Tag: convention
Kristina Karamo

Cops Nab Former Michigan GOP Chair For 'Trespassing' At State Convention

Even after being officially ousted from her role as chair of the Michigan Republican Party, Kristina Karamo still made an appearance at the Michigan Republican Convention this weekend in Flint. At least, until party officials called the police on her.

On Saturday, the Detroit News' Paul Egan tweeted a video of Flint police escorting Karamo from the premises while she insisted she was doing nothing wrong. Karamo was heard blaming her removal from the convention on "[current Michigan GOP chair] Pete Hoekstra's thugs" and decrying the "corruption" within the state party organization.

Egan wrote that Michigan GOP leaders apparently only called law enforcement after Karamo proved to be uncooperative with their requests: Namely, that she refused to take a seat at the convention and even declined a guest credential. He added that the convention now has a heightened police presence due to what Michigan Republican Party executive director Tyson Shepard described as "the disruptive actions of a few."

In another video taken by Bridge Michigan reporter Craig Mauger, Karamo is seen being led through a doorway from the convention floor while a throng of both supporters and critics surround her. When a man tried to sneak past police to get closer to Karamo, a convention security worker grabbed his arm, prompting a brief scuffle.

After the former Michigan GOP chair was taken outside, police continued to walk with her to her vehicle, clearly agitated by the scrum of reporters peppering her with questions. At one point, while Karamo was describing how she was only at the convention to support a candidate, a female Flint Police Department officer erupted, saying: "OK enough of your campaign. Where is your car?" That officer confirmed to Bridge Michigan reporter Simon Schuster that Karamo was "trespassed."

"You can't stop me from talking! I'm not committing any crimes," Karamo responded. "I'm walking to my car."

Karamo's contentious appearance at her party's convention comes as the former chair continues to dispute that her ouster was legal. A majority of state party committee members voted to remove Karamo from her position in February, and put former Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Michigan) in charge.

Republicans in the Mitten State ultimately decided to force Karamo out due to the dismal state of the party's finances. In December, eight of Michigan's 13 Republican congressional district party chairs co-signed a letter calling for her removal due to reports that she had driven the state party more than $600,000 in debt.

Karamo — a 2020 election denier who ran a failed campaign for Michigan secretary of state in 2022 — was elected to her position in 2023. However, her short-lived tenure was rife with controversy, particularly due to her inability to get the state party's coffers out of the red in a crucial election cycle. In November, Comerica Bank sent the state GOP a notice of default letter informing Karamo that the party had failed to pay interest on a loan in excess of $500,000.

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Cleveland To Process Thousands Of Arrests At The RNC — And Activists Are Nervous

Cleveland To Process Thousands Of Arrests At The RNC — And Activists Are Nervous

Police in Cleveland say they aim to avoid mass arrests at the protests planned for next week’s Republican National Convention, but preparations by the city’s courts to process up to 1,000 people a day have some civil rights activists worried.

Thousands of people from across the country are expected in the city to protest the expected presidential nomination of New York businessman Donald Trump, who has vowed to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and restrict immigration from countries with large Muslim populations if elected.

Supporters and opponents of Trump have clashed at several of his campaign events.

Police have vowed to honor protesters’ rights of free expression, which are protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, and avoid mass arrests.

“We don’t want anybody to trample on anybody else’s rights,” Cleveland police chief Calvin Williams told a news conference on Tuesday.

But memories of recent heavier-handed approaches are fresh in the heavily Democratic, majority black Ohio city of 388,000 people.

“I don’t want to be a naysayer here and rule out the possibility that everything is going to be hunky-dory … but knowing how the Cleveland Police Department has handled situations in the past, I just don’t have confidence that it’s going to work,” said Terry Gilbert, an attorney who has handled criminal and civil rights cases in the city for more than four decades.

“Until I see the actual situation next week, I’m going to be worried,” Gilbert said.

Gilbert pointed to the May 2015 arrests of 71 people following the acquittal of a police officer who fired 137 shots following a high-speed 2012 car chase, killing a black man and woman.

The arrested protesters were held for more than 36 hours over the Memorial Day weekend, and four alleged in a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union that police intentionally kept them in custody longer to prevent the protest from reforming.

‘WE ARE READY’

Cleveland paid $250,000 to secure 200 extra rooms in the Cuyahoga County jail, according to the Republican National Committee budget.

Cleveland Municipal Court officials said they would be ready to process a large volume of people quickly, with staff scheduled to work in two 10-hour shifts keeping the court operating from 5 a.m. to 1 a.m. each day.

“We are ready,” said Ed Ferenc, a spokesman for the court. “We’ll have staff here till 1 a.m. If we have to do a docket at 10:30 at night, we’ll do it.”

The United States has seen hundreds of protests over the past two years following a series of high-profile police killings of black men. The vast majority of the protests have been peaceful, although they have been punctuated with bursts of rioting, arson and looting.

The ACLU plans to be out in force to ensure that people are not arrested for legal protests, said Christine Link, the group’s executive director in Ohio.

“Let’s not equate a lot of protesters with violence,” Link said. She noted the group would be keeping careful watch on the whereabouts of anyone arrested to ensure they are charged and released quickly.

At the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York, hundreds of protesters were swept up and pushed into pens on the Hudson River.

With temperatures expected to reach 90 degrees F (32 C) most days, the health of detainees will be a concern, she said.

“What we’re worried about is that they’re not saying where they are booking people, they are being vague about it and that’s not good,” Link said. “That’s an attempt to hide the cheese.”

 

(Writing by Scott Malone; Editing by Peter Cooney)

Photo: A Cleveland mounted police officer talks to his horse during a demonstration of police capabilities near the site of the Republican National Convention July 14, 2016.  REUTERS/Rick Wilking

Pragmatism Don’t Know Bernie

Pragmatism Don’t Know Bernie

“You can’t always get what you want.” — The Rolling Stones

A few words in defense of pragmatism.

That ideal has taken quite a beating lately, mostly at the hands of Bernie Sanders and his supporters. The Vermont senator faces a virtually impossible deficit in his battle with Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination. Pragmatism would seem to suggest it’s time for him to pack it in.

But pragmatism don’t know Bernie. Or Bernie Nation.

If this weren’t clear before, it has been made abundantly so in the last two weeks, beginning with Sanders supporters in Las Vegas tearing open the Nevada Democratic convention in a protest so angrily chaotic it was shut down by security, fearing violence. But Sanders supporters weren’t done yet; they also sent death threats to party officials.

The proximate cause of this Trumpish behavior was a dispute over rules, a claim that, as Sanders’ campaign manager put it, the convention had been “hijacked” to award more delegates to Hillary Clinton. Politico rated that false.

Not that this has made much difference to Sanders, now locked in a battle with the party he ostensibly seeks to lead. His denunciation of the convention chaos was as tepid and belated as Donald Trump at his worst. He has blasted the party for being, as he sees it, in the pocket of the rich, and specifically denounced Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz. In a Monday interview, Sanders told the Associated Press that this summer’s convention could be “messy,” though he later insisted that was not a tacit suggestion of violence.

Given the intensity of the emotions at play and the behavior of his supporters in Vegas, it’s hard to see how it could have been anything but. Which is disappointing. A few days ago, Sanders’ campaign seemed headed for an honorable legacy. But he has apparently decided instead upon a legacy of peevishness and sore losing, which is, as Frank Bruni noted a few weeks back in The New York Times, a hallmark of this political epoch.

Look: There is something to be said, under certain circumstances, for fighting to the last breath. Under certain circumstances, it is noble to stand one’s ground, come what may. Under certain circumstances, it might even be heroic to soldier on past the point of defeat.

These are not those circumstances. Trump awaits. And every second the left spends arguing with itself is a gift to the presumptive Republican nominee.

Let’s not get it twisted. For all that some people now seek to normalize him and his campaign, for all that they fool themselves into thinking he wouldn’t be so bad, for all that a party once appalled to find him its leader now coalesces behind him, Trump is still what he’s always been: a tire fire in an expensive suit.

Yes, Clinton is, putting it mildly, a flawed candidate, stiff at the lectern, shameless in her pandering and disliked for reasons both substantive (she sometimes seems to have only a nodding relationship with truth) and not. (Since when is it a sin — or a surprise — for a politician to be ambitious?) But she’s also intelligent and experienced. And compared to Trump, she’s a plate of Lincoln with a side of FDR.

As such, she might make a good president, might be a middling president, might even be a bad president, but at a minimum, she would be a president unlikely to hand out nuclear weapons like party favors or require customs agents to ask would-be visitors, “Are you now or have you ever been a Muslim?”

Clinton is, in other words, a good, pragmatic choice. And no, that’s not an inspiring battle cry.

But a reality show buffoon unburdened by knowledge, decency or dignity is closing in on the White House. We should probably take a little inspiration from that.

(Leonard Pitts is a columnist for The Miami Herald, 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, Fla., 33132. Readers may contact him via e-mail at lpitts@miamiherald.com.)

(c) 2016 THE MIAMI HERALD DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Photo: U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is seen between poles of a football goalpost as he speaks in Santa Monica, California, U.S., May 23, 2016. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson 

Endorse This: Priebus On Candidates: “No One’s Forcing Them To Wear Our Jersey”

Endorse This: Priebus On Candidates: “No One’s Forcing Them To Wear Our Jersey”

At a meeting of the Republican National Committee in Hollywood, FL today, party chairman Reince Priebus said that his entire party had a responsibility to “unite behind the nominee.”

“Our candidates are running for the nomination for the Republican Party,” he said to a conference room of party and campaign officials leaders. “They’re trying out for our team, no one is forcing them to wear our jersey. We expect our candidates to support our party, and our eventual nominee.”

Priebus was navigating a minefield: the RNC’s rules committee voted Thursday against a rule change that would have made it harder to nominate candidates on the floor (a vote which enabled so-called “white knight” candidates to challenge Trump for the nomination should Cruz and Kasich fail) and the Republican National Committee has been paddling against Trump’s accusations that the system is “rigged” since he lost all 14 of Wyoming’s delegates to Ted Cruz.

Since then, Trump has accused Republican Party officials and the Cruz campaign of “wining and dining,” orchestrating a conspiracy against his campaign.

Of the three remaining Republican presidential candidates, Trump was the only one not to attend the meeting in Hollywood.

Video/photo: CSPAN

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