Livingston County Sheriff Mike Murphy, who’s also running for the Michigan Senate, held a political fundraiser for U.S. Senate candidate Mike Rogers last month and coordinated the event using taxpayer-funded resources, according to emails obtained by Michigan Advance.
The documents, obtained via the Freedom of Information Act, show that Murphy used his official Livingston County email address to organize a benefit event for Rogers held on July 29, of which Murphy was a host. The event sold tickets for $100 per person and $175 per couple, with higher tiers reaching up to $3,500 a person.
Donations could be made online and interested benefactors could attend by sending RSVP notices to Aaron Laatsch, deputy director of state development and fundraising with the Templar Baker Group, a political consulting and strategy group, according to an event flyer.
Michigan law prohibits public officials from using their offices and taxpayer-funded resources for outside political purposes, and the emails show that Murphy sent messages discussing what they would eat at the event and ticketing issues during the course of the weekday.
In an interview with the Advance, Murphy was unfazed and said he used very little government time on coordinating the event. He also was not concerned if someone eventually filed a complaint about it.
“Those were basically one-liners, three or five emails, that literally took 30 seconds or less each,” Murphy said. “They were not long diatribes. There was no email to anyone promoting the event. It was just a coordination thing.”
Murphy is currently seeking higher office in the state Senate as a declared candidate to fill the open 22nd District seat currently held by state Sen. Lana Theis (R-Brighton), who is term limited.
This is not the first time that Murphy has faced scrutiny for blurring the lines between his station as the county’s sheriff and party politics: Murphy is still facing a complaint for helping to organize an event for President Donald Trump last year in a county-owned sheriff’s department garage.
The emails obtained by the Advance were loosely redacted, blocking out the surnames and addresses of the email recipients. Murphy’s name remained on the emails, however, which show he helped coordinate aspects of the event using his government work email.
On July 25, Murphy was sent an email containing a draft flyer for the event and was asked to give his approval and offer any edits. The sheriff replied: “Perfect. Send it.”
On July 14, Murphy also coordinated with another person regarding what they would eat that evening, saying they should “nix the shrimp cocktail and the chicken satay.”
In an email sent on July 8 to one of the other hosts of the Rogers event, Murphy discussed an issue with ticketing and record keeping for campaign finance purposes. Murphy wrote that they were not going to have tickets printed, noting that for campaign finance reporting purposes, tickets “are a pain.”
Again, these emails were sent using Murphy’s Livingston County email address.
“Then we have to track people down,” Murphy wrote in the email regarding tickets. “ I would suggest forwarding this to anyone interested and having them fill out the form and bring a check, or pay online, because this will capture all the information needed for reporting.”
It was also in that email exchange where Murphy noted that he was going to reach out to other organizers about the night’s cuisine.
Other emails dated in April show Murphy coordinating with others on when the event would be held.
In all, the communications show a continued pattern of Murphy using his government email account to help organize external campaign events. The Trump event in August 2024 was the subject of numerous complaints with the Michigan Department of State, and it was alleged that Murphy coordinated it while also using his government email account.
Michigan law addresses public employees’ participation in political activities such as joining political parties and running for office. Public employees are defined to include both state civil servants and non-elected employees of political subdivisions.
Public employees can participate in political activities so long as they don’t actively engage in those activities during work hours. Several of the emails obtained by the Advance show that the messages were sent by Murphy during the weekday during his business hours.
It’s also a violation of Michigan law to use public email accounts for campaign purposes, which has been the subject of state complaints in the past.
While it is not against the law for a public official to endorse another candidate, a public official cannot use public resources to promote or advertise the endorsement of himself or another candidate.
In an interview, Neil Thanedar, executive director of the Michigan Campaign Finance Network, said that even though Murphy wasn’t organizing a fundraiser for himself, the use of his government email to do so for Rogers was a violation of the law.
The emails also raised some concern about ticket sales loopholes, and whether Murphy and organizers were trying to get around reporting rules, although Murphy’s insistence of collecting donations online was the route they went.
Per Murphy’s insistence, all donations to Rogers’ campaign and event ticket sales were collected via his campaign’s WinRed account, a Republican campaign fundraising platform, which requires name and address registration.
Thanedar said there were two parts of that equation to consider in the context of campaign finance law – the value of the ticket and the value of the donation on top of that.
“There could be some argument to be made that, even if you were selling tickets online, and they had some portion of the proceeds that were going to the campaign, they would still need to record that,” he said. “Whether money was taken online or in person shouldn’t affect the record-keeping that has to be done for that money.”
Thanedar said ticket registration was important, especially in the context of an issue like foreign nationals donating to American political candidates.
“Foreign nationals are prohibited from making campaign contributions, so if you truly made a ticket or a donation anonymous, that could be a potential workaround for things like foreign donations,” he said. “That would be the reason why you’d want to have to register everyone’s name and then have the process of putting their name and address into the campaign finance system.”
When asked about his history of using public resources like his email for political purposes and the previous complaints against him, Murphy said he was cleared from at least one of the complaints regarding the Trump event last year.
Michigan’s database of resolved complaints also shows that the department found that there was no reason to believe that a violation occurred in the act of hosting the event.
No other complaint filed against Murphy regarding the Trump visit appeared to be resolved in the public database.
Murphy told the Advance that he understood that his state Senate ambitions have put him under a finer microscope, but he still wasn’t bothered by the prospect of a new complaint.
“I’m totally good with that,” he said. “That’s what happens when you run for public office. You’re under a microscope. And you know what, my man? If that’s the best you can do?”
Still, the pattern was something the Michigan Democratic Party said voters should be aware of.
“For some reason Republicans never think that the rule of law applies to them,” Michigan Democratic Party Chair Curtis Hertel Jr. said in a statement provided to the Advance. “Once again, Sheriff Murphy has used his position to illegally and unethically support a Republican candidate, first Donald Trump and now Mike Rogers. This behavior demonstrates how deep the corruption runs in this party – clearly, Law and Order is just a TV show to them. Either way, MDP intends on filing a complaint.”