After Michigan Republican gubernatorial candidate Ryan Kelley was arrested yesterday, some of his copartisans worked to arouse suspicion that the event was politically motivated. Kevin Rinke, one of the candidates Kelley would have faced in the August 2 primary, tweeted that “the timing here raises serious questions.”
“Are we expected to believe the corrupt FBI happened to schedule a raid on Ryan Kelley’s home the same day of the J6 production in DC?” asked another candidate, Tudor Dixon. “The timing of this looks a lot like another example of political prosecution by a Democrat Party notorious for weaponizing government.”
The insinuation is that Governor Gretchen Whitmer is picking off her political opponents so that she will win the general election this fall. This argument fails especially because, if Whitmer were trying to do this, arresting Kelley would be the wrong move, strategically.
There is no evidence that presumptive nominee James Craig’s disqualification from the ballot in late May was anything other than legitimate. But to those of a conspiratorial frame of mind, his disqualification would be the “stronger” conspiracy theory, because Craig led Whitmer in a poll last September.
Kelley, on the other hand, would have been Whitmer’s ideal opponent. Not just because he fares poorly against her in polls (he’s down heavily against her, but so are all the other remaining candidates), but especially due to what he was arrested for: His alleged role in the January 6 riot at the Capitol. Though he denies entering the Capitol or having an altercation with police officers, he is believed to have recorded rioters climbing the steps of the building and to have encouraged them to enter. “Come on, let’s go! This is it! This is, this is war baby,” a man, believed to be Kelley, can be heard saying in the recording. If Kelley were to have won the nomination, any competent opposition party would run attack ads playing that clip over and over again.
The Whitmer campaign even tried to take advantage in the immediate aftermath of the arrest. “We’re running against fringe opponents in Michigan, and this is just the latest sign of how radical the bunch really is,” the campaign wrote in a fundraising email. Whitmer is attempting to paint the entire Republican field as a bunch of rioters like Kelley allegedly was. Were Kelley the nominee, Whitmer could make this argument much more easily.
January 6 is only Kelley’s most recent controversy. On his own campaign website, he takes credit for organizing an April 30, 2020, rally at the Michigan State Capitol, where protesters encouraged legislators not to extend Whitmer’s emergency powers with which she instituted draconian lockdown measures. While the protesters’ policy prescriptions were correct, their methods were far from appropriate. Crowds of people, many of them armed, gathered in the Capitol, outside of the chamber and chanted, “Let us in!” Some even made it into the gallery and shouted at lawmakers while carrying rifles. The protest did not turn violent, but the optics did not help the anti-lockdown cause. As with his apparent involvement in January 6, Kelley’s role in orchestrating these events would have helped Whitmer’s campaign convince voters that the Republican nominee and the party as a whole are radical.
Whitmer would have to be politically and conspiratorially inept to encourage the FBI to arrest a controversial opponent who was leading the primary field in the most recent poll since James’s disqualification. Whitmer would have to be politically and conspiratorially inept to encourage the FBI to arrest a controversial opponent who was leading the primary field in the most recent poll since James’s disqualification. We just saw in nearby Pennsylvania that some Democrats would actively prefer to run against ‘Stop the Steal’ and January 6–affiliated individuals on the theory that such a person is an easier opponent. That would have been Whitmer’s smarter play here.
The justice system may have given Republicans a greater chance of winning the election. Whitmer and the Democrats’ policies have hurt the state, and they need to be replaced. Baselessly attributing conspiracies to the governor when her alleged efforts would, in fact, be detrimental to her is not the way to beat her.