(WWJ) – Former Detroit Police Chief James Craig is among five Republican candidates for Governor of Michigan that are in danger of not making the primary ballot in August.
The Michigan Bureau of Elections says Craig, as well as businessman Perry Johnson and three others, didn’t submit enough valid petition signatures to qualify for the primary, according to a report from The Detroit News.
The other GOP hopefuls who fell short of the 15,000 signature threshold included Michael Markey of Grand Haven, State Police Commander Michael Brown and Donna Brandenburg of Byron Center.
The decision to keep five of the 10 candidates off the primary ballot will be up to the State Board of Canvassers, which consists of two Republicans and two Democrats.
Related
The board is scheduled to meet in Lansing on Thursday to make a final decision.
Mark Brewer, a longtime elections lawyer and former chairman of the Michigan Democratic Party, joined WWJ's Erin Vee live Monday night to talk about the news.
He said "the state has never seen forgery of petition signatures on this scale."
The Bureau of Elections found that Craig – who had been considered one of the GOP front-runners to challenge Gov. Gretchen Whitmer this fall – turned in more than 11,100 invalid signatures, including nearly 9,900 that came from “fraudulent petition circulators.”
The bureau said Johnson submitted just under 10,000 invalid petition signatures.
Brewer says the staff identified more than three dozen circulators across Michigan who "turned in page after page after page of forged signatures."
In a report, the bureau said ballot circulators submitted more than 68,000 invalid signatures in total across the 10 candidates’ nominating petitions. The BOE noted it does not believe any specific campaigns or candidates were aware of the fraudulent circulators, according to the report.
Brewer, who was among those filing the challenge to the petition signatures, said the evidence in the report is "overwhelming."
"There's a report that the staff wrote up on each candidate for governor, as well as other candidates that were challenged," he said. "The Board will work its way through all of that evidence. But again, that evidence is overwhelming; just massive."
Related
