On Monday, Michigan Advance's Laina Stebbins reported that the evening's nominating convention for the Republican Party of Macomb County, Michigan — an event including former two-time Senate candidate and current House candidate John James and Macomb County prosecutor Peter Lucido — went completely off the rails as the over-capacity crowd grew restless and party chair Mark Forton refused to leave the stage.
"I will not throw away my freedom of speech," proclaimed Forton as the crowd began to shout him down. He even dared attendees to get the police outside to have him arrested. According to Stebbins, one attendee in the crowd shouted, "Why are you still on stage?"
"This party is a mess," Stebbins said she overheard Lucido saying.
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This chaos unfolded just days after Matt DePerno, a pro-Trump candidate for Michigan Attorney General, urged his supporters to storm GOP county conventions around the state. These conventions determine delegates to the statewide nominating convention at Grand Rapids at the end of April, and rules set by the state party allow the county parties to choose non-delegates favoring a certain candidate if enough of the elected delegates to the county convention agree.
Watch below:
This could go on for a while.pic.twitter.com/C3vuNY0RAL— Laina G. Stebbins (@Laina G. Stebbins) 1649720318
Also want to note that House candidate John James & Macomb County Prosecutor Peter Lucido are here.\n\nI'm not great at crowd counts, but there are hundreds packed in this room \u2014 so many that they ran out of guest passes (see photo)\n\nIncludes 288 credentialed delegates, per Fortonpic.twitter.com/P7VuED5R3d— Laina G. Stebbins (@Laina G. Stebbins) 1649720983
Overheard from Lucido just now: "This party is a mess."— Laina G. Stebbins (@Laina G. Stebbins) 1649722417
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