LANSING, MI — House Speaker Jason Wentworth said it was not the fault of former President Donald Trump that Republicans underperformed in Michigan but the campaigns that candidates ran during the 2022 midterm cycle.
Wentworth, R-Farwell, made the comments Thursday, Nov. 17, when speaking to reporters during a roundtable in his Lansing office.
“Full responsibility on myself. We lost – I mean, fair and square, we lost,” he said. “I don’t think anybody imagined the governor would perform as well as she did. I think the House Democrats should thank Gov. Whitmer for their majority, because I don’t believe House Democrats earned that majority; I think Gov. Whitmer delivered that majority to House Democrats.”
Michigan Democrats swept nearly every race from the top of the ticket down on Nov. 8, performing a feat not seen since the early 1980′s when they took both chambers of the legislature and the governorship in one election. That’s not to mention the Democratic control that has been retained on the state Supreme Court, as well as for the positions of attorney general and secretary of state.
This, in turn, has caused a barrage of finger pointing by Republicans in the wake of massive losses in search of who’s to blame, including the party itself disparaging Republican gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon for not being appealing enough to voters statewide. How she ran her campaign and the former president also received a share of that blame.
But Wentworth, who will leave the legislature at the end of this year, said Republicans had no one to blame but themselves when it came to poor performances in the House, specifically.
He said the caucus, historically, runs “our own campaigns,” and that it did not “rely on any outside entities.”
“We don’t rely on the GOP. We rely on our candidates and our incumbents to do the work, to meet with their constituents, to run grassroots campaigns,” Wentworth said. “So, we did not lose for any other reason than us not winning. That’s it. There’s nobody to blame. … I’m not going to point fingers at the GOP. I’m not going to point fingers at Trump. The only thing I’m going to do is give credit to Gretchen Whitmer for winning.”
His comments come somewhat in juxtaposition to those made by outgoing Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey, R-Clarklake, who earlier this week told a Jackson-area television program that Republicans lost because of Trump’s influence, coupled with the presence of reproductive rights being on the ballot as well.
“His interests are for him, it’s become abundantly clear,” Shirkey said Monday, indicating that Trump’s self-motivated interests were most evident in a lack of funds to support the campaigns of Republican candidates.
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Wentworth, however, didn’t seem to share that same viewpoint when talking to reporters Thursday, saying that “any one of those aspects could have influenced … voters to come, or not come, to the ballot box.”
“And so, I can’t pinpoint any one issue, other than I take responsibility for losing majority,” he said. “I’m going to work hard to make sure to get it back next time. And I think that this next time, there are a lot of things that won’t be working in the Democrats’ favor.”
Wentworth added that he did not believe the House Democratic Caucus would “be able to ride Gov. Whitmer’s coattails in 2024″ and promised that the next election, which coincides with the 2024 presidential election, “would be much different.”
“In a year where the governor ran 11 points, almost 11 points ahead, House Democrats should be at 60-plus seats and they’re not. They’re at 56. They barely squeaked the majority,” he said.
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