Stark comments captured on videotape show a prominent Michigan Republican claiming that some Detroiters vote repeatedly in the same election.
Ron Weiser, an Ann Arbor real estate investor and past U.S. ambassador to the Slovak Republic, told an August meeting of Tea Party groups in Milford that Detroit voters get picked up at pool halls and barbershops and bused "from precinct to precinct where they vote multiple times," Paul Egan discloses atop the front page of Sunday's Detroit Free Press.
Weiser is finance chairman of the Republican National Committee and a former state party chairman. He was recorded by a Democratic activist following GOP congressional candidate Kerry Bentivolio, Egan says.
Weiser also said at the Aug. 9 meeting in Milford that someone not from Detroit would not want to go to the polls there at 6:30 a.m. "without a side arm."
The video of Weiser's comments . . . was given to the Free Press and posted on YouTube by the Michigan Democratic Party.
Weiser emphatically said Friday that he meant no offense to Detroit and was speaking about past, not current, campaigns.
The nearly three-minute clip shows Weiser saying Mitt Romney could carry Michigan on Nov. 6 because the state's heavily Democratic largest city has fewer people. On the video, which accompanies the Free Press report, he says:
"There is no Dave Bing machine. There's no machine to go to the pool halls and the barbershops and put those people on buses, and then bus them from precinct to precinct where they vote multiple times.
"And there's no machine to get 'em to stop playing pool and drinking beer in the pool hall. And it does make a difference."
Five Tea Party chapters from Western Oakland County, Brighton, Lapeer and other areas hosted the Aug. 9 event at Bakers of Milford Banquet Center.
Egan's front-page report has reactions from the Rev. David Bullock, a civil rights activist, and state Rep. Harvey Santana, D-Detroit.
Background: Weiser biographical summary.
