Republicans meet this weekend in Lansing for their GOP convention, and political columnist Chad Selweski asks:
Will anything change in the next two days for a party plagued by officials and candidates for party offices who harbor pasts mired in criminal activity or bigotry?
Selweski, who is a contributor to Deadline Detroit, writes in his blog "Politically Speaking," that there are key officials who have some serious criminal records.
He mentions GOP activist Michael Bancroft of Thompsonville in northern Michigan, who will be a candidate for the Republican State Committee when the 1st Congressional District convention-goers hold their caucus tonight. He was charged with sexually assaulting his babysitter in Genesee County. Some of the charges were dropped and he served 30 days for simple assault and battery.
Selweski notes that Darwin Jiles, Jr., currently on probation for shooting a man (an incident that he insists was accidental), is up for election as the party’s vice chair for the ethnic/minority bloc of the state GOP.
And there's others including William Rauwerdink, who is a State Committee member from the 14th Congressional District. He served prison time for a massive $285 million fraud scheme.
