Moment two female Michigan GOP committee members scuffle in bar
Two female members of the Michigan GOP were caught on camera Friday night having a physical scuffle amid internal party tensions within the state party.
The altercation, which took place on a patio at the Doherty Hotel in Clare, Michigan, last Friday night, stemmed from a confrontation between Kalamazoo Republican Party Chairman Kelly Sackett and Macomb County GOP Secretary Melissa Pehlis.
The heated conversation resulted in Sackett knocking a cigarette and phone out of Pehlis’s hand.
Pehlis then waved back with an open hand aimed at Sackett’s head.
A man standing behind Sackett steps in to try and separate the two.
Local outlets reported that police were called to the bar following the incident and that Sackett lodged a complaint.
The police were eventually called to the scene of the fight and Kelly Sackett (the blonde) filed a complaint against Melissa Pehlis
The exchange was reportedly the result of an ongoing rivalry within the state party between supporters of new state GOP chairperson Kristina Karamo and Matthew DePerno β a lawyer who opposed Karamo running the party.
DePerno told Bridge Michigan, “There are major internal disputes within the party right now and Karamo has done nothing to bring the party together.”
βAnd after standing on a podium in front of the chair, how could she divide the party? Her platform was to burn it down to eliminate the people who disagree with her.β
The reason for Friday night’s intense exchange was apparently an allegation that Kalamazoo County GOP officials are working to “cleanse” Karamo loyalists from positions of power.
Pehlis, who is part of a Macomb County GOP leadership team that supported Karamo, accused Sackett of delegating the Karamo-supporting district from their positions last week.
The alleged purge followed the recent censure and removal of three Karamo loyalists from the Kalamazoo GOP executive committee. Two of those members sued Sackett and the provincial party after she accused them of orchestrating a “coup” ahead of the February convention at which Karamo defeated DePerno.
Those two members claim that Sackett and DePerno try to remove anyone who disagrees with them.
DePerno β who, like Karamo, is a 2020 election denier β claimed that the February leadership election was fraudulent, and more recently has said that Karamo had her campaign staff “counting ballots in the pits.”
In a police report, DePerno claimed the members are part of a group of “anarchist-minded delegates” in the Kalamazoo Republican Party, whose goal is not to raise money and win elections, but to push a “radical agenda” through a ‘Christian cult mentality’ that will ‘cleanse’ the party.’
The two women (Sackett left; Pehlis right) were caught on camera getting into a physical scuffle Friday night, allegedly related to internal party rivalry
Kristina Karamo won the election for Michigan state GOP chairman in February, defeating Matthew DePerno, who has since allegedly launched a stealth campaign to undermine her.
DePerno was endorsed by Trump but failed to get the votes he needed to become the next state party chairman in the mid-February election
A controversial post from the Michigan GOP that Karamo defended
Ken Beyer, the new chairman of the Michigan GOP’s 4th Congressional District Committee, said DePerno is a “sore loser trying to keep us from succeeding and moving forward.”
He accused DePerno and his faction of trying to “sabotage” Karamo, suggesting that he doesn’t want the Michigan GOP to want the Republican National Committee to “step in and take over the (state) party and put Matt in ( Karamo’s) position. .’
Karamo and DePerno have both denied the results of the 2020 election and previously shared the 2022 vote as the Michigan GOP nominees for secretary of state and attorney general, respectively.
Karamo, won the GOP state presidency while refusing to concede in the 2022 Michigan Secretary of State election, which she lost by a margin of more than 600,000 votes.
She is the first black woman to chair Michigan’s Republican Party.
Last month, she was widely condemned for defending a social media post by the Michigan GOP comparing recent gun safety laws passed by the state legislature to the Holocaust.
The post, which was a photo of hundreds of wedding rings seized from Jews being sent to concentration camps, read: “Before they collected all these wedding rings … they collected all the weapons.”
At a press conference, she defended the post, saying people are “way too offended.”