Welcome back and Happy New Year.

Former gubernatorial and presidential candidate Perry Johnson talks about the problems in his Republican Party.

Our lead story, new polling data in the Democratic U.S. Senate race.

Who's on first.

On the OTR panel Kyle Melinn, Emily Lawler, and Chad Livengood sit in with us as we get the inside out.

Off the Record.

Production of Off the Record is made possible in part by Martin Waymire, a full service strategic communications agency, partnering with clients through public relations, digital marketing and public policy engagement.

Learn more at MartinWaymire.com.

And now this edition of Off the Record with Tim Skubick.

Everybody's in a good mood.

Happy New Year.

Nice to have all of you on board and to have you back in our studio C as we look at off the record in this week in the news and the polling data in the US Senate race views of the Democrats.

Kyle is kind of interesting vis a vis Ms.. Slotkin and Mr. Harper.

Well, we have public policy Polling.

I did some polling for a progressive outfit this past week, came out that Hill Harper is at 12%, and Elissa Slotkin is at 50%.

And there's two other Democrats are polled as part of that.

Leslie Love got 3%.

Nassar Beydoun got 2%.

But as you're taking a look at favorability unfavorability, this is, of course, among Democratic voters.

Elissa Slotkin Numbers are way up.

Hill Harper 18% favorable, 9% unfavorable.

The rest are undecided.

If he's got money in the bank and he's ready to spend, he's got to let people know who he is.

Alright before we continue, let me ask, have you ever talked to Hill Harper personally?

I have not.

Have you?

No.

Have you?

Yeah.

He was on our podcast once.

You did.

So you actually got to him?

Yeah.

Where has he been?

Well, he hasn't always been a full time resident of Detroit.

He because of his show, The Good Doctor on ABC tapes I think in like Vancouver and lives in Seattle at the time or travels back and forth and so you know he's he's a working actor so he's not always in the state but where he is out on the campaign trail, he's not advertising it very much.

I mean, he pops up every once in a while, you see things or he's good at it.

Some dinner or a chicken dinner or a barbecue or something.

But but that's what a lot of.

politicians do.

Sort of shades of James Craig, you know what I'm saying?

Well, I don't know if it's that James Craig had a hard time leaving Wayne County at times.

And so but when he ran for governor and, you know, by all accounts, he's still having a hard time getting outside of that bubble.

Ms. Lawler.

Yeah.

You know, I think that if you're looking at those numbers as Elissa Slotkin you can't be disappointed.

I mean, to be on the bubble of a plurality and a majority and a four way ball that far ahead of the election is certainly impressive.

And I think honestly, that reflects just getting in that early.

You know, I think there's no question that she sort of scared off some potentially good candidates.

There's still some in the pool, but to be polling this far ahead is pretty promising, I think.

Yeah, there's just no name recognition yet for Hill Harper.

I mean, what is he doing?

I mean, we'll find out with the next campaign finance report if he's raising money, that's what he should be doing.

I've been getting emails from him, trying to get pitches for money and so forth, and we'll see if that's bearing fruit.

But as you look at folks like Curtis Hertel, who's running for Congress, they're all sitting at the phone dialing for dollars, waiting until the spring, and then they start getting a bit more visible.

But at this point, you know, he's starting pretty far behind.

I remember Carl Levin talking about this.

He said to me, you know, I'm spending 60 to 70% of my time on the phone raising money.

And he said, I don't like it, but that's the reality, isn't it?

No, that's a big part of the job.

And if you're not willing to do that, then you're not You usually don't go very far or don't get don't get out of the out of the stall very easily.

All right.

Let's turn the page and look at the Minard story, bringing people up to speed on this as it relates to the former speaker, Mr. Chatfield.

Yes.

So just before Christmas, the Attorney General, Dana Nessel, charged the former chief of staff, Rob Minard, Chief of Staff to Lee Chatfield, the new speaker, and his wife, Annie Minard, who is the director of external Affairs, who also was sort of the gatekeeper to the Lee Chatfield multimillion dollar fundraising juggernaut that we saw in this town for a few years.

He charged him with with bilking about a half million dollars out of a whole variety of different nonprofit accounts.

The so called social welfare funds 501c fours, they're proliferated in this town and then also some campaign funds as well.

Essentially that they are they're alleged to have run an embezzlement scheme where they would double bill they would take reimbursements and not and they would have other funds reimburse the same bill.

Essentially, there was a whole host of schemes a ways they turned these campaign accounts into cash cows, essentially, they did not charge the former speaker himself.

The attorney general said there was still similar and work being done in the investigation, but signaled that the investigation would be wrapped up early this year.

They, of course, pleaded not guilty.

Correct.

Correct.

But, you know, I think that this has opened up a lot of questions.

We've had these key for social welfare organizations sort of operating in the background of our official campaign dollars for a long time now.

And I think that, you know, the attorney general got insight into the see for to like make these comparisons and find out that, you know, allegedly some of the reporting going on on the official accounts was sort of contradicting or double billed with some of these five, 24 hours.

But, you know, we lack that transparency on a daily basis.

Not only can journalists not identify similar problems, but, you know, several candidates allegedly and sort of got built through the scheme in a way that they would never be able to tell with the information that's publicly available.

And we wouldn't have known about it had the attorney general not been asked to look into it by Rebecca Chatfield, who had accused Lee Chatfield of sexual improprieties of grooming her back when she was a teenager.

And she said, Oh, by the way, you should look into this.

I think something funny is going on.

So the Attorney General took a look at Lee Chatfields Bank Records has been taken a look at Lee, or at the Minards, did a raid of their house and took a look and had that not happened, Dana Nessel would have never looked into this in the first place because there is no real oversight over these 501c force, these administrative accounts.

So the so numerous accounts can be established and they can and the people who are running these accounts can go to this law firm and say, hey, you know, we'd really like this money or this pack and say, Hey, we'd really like money for that.

It'd be for the same exact thing and nobody would really know.

Let's be clear here.

This is not unique to the speaker's office.

There's a chilling effect I would think this case would have on everybody in this town that's gotten one of these things that is not disclosing.

And you might think you don't want to get ahead of the curve here.

Maybe I ought to disclose what's in this stuff.

Yeah, I mean, there could be still a lot of collateral damage in this town.

I mean, what this this these charges against Menards exposed, for example, is that there was a 501c4 run by three prominent lobbyists in this town who would the House Republicans could essentially submit receipts for stuff and then they would just pay them back.

And Amy Minard figured out ways allegedly to basically steal this money.

The idea that the lobbyists who have to disclose if they pay for a meal for Lee Chatfield, but then they can essentially have a little fun here on the side where where you can just go over here and you don't have to have this disclose because it's it's a social welfare organization.

Whatever the heck that is, right?

It's just it's a completely corrupted the whole concept of this.

And, and and they do this outside of the campaign finance law outside of the lobbying law, and it's run by lobbyists.

I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

You know, I think that just to give you an idea of scope, I think that Craig Mauger and I are the only ones to have done a full scope of the legislature at one point and a few years ago we connected either there's five one, three, four or 527 operating.

And basically as an unregistered not registered as PACs to, I believe, a third of lawmakers at the time.

And that was just the ones we could figure out.

So I do sort of think that this is way more prevalent than people realize and sort of operates as a shadow system behind what you're seeing in official campaign finance documents.

So the question is, is this on the agenda in the new year to be addressed by the lawmakers who are just coming off of these so-called reforms on disclosure?

Well, I'm not holding my breath.

You know, the attorney.

Can you hold it?

But it would seem like this would be a perfect atmosphere to do it.

A 54 54 split in the House.

Nobody has real majority right now.

There's been talk about an ethics panel for some years.

In the last campaign cycle, the Democrats brought this up as a campaign item.

But then since they've been in the majority, I don't know if they've uttered Lee Chatfield name one time, because now they're in charge and they can take care or they can take advantage of the exact same vehicles Lee Chatfield took advantage of when he was speaker.

So do the Democrats want to create a system now to unravel the very mechanism that they themselves could be using?

I don't know.

I'm I'm skeptical.

I think we are a little cynical on that.

Let's not say it could be using are using Senate Majority Leader Winnie Winnie Brinks went to Brazil on a trip with this we've we Craig Mauger reported that that Senate appropriations chair Sarah Anthony acknowledged that she went on a trip to Israel as a as a state rep paid for by something that Lee Chatfield used, doesn't even know how it got paid for.

She went to a trip to Israel and Lee Chatfield took care of it as the speaker.

I mean, this is how untransparent this is.

And then lastly, Governor Gretchen Whitmer raised $13 million with a 501c4 that you turn around and gave the money to the to an entity controlled by the Democratic Governors Association.

They use that.

They use that money to help a governor, Gretchen Whitmer, win reelection.

This is a complete end around of the campaign finance law, and both sides are using it.

And it really is hard to believe that even 5454 House is going to like come come up with the courage to take this away or put transparency on this excuse me.

Speaking of it, unraveling quickly, Emily, the the Republicans are supposedly going to meet on Saturday to oust the current chairwoman.

Correct?

It's going to require perhaps a rule change first.

And there's already arguments over whether this meeting is properly called.

She says it's illegal.

Uh well see.

I guess we'll see how that turns out.

We've seen courts have to decide essentially in Macomb County, there's a case pending in Saginaw County right now.

There's been a curveball in Hillsdale County.

You know, I really think that the GOP is having a very hard time deciding who's in charge right now.

All right.

So the question is for the people out in TV Land, so what?

Well, it wouldn't it would just seem like palace intrigue, except that we have a presidential selection process here in Michigan where that is going to be directly impacted by this because the primary is scheduled for February 27, and that is before the Republicans nationally will accept a primary date.

The Republicans have to have a separate presidential delegate selection process, and they've scheduled that for March two, and that's held by the party.

So if we have an issue about who's actually the chair and who's actually control the party and who is officially the Michigan Republican Party, which is where this looks like this is heading, then who is actually selecting the presidential delegates for Michigan?

I mean, we're probably can we probably can assume that whether it's Karamo or the anti-Karamo people, they'll probably both pick Donald Trump delegates.

But who is delegates and who gets to select it?

Ronna Romney McDaniel that the RNC she gets to decide, is it going to be the Karamo delegates or the anti-Karamo delegates?

I think this is unfortunately where we're headed.

It could spill out into a floor fight in Milwaukee at the national convention and in in July.

And so there is a whole host of problems that could that could transpire here if we don't know who is really in charge of the Michigan Republicans.

Well, let's assume and I it's not a safe assumption that there is a vacancy and that they will remove her.

Who would want the job, please?

Oh, there's people that want the job.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think plenty of folks in Michigan politics, they want that job.

But they have to get around the Trump people in the party.

And those people that you're talking about are Not Trumpers.

Is that not correct?

HOEKSTRA Pete Hoekstra was an ambassador to Donald Trump.

So yeah, but is he a true believer?

Well, I mean, there's always going to be a purity test when it comes to the Trumpers.

How about Matt Depurno is he interested in this thing?

I don't know.

I haven't heard that.

He was, wasn't he, before.

In kind of a low profile?

You know, he's also going on trial in March.

So, you know, for tampering with Tabulators, allegedly.

So, you know, maybe he's not the person I want.

I heard Ryan Berman's name, former candidate for attorney general possibility.

But I think Pete Hoekstra actually wants the job.

And I think Scott Greenly, who had run for the job, is supporting Pete Hoekstra.

All right.

Let's call in our guest today, Perry Johnson, former candidate for governor, former candidate for president.

Good morning, Mr. Johnson.

Welcome back to Off the Record.

How you doing?

Oh, fantastic.

How are you doing?

I couldn't be better.

I know politicians hate theoretical and hypothetical questions, but let's go there anyway.

All right.

Let's say the presidential election is on the way.

The new administration is in and the Republicans head up to Mackinac Island for the Leadership Conference.

Number one, are you going?

I will probably be going.

And number two, will you see I'm interested in running for governor.

I doubt that I'm going to be saying that to run for governor this early.

That would be kind of nutty.

Would it be... Everybody is going to be focusing on the presidential race now.

I understand, but I want to get past that to do what you're going to do because you failed at governor before you failed as president.

Why would you want to run for governor?

Well, that's actually a very good question.

I understand right now.

I think I think it's this next week, the forgers that went out, that is the petitioners that went out there to get the forged signatures are going on trial.

And it is unfortunate that they kicked, I guess, five votes off the ballot.

But the governor race didn't exactly go badly for me, other than the fact that they never let me on the ballot.

I had been running for a couple of months and I guess I was in second place two months later behind Chief Craig and then later on, at the time of the election when they actually knocked us off, it isn't clear whether Chief Craig was ahead or I was ahead.

The presidential race was kind of interesting.

We all know that in the presidential race, the decision is made based on how you do on the debate stage.

But this was a very interesting sort of situation where I had five polls, five national polls at 1% or higher, and they decided to exclude all of them.

So although they accepted the Trafalgar poll, they said McLaughlin wasn't any good.

They said that Vic Restrategic wasnt any good.

They said that the Harris poll wasnt any good Harvard Harris poll.

The caravan poll wasn't any good, and they systematically Emerson poll wasn't any good.

So they systematically decided over there at the RNC that they were going to exclude certain polls.

Before I got for turn over to my colleagues who said, I want I need a story here.

Okay.

Do you still have the bug to be governor?

I do.

I, I enjoyed it.

I enjoyed the campaigning.

And most importantly, you can't just say because politics is a little tough, you're going to get out of the game because maybe your message can get heard that my message was always very simple.

I think the government spends too much money and I think we're going broke.

We are $33 trillion in debt at this point.

I think it's close to 34 and it's getting kind of ridiculous that we spend so much money and yet we pay no attention to this and it creates a problem here.

The only reason that we have inflation is that the government decided to spend too much money.

All right, let's see.

Let's see what that let's see what Emily has to say.

You've called the RNC corrupt, I think in reference to some of those policies and procedures you were talking about earlier, why endorse Donald Trump, who many would argue are is the person that some of those RNC procedures are designed to benefit?

Why?

I'm not sure that the RNC procedures that they had limiting the people on the debate stage was designed in favor of Donald Trump.

I think it was just the opposite, actually.

I think what what Ronald wanted to do was to get very, very few people against Trump so that he could go one on one against them.

It's just that when you take a look at the candidates that were out there and their positions compared to Trump, there was no question that Trump appeared to have the superior position.

Then when you take a look at the nomination process, Trump never even had a debate, and he's still over 50%.

There's almost no question in my mind that he is going to win the nomination.

What would have happened, Mr. Johnson, if had you been on the debate stage, do you think you would have made an impact?

I think my message would have gotten across, yes.

Do you think you would be in a position where you could challenge Trump, Could you would you do you think you could have put yourself in a position to actually challenge Trump?

Well, I do believe that if I had been on the debate stage, we'd have an entirely different scenario than we have right now.

I do believe that.

And I think that the only way that you could really see whether or not a person's position makes any sense is to get them on the stage.

Then you have to shoot questions at them and they have to be able to answer them.

And you learn a lot about a person's personality, their thinking, their mind, whether or not they really are that person, whether on that stage.

Otherwise you're just looking at a bunch of commercials.

PERRY When we talked about the Michigan Republican Party and the sort of power struggle right now going on, do you think Kristina, Karamo, is doing a good job?

And if not, do you think she needs to step down?

Well, I'm going to ask you a very simple question.

What do you think is the major role of the person in charge of the party?

The number one function raise money.

That's it.

Exactly.

No question about it.

Thought you were talking about that earlier in your segment.

Sure.

So we have to raise money because they have no money given to them other than donations.

So then we take a look at how well are we doing?

Bottom line is we are now $600,000 in debt.

And we are told that there's $71,000 in the bank.

Now, this is not exactly the ideal situation that the Republicans want if they hope to do something in this upcoming election, because they have to spend money to get the vote out, they have to spend money, get behind the cause.

And without money, elections cannot be won.

I, for one can tell you that it's very expensive.

I spend quite a lot of money at both.

So should she go?

Well, I think that if she has cannot raise money, she can't do what's necessary for the party.

So I think the party has to recognize that in the event that she can't raise money, she can't do the primary job, and there won't be any money available to help support the candidates.

So then you're failing as the head of the RNC.

So do you think Nikki Haley has a shot at beating Donald Trump?

No, not at all.

I don't I think it's completely hopeless.

But maybe she wants to continue to promote her name or whatever.

There's some reason.

But when you look at the numbers, you can see they are nowhere near touching Donald Trump.

I think the latest poll, he is 52% in Iowa and he's over over that in New Hampshire.

So when you take a look at the numbers, no one is going to beat Donald Trump.

Have you taken a look at the US Senate race here in Michigan?

And do you have a favorite among the candidates?

I think we got to like 11 Republicans at this point.

Yeah.

No, I have yet.

Yeah.

No.

At this stage of the game, it's kind of premature.

I can't say that I have a favorite right now.

I have to see what the policies are.

I don't even think we've gotten the message out.

We don't even know where everybody stands.

We do know one thing that this is probably one of the most important races for the Senate that we've had in a number of years.

But if Karamo is unable to raise money, that's going to hurt whoever the Republican nominee is, isn't it?

Without a doubt.

You need a tremendous amount of money.

I would I would suggest that in order to be able to win this race, somebody is going to have to spend well over 100 million.

Have you donated any money to the Republican Party since Christina Carano took over?

I don't know.

Probably that's what I've spent so much money.

I think I spent 16 million in the last race.

So I may very well have donated some money to the Republican Party.

Maybe I've donated it, I don't know, to various causes, maybe 100,000 or so, maybe a little more than that.

Surely there must be fun things to spend money on.

What do you say to people who ask why you keep running for these prestigious executive roles when I presume you could be on a yacht somewhere?

Yeah, well, I don't know how to say this, but I don't think there's anything quite like running for president.

It really is remarkable because you get an opportunity to see what the people really think, and you're busy all the time.

I mean, you literally are face to face.

It is retail politics in Iowa and New Hampshire that changed the race substantially when they put in this requirement that you had to have a certain percentage nationally.

And it's really almost kind of nutty advertising in California.

Think about how silly that says you're advertising in California when the Republicans know they're not going to win California.

And then on top of that, in California, they're not even making a decision to vote for over a year down the road.

And in politics, people have very short memories.

So it makes no sense financially to do anything like this.

But we were kind of course to it to do it just because they had new requirements that were never laid out before in order to get out of the debate stage.

This is the first the Republicans have ever done anything like this.

Mr. Johnson, is John Jobs still on your payroll?

I know John is not on my payroll.

It now will be soon.

I don't know.

Well, I have to say I don't.

Testifying in court next week.

He is testifying.

Why?

That's because they're prosecuting the the forgery campaign.

You know, when you understand how it worked, the candidates, the five candidates, they didn't even hire the petitioners, at least.

I certainly didn't.

You don't even know who these guys are.

And you don't even know the companies.

Are you ever consulted?

And the consultant is the one that goes out and hires these people to collect the names.

And John Yob is the person that did that.

And he was my consulting and he's going to testify because it really damages the entire election process.

And it certainly is devastating to our whole way of life.

If we want to continue running a democracy.

So they are going on trial next week.

And what is Mr. Yob going to say that they were crooks?

Well, they were.

I don't think there's any question on that.

You think they should go to prison, Mr. Johnson?

They probably will.

And do you think they should have or they should go to prison?

Yeah, I think.

Would you do something like that?

It's devastating.

I mean, if we had that kind of corruption going on, it be very hard to continue to run our democracy.

I mean, this is brutal.

So we have a republic here and in this republic, we certainly are going to have a certain have to have a certain amount of trust.

You can't have a situation where you have this kind of scheming going on.

It's devastating.

Let's suppose, hypothetically, that we have all corrupt people all over and you just go and you try to get signatures and somebody forges somebody else's signature.

No, this can't be trusted.

I mean, this can't be a system that we can allow it to do that deliberately, then to go and get involved in an election to try to change things like that.

I think that's pretty severe.

Mr. Johnson, did you have fun riding on the tractor out in Iowa?

I get that when you do anything you have to write.

Well, it was fun.

I mean, everything that happened, there was a great experience.

I really loved it.

My I had a chance to have my son with me and my wife with me.

My my oldest son was with me all the time.

I had all my boys out there.

At some point or other.

And when I say that, it's really wonderful to get out there and talk to the people and see what really concerns them.

It truly.

Is.

Can you call me?

You'll call me on the governor thing, right?

The governor thing?

I will, yes.

You know, I loved running for governor, too.

That was fun.

I mean, it was just a devastating result.

That was shocking to me.

I got to get out of here.

I got to get out.

Mr. Johnson, thanks for being on the program.

We'll talk to you later.

Okay.

In the meantime, enjoy life and happy New Year.

Yes, back to you.

See you guys next week right here.

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