trusted, but failed to verify. Near the end of his meeting with the Free Press editorial board, he recounted his reaction to the revelation he had a potentially fatal petition problem.

"I had a whole panic attack laying on the floor, like, 'Oh, my gosh, my whole life, like, I've spent my whole life getting to this moment, doing the right thing, consistently doing these things. And I took my eye off the ball for one second; I trusted one person to do a thing and to check it, and they said it was done. And I didn't look at it. And it's gonna cost me everything.' "

Hollier, who tends to be more candid than most candidates, acknowledged he was more focused on fundraising, because he knew he needed to raise a ton of dough to compete with Thanedar's millions. While Thanedar says spending his own money means he's not beholden to special interests, it also means anyone who hopes to compete with him has to hustle harder.

Where Hollier deserves blame is for failing to insist that someone flyspeck his petitions — or insisting that Webb hire someone to do so. Contracting an expert like Mark Grebner of Practical Political Data & Forum Strategies to scrutinize your petitions can be expensive. On the other hand, it's cheaper in the long run to have Grebner tell you your petitions are no good than to have your opponent — in this case, Thanedar — hire Grebner to inspect your petitions and tell election officials they're no good.

Hollier also shouldn't blame the system for his predicament. Congressional candidates in Michigan are required to turn in 1,000 signatures from registered voters in their district to qualify for a spot on the primary ballot. Campaigns can turn in up to 2,000 signatures — and many do — because there are always problems with people who make technical mistakes, like putting down the wrong date when they sign, or who mistakenly think they are registered to vote or who live in another district. Hollier turned in 1,553 signatures, an especially thin cushion for a campaign that didn't check the validity of the signatures.

In the statement Hollier released after the Wayne County Clerk ruled he only had 863 valid signatures — a 137 signature shortfall — he said: "I must hold myself to a higher standard," but then added "It is also clear that our state's system of ballot access and petition collection is sorely in need of reform — so that future campaigns, as well as the voters of this state — do not fall victim to fraud."

The problem with that statement is Hollier fell victim to fraud — fraud committed by the people he hired.

It's possible Hollier will somehow survive Thanedar's thus-far successful bid to knock him off the ballot, though I confess I have no idea how he'll pull it off.

Unlike the original A-Team, Hollier doesn't have a room full of writers challenging themselves to come up with outlandish new ways for Hannibal, Face Man, Murdock and B.A. Baracus to save the day.

M.L. Elrick is a Pulitzer Prize- and Emmy Award-winning investigative reporter and host of the ML's Soul of Detroit podcast. Contact him at mlelrick@freepress.com or follow him on X at @elrick, Facebook at ML Elrick and Instagram at ml_elrick.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Adam Hollier needs original A-Team to rescue his bid for Congress