Last year, Michigan Speaker of the House Jase Bolger convinced Grand Rapids' Democratic state Rep. Roy Schmidt to switch parties and become a Republican. They then plotted together, official records show, to wait until the very last moment before the filing deadline for the 2012 election to announce the switch. That way Schmidt was unlikely to face any serious challenger in his re-election bid.
Schmidt also offered as much as $1000 to a 22-year-old retail employee to run as a kind of strawman opponent to dissuade any meaningful write-in campaign.
When this scheme was exposed last summer, Kent County Prosecutor William Forsyth (also a Republican) criticized both Bolger and Schmidt for what he called unethical behavior, but said they broke no laws.
An Ingham County grand jury agrees.
Detroit Free Press: “An indictment is not warranted,” due to a lack of evidence of a crime or wrongdoing, Ingham County Circuit Judge Rosemarie Aquilina said in an order today.
Her investigation followed a request from Senate Minority Leader Gretchen Whitmer and former Michigan Democratic Party Chairman Mark Brewer.
It is, apparently, not a crime to pay someone to take a dive in a Michigan election.
However, voters were able to extract their own kind of justice. Schmidt was defeated last November by Winnie Banks, a Democrat.
