(This following article is courtesy of MIRS -- Michigan Information &amp; Research Service from a posting on their website&nbsp; http://www.mirsnews.com/ from Tuesday, August 31, 2010)<br />
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Wednesday Eyed For 33rd District Convention<br />
It appears 126 Republican Party officials from four mid-Michigan counties will determine at a 7 p.m. closed-to-the-public Wednesday meeting who will replace Rep. Brian CALLEY as the Republican nominee in the 33rd Senate District.<br />
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A meeting held this evening to set the ground rules for the special convention, of sorts, involved the Republican chairs of Clinton, Ionia, Isabella and Montcalm counties and Michigan Republican Party (MRP) Chair Ron WEISER. The group decided that on Wednesday, 30 votes would come from Clinton and Isabella counties each. Another 29 would come from Ionia and 37 would come from Montcalm, according to the agreement reached tonight a source told MIRS.<br />
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MRP spokeswoman Jennifer HOFF confirmed the meeting is tentatively scheduled for 7 p.m. Wednesday and that she would formally release details of the process on Tuesday after information had been shared with county Republican officials and the candidates. She stressed that nothing is official at this point.<br />
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Strictly going by the numbers, the breakdown would seem to benefit former Rep. Judy EMMONS, who represented Montcalm and half of Ionia in the Legislature. The other two candidates actively seeking the nomination -- former Rep. Scott HUMMEL and Michael TRESBESH of DeWitt -- are both from Clinton, the county that received the lowest number of delegates.<br />
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Whoever receives 50 percent of the votes plus one of the present executive committee members will receive the nomination. If no candidate receives 50 percent plus one on the first ballot, there will be a runoff.<br />
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No final decision has been made on the location of the meeting.<br />
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Today's meeting to set the ground rules revolved around a state statute (168.169) that would seem to leave the power of naming replacement for Calley, who is now the Republicans' lieutenant governor nominee, to the executive committees of the counties involved.<br />
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The debate in the room revolved around whether it was fair that Montcalm, the county that had only the third-highest number of Republican voters participating in the August primary (6,418), received 37 votes while Clinton, which had, by far, the highest number of votes (10,311), should only receive 30, a source told MIRS.<br />
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I only had 7,058 GOP votes in the primary and Isabella had 5,942.<br />
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However, state law speaks to the county parties' executive committees filling the appointment and Montcalm happens to have 37 people on their executive committee while Clinton only has 30. To prevent a potential lawsuit down the line, the decision was made to keep the structure as is.<br />
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Whoever emerges from the mini-convention , which is tentatively not open to the press, will face Democrat James HOISINGTON, a 52-year-old golf course manager who once worked as a factory laborer. The district has a 54.3 percent Republican base, which gives the Republican nominee a large advantage going into the General Election.<br />
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The campaigning for the position has been fast and furious among the three candidates in the past week, when it became clear Calley was seriously being considered for the post. Trebesh was on the Michael Patrick SHIELS radio show this morning, saying he should receive the nod since he received 12,848 votes (43 percent) in the primary. He also released a poll that showed a plurality of voters of the 33rd District would prefer him be the nominee.<br />
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Meanwhile, Hummel was talking to county officials across the district about his candidacy this afternoon. And Emmons was working the phones, beating down false rumors that she was getting out of the race or only using her candidacy to squeeze an appointment out of Rick SNYDER, if he were elected governor.<br />
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&quot;Those rumors are all false. The people I represented in the House were my people,&quot; she said. &quot;Nobody ever worked harder for them in the Legislature.&quot;<br />