For the second time in less than two months, Mellissa Carone has been bounced from the 2022 ballot for making false statements on the campaign affidavit she filed to run for state Senate. The state Bureau of Elections announced Tuesday that Carone was one of 15 candidates for state offices who were disqualified for submitting incomplete faulty or false information when they filed to run. Carone’s false claims in 2020 about the vote-counting “fraud” she said she saw at the TCF Center in Detroit made her the butt of jokes by late-night TV comedians and the subject of a sketch on “Saturday Night ..read more

The driving force behind the phony petition signatures that likely disqualified half of the Republican candidates for governor was previously convicted of felony election fraud and participated in a shadowy signature collections for former Lt. Gov. Brian Calley. Shawn Wilmoth, owner of a political consulting firm in Warren called First Choice Contracting, allegedly scammed five of the 2022 GOP hopefuls — providing them with a combined 68,000 fraudulent voter signatures for their nominating petitions, according to the state Bureau of Elections. James Craig, Perry Johnson, Donna Brandenburg, Mik ..read more

It’s hard to know where to begin. The Macomb County Republic Party convention on Monday night erupted into chaos, as battling GOP factions engaged in verbal clashes and Shelby Township police moved in to calm the situation. Before the long night was over, the convention delegates ousted the county party chair from his post and another top party official was greeted with chants of “Lock him up” from the overflow crowd of perhaps several hundred people. The convention was held to pick county delegates to the upcoming state GOP convention. These gatherings are typically routine and often rather d ..read more

Every election season, we see first-time candidates – often political neophytes – searching for a potentially lucrative location to run for office. They don’t declare their candidacy in their hometown or the community where they’ve spent their recent years. They make a choice based on political territory where they have think they have a shot at winning. Mellissa Carone has emerged in 2022 as the ultimate poster child for district-shopping. Best known as Rudy Giuliani’s wacky witness at a 2020 state legislative hearing on election fraud, a video of which went viral, Carone is running for state ..read more

Macomb County experienced a dramatic drop in Covid cases and deaths in February after dealing with a virus surge in December and January. According to the Macomb County Health Department, 5,811 Covid cases were reported last month – a nearly 90 percent decrease compared to January. Deaths dropped in February by 73 percent, to 81 fatalities. The Covid-positive tests recorded last month was at 11.1 percent, a much smaller rate than in January. The numbers were the best news the county has received about the virus since last September. Over the course of the 2-year pandemic, the county has report ..read more

The three states that would suffer the most economic damage from an extended war in Ukraine include Michigan, as a months-long barrage by Russian forces and even harsher sanctions could constrict supplies and drive up global prices for oil and other critical materials. That’s the conclusion of a report by Moody’s Analytics that finds all 50 states would experience adverse effects from the military conflict in central Europe if it continues into 2023. Michigan, South Carolina and Washington would feel the most pain, with declines of nearly 3 percent in those states’ projected GDP growth. Michig ..read more

Macomb County enters 2022 facing a daunting threat from the newest Covid variant, Omicron, as the number of Covid cases accelerates at a record-breaking pace and the number of people testing positive for the virus has equaled its highest level since the pandemic began. The county experienced 26,786 Covid cases in December, according to the Macomb County Health Department, nearly 8,000 more than the previous high reached in April 2021. Macomb’s number of deaths broke the 3,000 milestone over the weekend while the virus seems to be spreading largely unabated due to the lack of substantial vaccin ..read more

The election year follies are in full swing in Lansing as Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Republicans in the Legislature try to outdo each other to see who can offer voters the biggest tax cut. Whitmer is again proposing the repeal of Michigan’s tax on retirement income, which would reduce state revenues by up to $500 million. Not to be outdone, GOP lawmakers in the House and Senate have started a push for an income tax reduction and a big cut in the corporate tax. If all of those items pass, it would blow a $2.4 billion hole in the state budget each year. The Whitmer administration says that the st ..read more

The increasing divide between Red States and Blue States, between Democrats and Republicans, has led some to conclude that the solution to this destructive polarization is the formation of a third party somewhere in the middle. But a new study by the Pew Research Center finds that there are plenty of divisions within the Democratic and Republican parties that results in nine distinct categories of voters. Pew found three types of Republicans, three types of Democrats and three types of independents. Yet, they did not include a category for centrists and ticket-splitters, those with a strong in ..read more

The new Michigan legislative districts approved on Tuesday could overhaul Macomb County politics as they dramatically redraw the election maps starting next year and mark the first time that some district boundaries in Macomb will extend south of Eight Mile Road into Detroit. In addition, the congressional lines redrawn by the state’s redistricting commission have already upended the 2022 election outlook in Macomb, with Congressman Andy Levin deciding to run for re-election in an Oakland County district rather than in the district he currently represents, which was altered to entail mostly te ..read more