密歇根州沃伦密歇根州的大选投票正在进行中选举作为前总统的热身，共和党提名的国务卿走上舞台唐纳德·特朗普猛烈抨击她的竞选主题。

克里斯蒂娜·卡拉莫重复了关于2020年总统选举的毫无根据的断言，这些断言已被多次揭穿。她在最近在马科姆社区学院举行的集会上告诉人群，“独裁主义者”正在给她的民主党对手——国务卿乔斯林·本森——数百万美元，企图“腐败战场州选举系统，以便他们能够控制美国。”

“如果你看看历史，它会告诉你暴君做了什么，”前社区大学教授卡拉莫说。“历史在告诉我们，历史在向我们尖叫，如果我们现在不站出来战斗，我们将失去人类历史上最伟大的国家。”

这是一个旨在激励特朗普忠实追随者的演讲，其中一些人已经抓住了毫无根据的QAnon阴谋论。

虽然卡拉莫的演讲赢得了欢呼，但对密歇根州的共和党人来说，依靠吸引最右翼选民的大选策略是一场赌博。

在初选或提名大会期间必须迎合本党基础的候选人通常会转向中间立场，旨在为大选吸引更多选民。但是，对于共和党人来说，这种情况今年并没有发生，他们正在寻求密歇根州全州范围内的三个最高职位——州长、司法部长和国务卿。

11月8日的选举将考验旨在与极右翼产生共鸣并突出与特朗普密切关系的竞选活动是否足以在传统的摇摆州获胜，共和党现任总统在2020年以超过15.4万张选票的优势输给了民主党挑战者乔·拜登。

10月1日，在底特律以北约20英里的大学举行的集会上，所有三名共和党候选人都站在特朗普身后，佐治亚州众议员马乔里·泰勒·格林(Marjorie Taylor Greene)也参加了集会。以及MyPillow首席执行官迈克·林德尔(Mike Lindell)，他向全国各地的观众放大了特朗普的选举谎言。

特朗普错误地声称，2020年的选举在密歇根州被“操纵和窃取”，引用了他所说的首先来自卡拉莫和马修·德佩尔诺(Matthew DePerno)的“证据”，马修·德佩尔诺是一名税务律师，被提名为州检察长。

在他自己对人群的讲话中，德佩尔诺称民主党人是“激进的文化马克思主义者”，他们想“让你闭嘴”。

“如果这不起作用，他们想把你关进监狱，”德佩尔诺告诉人群，人群中响起了“把她关起来”的口号所有三名民主党在任者都是女性。

德佩尔诺的竞选活动也因一项调查而蒙上阴影，该调查涉及他是否应该因试图在2020年大选后获得投票机而受到刑事指控。

参加集会的大急流城房地产经纪人兼选区代表约翰·德布拉伊说，候选人让他激动不已。“我们已经得到了很长时间以来最好的美国第一票，”他说。

一些温和的共和党人怀疑，主要吸引党内基础分子的竞选活动是否足以击败拥有广泛知名度和可观筹款优势的民主党现任者。民主党人预计也将受益于一项旨在将堕胎权纳入州宪法的修正案。

这些共和党人表示，通货膨胀、天然气价格和经济焦虑应该是共和党的主要谈话要点，而不是继续与特朗普和他关于广泛欺诈的错误说法保持一致，这使他失去了连任的机会。

他们指出密歇根州选择司法部长和国务卿候选人的不同寻常的方式，这一过程是通过政党提名大会而不是通过选民做出选择的初选来完成的。

忠于特朗普的最保守的共和党人主导了4月的大会。该党的联合主席梅肖恩·马多克(Meshawn Maddock)是16名共和党人之一，他们提交了虚假证明，称自己是该州的总统选举人，尽管拜登在该州获得了胜利。

在大会召开前三周，在特朗普的另一次集会上，德佩尔诺鼓励与会者——其中许多是选区代表——对党内聚会进行“突袭”,并表示“基层团结起来的时候到了”

代表们以压倒多数投票提名卡拉莫。德佩尔诺在前立法领袖汤姆·伦纳德(Tom Leonard)的竞选中获胜，后者在2018年的司法部长竞选中以3个百分点的优势输给了民主党人达纳·内塞尔(Dana Nessel)。

“卡拉莫和德佩尔诺是这个国家最忠诚于唐纳德·特朗普的人，”共和党资深策略师杰森·罗(Jason Roe)说。“这种忠诚在这次选举过程中是不可动摇的，不管它会如何影响大选前景。”

罗伊的父亲曾担任密歇根州共和党执行董事10年，他于2021年春成为该州的执行董事。六个月后，他因“在我们应该容忍多少阴谋论的问题上存在意见分歧”而下台。

罗伊离开后不久，特朗普开始打电话给党内领导人，“迫使该党正式接受对即将到来的选举没有帮助的事情，”罗伊说。

该党的州长候选人都铎·迪克森(Tudor Dixon)在获得特朗普的支持后，在8月的初选中赢得了提名。迪克森是一名保守的新闻节目主持人，曾经出演过低成本的恐怖电影，他也受益于富裕的德沃斯家族的支持。

虽然被认为没有卡拉莫和德佩尔诺那么极端，但迪克森在辩论中表示，她认为2020年的总统选举被盗，她最近对绑架民主党人格雷琴·惠特默州长的阴谋轻描淡写。此后，迪克森试图通过关注通货膨胀和教育等话题，摆脱对上次选举结果的否认，但她也在文化问题上重复强硬的右翼言论。

她呼吁在学校禁止“色情”书籍，并提出了一项仿照佛罗里达州政策的教育议程，批评者称之为“不要说同性恋”。

虽然民主党人攻击德佩尔诺和卡拉莫继续否认拜登在2020年的胜利，但他们把重点放在了他们所说的迪克森的“极端”堕胎立场上。乏善可陈的筹款让她很难反击。

根据最新的竞选财务报告，截至8月22日，迪克森在银行有524，000美元，而惠特莫有1，400万美元。超级PAC密歇根家庭联合会已经弥补了部分缺口，该组织已经收到了250万美元的捐款，其中包括来自DeVos家族的捐款。

“我只是不喜欢电视上没有关于迪克森的广告。你看到的一切都是关于其他人的，都是负面的，”参加特朗普集会的爱奥尼亚县居民劳拉·邦廷说。

根据竞选财务报告，截至9月16日，卡拉莫和德佩尔诺手头共有422，554美元现金，而他们的民主党对手共有570万美元。

密歇根民调机构伯尼·珀伦(Bernie Porn)表示，共和党候选人以他们的极端立场著称，但没有一个人吸引了足够的资金上电视，向更广泛的选民介绍自己。他说，这“让人们很难对你形成好感。”

Michigan GOP statewide candidates stick to far-right message

WARREN, Mich. --With voting underway in Michigan's generalelection, the Republican nominee for secretary of state stepped on stage as a warm-up act for former PresidentDonald Trumpand hit hard on the main theme of her campaign.

Kristina Karamo repeated unfounded assertions about the 2020 presidential election that have been repeatedly debunked. She told the crowd at the recent rally at Macomb Community College that “authoritarians” are giving millions to her Democratic opponent — Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson — in an attempt to “corrupt battleground state election systems so they can control America.”

“If you look at history, it shows you what tyrants do," said Karamo, a former community college professor. "History is telling us, history is screaming to us, that if we don’t step up and fight now, we will lose the greatest country in human history.”

It was an address designed to rev up the crowd of devoted Trump followers, some of whom have latched onto the baseless QAnon conspiracy theory.

While Karamo's speech drew cheers, relying on a general election strategy that appeals to the most far-right voters is a gamble for Michigan Republicans.

Candidates who have to play to their party's base during primaries or nominating conventions often shift toward the center, aiming to attract more voters for the general election. But that hasn't happened this year for the Republicans seeking Michigan's top three statewide offices — governor, attorney general and secretary of state.

The Nov. 8 election will test whether campaigns designed to resonate with the far-right and highlight strong ties to Trump will be enough to win in a traditional swing state, where the Republican incumbent lost the White House race to Democrat challenger Joe Biden by more than 154,000 votes in 2020.

All three GOP candidates stood behind Trump during the Oct. 1 rally at the college about 20 miles north of Detroit, joined by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, who has amplified Trump's election falsehoods to audiences across the country.

Trump falsely claimed the 2020 election was “rigged and stolen” in Michigan, citing “evidence” he said first originated with Karamo and Matthew DePerno, a tax lawyer who is the nominee for state attorney general.

In his own address to the crowd, DePerno called Democrats “radical, cultural Marxists" who want to “silence you."

“If that doesn't work, they want to put you in jail,” DePerno told the crowd, which fell into chants of “Lock her up." All three Democratic incumbents are women.

DePerno's campaign also is clouded by an investigation into whether he should be criminally charged for attempting to gain access to voting machines after the 2020 election.

John DeBlaay, a Grand Rapids real estate agent and precinct delegate who attended the rally, said he was thrilled with the candidates. “We’ve got the best America First ticket all the way from top to bottom that we’ve had in a long time now," he said.

Some moderate Republicans are skeptical that campaigns appealing mostly to base elements of the party will be enough to beat Democratic incumbents with wide name recognition and sizable fundraising advantages. The Democrats also are expected to benefit from having an amendment on the ballot that seeks to enshrine the right to abortion in the state constitution.

These Republicans say inflation, gas prices and economic anxiety should be the GOP's main talking points, not a continued alignment with Trump and his false claims about widespread fraud costing him reelection.

They point to the unusual way Michigan selects its attorney general and secretary of state candidates, a process done through a party nominating convention rather than through a primary election in which voters make the choice.

The most conservative Republicans who are loyal to Trump dominated that convention in April. The party’s co-chair, Meshawn Maddock, was one of 16 Republicans who submitted false certificates stating they were the state’s presidential electors despite Biden’s certified victory in the state.

Three weeks before the convention, during another Trump rally, DePerno encouraged attendees — many of them precinct delegates — to “storm” the party gathering and said it was “time for the grassroots to unite.”

Delegates overwhelmingly voted to nominate Karamo. DePerno won a runoff over former legislative leader Tom Leonard, who lost in the 2018 attorney general's race by 3 percentage points to Democrat Dana Nessel.

“Karamo and DePerno are among the most loyal to Donald Trump that you will find anywhere in the country,” said Jason Roe, a longtime Republican strategist. “That loyalty has been unshakable in this election process, regardless of how it might affect general election prospects.”

Roe, whose father served as the Michigan GOP’s executive director for 10 years, became executive director of the state party in spring 2021. Six months later, he stepped down due to a “difference in opinion on how many conspiracy theories we should tolerate.”

Soon after Roe left, Trump began calling party leaders to “force the party to embrace things formally that weren’t going to be helpful to the upcoming election,” Roe said.

The party's candidate for governor, Tudor Dixon, won the nomination during the primary in August after receiving Trump's endorsement. Dixon, a conservative news show host who once acted in low-budget horror films, also benefited from support of the wealthy DeVos family.

While seen as less extreme than Karamo and DePerno, Dixon indicated during debates that she thought the 2020 presidential election was stolen and she recently made light of a plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat. Dixon has since tried to pivot away from denying the results of the last election by focusing on topics such as inflation and education, but she also is repeating hard-right rhetoric on cultural issues.

She has called for banning “pornographic” books in schools and has pitched an education agenda modeled after the Florida policy that critics have labeled “Don’t Say Gay.”

While Democrats have attacked DePerno and Karamo for their continued denial of Biden's victory in 2020, they have focused on what they describe as Dixon’s “extreme” abortion stance. Lackluster fundraising has made it difficult for her to push back.

As of Aug. 22, Dixon had $524,000 in the bank compared with Whitmer’s $14 million, according to the latest available campaign finance reports. Some of that gap has been closed by the super PAC Michigan Families United, which has received $2.5 million in donations, including from the DeVos family.

“I just don’t like that there’s no commercials on TV about Dixon. Everything you see is about the other people, and it’s all negative,” said Laura Bunting, an Ionia County resident who attended the Trump rally.

Karamo and DePerno had a combined $422,554 cash on hand as of Sept. 16 compared with the $5.7 million combined for their Democratic opponents, according to campaign finance reports.

Michigan-based pollster Bernie Porn said the Republican candidates have been defined by their extreme stances but that none has attracted enough money to get on TV and introduce themselves to a broader swath of voters. That, he said, "makes it difficult for folks to form a favorable opinion of you.”

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Joey Cappelletti is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.