Former President Donald Trump is the projected winner of the Michigan Republican Convention, according to the Hill and Decision Desk HQ.
Saturday’s convention saw 39 of the state’s delegates at stake after Trump won Tuesday’s primary in the Wolverine State by more than 40 points, where 16 delegates were on the line. Trump earned twelve of those delegates, while former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley garnered four.
Nikki Haley (AP Photo/Steven Senne)
Decision Desk HQ projects Trump has won 33 of the remaining 39 delegates, with the other six still unbound to a candidate, according to the Hill’s race call article published at 1:38 p.m. ET.
Chaos surrounded the lead-up to Saturday amid an internal party struggle for leadership at the state level. Michigan GOP Party Chair Pete Hoekstra ran the official convention in Grand Rapids, through which all delegates will be allocated, while ousted former Chair Kristina Karamo planned to hold one in Detroit that the Republican National Committee (RNC) would not recognize, the Detroit News reported. That was canceled per emails from Karamo allies on Friday, according to the outlet.
Kristina Karamo (Sarah Rice for The Washington Post via Getty Images)
In January, state party members voted to remove Karamo from her position, a vote Karamo insisted was illegitimate. In an interview with Breitbart News in January, she accused her opposition of wanting “to play Game of Thrones,” calling it “pathetic.”
The RNC sees the vote to remove Karamo as legitimate and regards Hoekstra — a former U.S. representative and ambassador to the Netherlands under the Trump administration — as the official chair, as ABC News notes. Recently, “a county circuit court judge affirmed the removal of Kristina Karamo as the chairperson.”
Trump’s victory in Michigan comes hours after the Associated Press projected he would win the Missouri Republican Caucuses. The Idaho Republican Caucuses are also underway on Saturday.
These latest victories for Trump follow a 20-point win over Haley in her own backyard, South Carolina, on February 27.
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