Trump wins big at Michigan GOP district caucuses held at Grand Rapids convention

GRAND RAPIDS — Former President Donald Trump scored an overwhelming victory Saturday in Michigan Republican Party district caucuses held at a convention in Grand Rapids.

Trump, who has dominated Republican contests to date and is opposed only by former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, won all 39 delegates awarded Saturday at 13 separate caucuses held in Grand Rapids amid months of party infighting before and after the recent removal of Kristina Karamo as state party chair.

"Clearly, this is Trump country, and clearly it's a great day for Donald Trump," said Michigan Republican Party chair Pete Hoekstra, a former congressman and U.S. ambassador during the first Trump presidency.

Trump won all 13 district caucuses with at least 90% of delegate votes in each, and in some cases, 100% of the vote. Across all caucuses, his 1,575 delegate votes represented 98% of the total, with only 36 delegate votes going to Haley. Under the party's caucus rules, whoever gets a simple majority of the delegate votes wins all three national convention delegates for each district.

Michigan Republicans get 55 convention delegates in total. In a Tuesday primary, Trump won 12 of the 16 delegates awarded and Haley won four. So the final Michigan count is 51 delegates for Trump and four for Haley.

Hoekstra, whose chairmanship of the state party was further strengthened Tuesday when a judge issued a preliminary ruling that Karamo had been lawfully removed from the top party post, said breakaway delegates were free to meet Saturday in Houghton Lake and Battle Creek, as their district chairs announced they were invited to do, but only the delegates elected in Grand Rapids Saturday will be seated at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in July.

Even before Kent County Circuit Judge Joseph Rossi ruled against Karamo in a protracted party leadership dispute, Hoekstra was recognized as state chair by the Republican National Committee, which will run the national convention.

Karamo had planned her own caucus/convention Saturday in Detroit, but that was canceled Friday in light of the judge's ruling.

Both Karamo and Hoekstra, plus the vast majority of party activists who vote in county conventions and district caucuses, back Trump for president.

Delegates from more than 20 Michigan counties where the leadership backed Karamo were denied credentials for Grand Rapids because officials said they missed deadlines to submit lists of delegates recently elected at county conventions. That prompted the chairs of the 1st Congressional District, in northern Michigan, and the 4th Congressional District, in western and central Michigan, to announce their own Saturday caucus locations, in Houghton Lake and Battle Creek, respectively.

But not all delegates heeded calls from their district chairs, and officials said even some delegates from counties that had been denied credentials were allowed to participate after showing up in Grand Rapids on Saturday.

"I want my vote to count," said Creston Scheel, a 1st District delegate from Emmet County, where the chair was among the district delegates who met the deadline for Grand Rapids credentials.

"This is where that’s going to matter and I want our voices to be heard and our votes counted," said Scheel, who hoped to be selected as a Trump delegate to the national convention.

"I have sympathy, frankly, for all sides of this," Scheel said.

"It’s been very chaotic, with all of the emails and the attacks nonstop over the last several weeks — it’s been insane. And so I totally understand why some are going to different conventions, because there is bit of a power vacuum. But at this point we need to come together and unify as a party and have our voices heard."

Bernadette Smith, the state party's ethnic vice-chair and a Saturday candidate for RNC committeewoman from Michigan, said she, too, has sympathies on both sides of the dispute.

Smith said she's not convinced Karamo received due process and would have liked to have seen her leadership debated by the party's full state committee, which has a little over 100 members. Instead, competing state committee meetings were held with Karamo's backers boycotting meetings called by the dissidents and the dissidents staying away from meetings called by Karamo.

"We have to unify around the truth, and that's what I want," Smith said.

At the same time, there's been a legal ruling that Hoekstra is chair, "so he is chair," Smith said.

Many delegates said the Grand Rapid caucuses proceeded more smoothly than expected Saturday, though there were lengthy delays getting results from the caucuses for the 3rd and 9th congressional districts. The 9th District caucus became particularly heated in a leadership dispute and was the last to report its results.

In the 5th Congressional District, where there is a legitimacy dispute between two competing Hillsdale County GOP leadership factions, delegates quickly OK'd a pact under which one faction was able to seat seven delegates at Grand Rapids and the other was able to seat six.

Mike Brown, a member of the Republican state committee and a Michigan State Police captain, said he is hoping Saturday's caucuses signal good things to come.

"I'm pretty excited about the convention today," Brown said.

In Berrien County, where he is from, "everyone is looking to put this fight on the state chair behind us," he said.

Not all the Republicans in Grand Rapids were backing Trump.

Roger Kahn, a former GOP state senator from the Saginaw area, was hoping to be elected as a delegate to the national convention. But Kahn didn't like his chances, since he put his name forward as "uncommitted."

"I think we need to have an open convention," Kahn said.

In other business Saturday, Michigan Republicans elected Dr. Rob Steele to a third term on the Republican National Committee. They also elected Hima Kolanagireddy, the 6th district chair, to the RNC. She replaces Michigan representative Kathy Berden, who has moved to Tennessee.

Until Friday, many backers of Karamo expected to meet at Huntington Place in Detroit. Instead, some went to Grand Rapids, but others to Houghton Lake or Battle Creek or just stayed away, which strengthened the unity of the Grand Rapids convention.

On Saturday, hundreds poured into the downtown Detroit convention center, but it was to attend the annual Detroit Autorama, dubbed “America’s Greatest Hot Rod Show!”

Larry Tracy, 80, of Waterford, wore a Trump 2024 campaign hat for the event, but he said he was not a stray convention delegate. He was there to see the cars, an event he looks forward to every year. He saw a sign in the garage with a notice of cancellation for the Michigan GOP convention in large font, but he hasn’t closely followed the drama that has plagued the state party.

Tracy couldn’t say who leads the party these days. “I’d be telling you a lie. I don’t know anymore, and I don’t think they do either,” he said. But he thinks Trump can win Michigan in the fall regardless of the strength of the state party apparatus.

“I wear my little red hat everywhere I go, and all’s I get is positive. And that just tells me there’s a whole lot of Trump supporters out there,” he said. “A lot of people have them but they just don’t want to wear them because they don’t want to get their feelings hurt.”

Contact Paul Egan: 517-372-8660 or pegan@freepress.com. Follow him on X, @paulegan4.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Trump wins big at Michigan caucuses held at Grand Rapids convention