LaBrant: GOP ticket is least qualified in Michigan history | Opinion

In the days after Republican primary voters chose her to be their party's gubernatorial nominee, Tudor Dixon’s top priority was to travel out-of-state to Dallas, Texas to speak at the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) convention), where she joined election deniers like Ted Cruz, Marjorie Taylor Green, Josh Hawley, and My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell as a featured speaker.

Also sharing the CPAC podium with Dixon were insurrection aiders and abettors like: Steve Bannon, Mark Meadows, Matt Gaetz, and Jim Jordan, who we have learned from testimony given to the January 6th Committee all unsuccessfully sought pardons from Insurrectionist-in-Chief Donald Trump before he left office on January 20, 2021.

Who would Tudor Dixon model her governorship in Michigan after? Look at the record of those current governors appeared alongside Dixon at CPAC: Greg Abbot of Texas,, Ron DeSantis of Florida and Kristi Noem of South Dakota.

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These are governors who, like Dixon, back abortion laws without rape or incest exceptions. These are the governors during the COVID-19 pandemic ordered anti-mask and anti-vaxx policies. After scores of school shootings, these are governors who opposed laws restricting the sale of M-15 rifles to 18-year-olds, opposed limiting the capacity of ammunition magazines, and opposed expanding background checks for gun purchasers.

These are the governors who are firm in their belief that America only has a mental health problem not a gun problem, the same governors who seem obsessed with the content of books found in public libraries. They say, without proof, that critical race theory, and issues like LGBQT have come to dominate school curriculum.

Is this a preview of the Dixon agenda for Michigan in 2023?

During my adulthood, Michigan has had four Republican Governors: Romney, Milliken, Engler and Snyder. During that period Michigan had to deal with race riots, PPB contamination, college protests, Flint water, unemployment, and recessions.

Those governors were responsible for guiding Michigan through that turbulence. They were able to do so because they were serious people. They had experience in government or as CEOs in private industry. Dixon’s private sector experience was in sales in her family’s steel plant, which is no longer in business. Now she is a commentator, with roughly the same qualifications for public office as Bannon, Alex Jones, and Glenn Beck.

Like Trump, who still denies he lost the 2020 election and exhorts states like Michigan to rescind their electoral college votes and reinstate him as president, Dixon has spent much of her current campaign looking backward. Her CPAC speech focused on Whitmer’s 2020 COVID response; she has called the public health precautions Whitmer imposed cruel and destructive. But Dixon has not explained how her own policy of simply ignoring the pandemic, not taking any steps to mitigate its spread, and opposing masks and vaccine mandates would have saved Michigan lives.

Dixon has spent much of her time since attacking Whitmer for inflation. Does Dixon really think inflation is a state issue confined to Michigan? Does she suppose that Gov. DeSantis or Gov. Abbott have cured inflation in their states?

Lt. Governor nominee Shane Hernandez is the only person on the Republican ticket who can demonstrate any qualification for holding statewide office. His running mates — Dixon; attorney general nominee Matt DePerno, under criminal investigation for voting machine tampering; and secretary of state nominee Kristina Karamo, a featured QAnon conference speaker — can point only to their allegiance to Trump and his debunked stolen election claims..

This is the most unqualified state-level ticket in recent Michigan history.

Bob LaBrant was the senior vice president for political affairs and general counsel at the Michigan Chamber of Commerce for 35 years,

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Opinion: LaBrant: Meet least qualified GOP ticket in generations