Michigan didn't have a seat at the RNC meeting, but two people showed up anyway

A meeting of Republican Party bosses from across the country on Wednesday was missing a seat: Michigan, a crucial battleground for the November election, had no reservations for the event.

Not that the seat would have been empty.

Two rivals — Kristina Karamo, an election-denying crusader who has led the state party as chair for nearly a year, and Pete Hoekstra, a former member of the House of Representatives recently elected to replace her — have both laid claim to the post.

The dispute has wreaked havoc among Republicans in the swing state, ending up in court less than a month before the party held its presidential primaries there.

It has also become a microcosm of the ongoing tensions between the party's far-right wing and its old guard, competing factions with often overlapping loyalties to former President Donald J. Trump. Ms Karamo's rise was fueled by her claims of fraud in the 2020 election, while Mr Hoekstra was Mr Trump's ambassador to the Netherlands.

So when they gathered this week at Horseshoe Las Vegas for the RNC's winter meetings, neither received official recognition. Organizers demoted Ms Karamo and Mr Hoekstra to guest referees, barring them from voting on party resolutions amid an ongoing review of who is the rightful chairman.

Mr. Trump endorsed Mr. Hoekstra for the post on Friday, but that does not seem to matter much to Ms. Karamo.

“The reality is that legally I am still chairman,” she said in radio performance on Monday.

Lawyers for the RNC came to a different conclusion last week, writing in a letter that it appeared Ms. Karamo had been “properly removed” by a group of state committee members on Jan. 6. The RNC later replaced her photo in an online post. gallery of state party leaders with a gray avatar and the word 'vacant'.

In a letter to RNC members on Tuesday and in Monday's radio spot, Ms. Karamo repeatedly lashed out at the national party and its leader, Ronna McDaniel, who is from Michigan. She accused the RNC of “colluding” with a minority of state committee members. She compared the situation to a “country club.”

Ms. McDaniel declined to comment through an RNC spokeswoman.

Ms. Karamo's critics say the Michigan Party under her leadership is shrouded in secrecy and cash-strapped. Mr Hoekstra said he had not had access to the party's financial records, which he said were tightly controlled by Ms Karamo. So have the party's email account and website, he said, and that's why he's having new ones developed.

He and Ms. Karamo had no interaction during the Las Vegas meeting, he said.

“It's a big space,” he said in an interview, away from the clanging of slot machines and the smoke-laden casino floor. He acknowledged that his guest certificate had made him feel like a bit of an 'outsider'.

Contacted for comment, Ms Karamo said she could not talk because she was on the phone and would call back later. She didn't do it.

She has argued that the move to replace her violates the state party's bylaws and thwarts the will of the leaders who installed her last February, after a war of attrition that took three rounds of voting and several hours of voting.

The RNC has not yet recognized Mr. Hoekstra as the new chairman of the state party. But Mr. Hoekstra said Wednesday that certification could come as early as next week.

In her subsequent bid to become party chairman, she outlasted Matthew DePerno, another election-denying Trump acolyte who also ran unsuccessfully for statewide office in 2022. Mr. Trump had endorsed Mr. DePerno for chairman.

Ms. Karamo promised that she would heal the party and return it to electoral success after two cycles of losses. The state flipped from Mr. Trump in the 2016 election to Joseph R. Biden Jr. in the 2020 election, and during the 2022 midterm elections, Democrats captured the state's top offices and flipped the legislature.

But last fall, when the legendary state party meeting on Mackinac Island showed the deficits — attendance plummeted, presidential candidates skipped the event, some speakers didn't show up — the mutiny intensified.

Mr. Hoekstra said he was eating Friday evening at the Trestle Stop, a restaurant in Hamilton, Michigan, in the western part of the state, when the former president called him and asked if he wanted his endorsement.

“He says, 'I know what's going on in Michigan. You know, you're my man,'” Mr. Hoekstra said.

He hopes Ms. Karamo will resign if the RNC qualifies him as state party chairman.

“You would think at that point” she would “seriously consider doing so,” he said, “but that's her decision.”