It's Over for Church Militant and Karamo

It's been a tough year for Michigan Conservatives and Catholics

COMMENTARY

The Detroit-based, Catholic nonprofit St. Michael’s Media (SMM) reached a settlement agreement on Tuesday in New Hampshire with Father Georges de Laire in his lawsuit claiming a January 19, 2019 story published on Church Militant’s (CM) website defamed him.

In addition to a financial payment of $500,000, SMM published an apology today on its news website Church Militant to the defamed clergyman.

The apology stated: “SMM and Church Militant extend their apologies to Father de Laire for the publication of this story which has been permanently removed from the ChurchMilitant.com website.”

Earlier this week sources were saying SMM and Church Militant would be announcing their dissolution today. As of 6:00 p.m. CST today, that has not been announced.

In a Michigan court, also on Tuesday, the state’s Republican grassroots movement was dealt a staggering blow when a Kent County judge issued a preliminary injunction on Tuesday barring the GOP leader, Kristina Karamo, from claiming she is Chair of the state’s Republican Party and banning her from access to the Party’s checkbook.

After months of vocal concerns about Karamo’s leadership, a faction of the state’s Republican Party committee members called for a vote on January 6 that successfully removed her from office. The judge’s preliminary injunction is effectively upholding that vote.

Both organizations, Church Militant and the Michigan Republican Party, were led by charismatic individuals whose errors and omissions played out over the past eleven months in the national press.

Unlike Church Militant, the Michigan Republican Party isn’t closing, but Karamo’s disastrous, 12-month tenure has weakened the state’s conservatives and divided the grassroots movement when a Presidential election is only eight months away.

The drama of a leader’s demise quickly drains an organization’s energy, leaving behind feelings of defeat and bitterness. Both Karamo and CM founder Michael Voris have followers who remain defiantly supportive in a classic example of misplaced loyalty.

Providence gave me a front row seat to these events.

Background

To great elation from the Michigan GOP grass roots, Kristina Karamo was elected chair of the state Republican Party on February 18, 2023. I voted for her. The Republican grassroots was energized by this major victory. The Party was twenty months away from the November 2024 Presidential election.

A few weeks later, on March 7, 2023, I met Patty McMurray for lunch at a local restaurant in Ferndale. McMurray, who knows every Republican in Michigan, published the successful news website 100 Percent Fed Up. I asked for the meeting, hoping she could give me a job.

I was 100 percent fed up with Church Militant where I was employed as a news reporter and producer. I’d already decided I would resign no later than May 4; I’d marked it on my calendar.

Things were just getting fishier and fishier. The atmosphere in the studio was deteriorating, and the staff knew it, even though no one in leadership said a word.

Maybe that’s not entirely true. Four months prior, employees had been given a big heads up. In a November 10, 2022 (two days after the disastrous mid-term elections) 4-page memo, CM founder Michael Voris cut all staff health benefits, made changes to the PTO buyback program, and announced there would be no raises in 2023. In a follow up meeting the same day, he ominously revealed further belt-tightening in the form of layoffs might be required.

That memo was the beginning of the end of Church Militant.

I first met McMurray on election night. We had several hours to get to know one another while she was reporting for 100 Percent Fed Up and I was broadcasting live for Church Militant. We were watching ballots being counted at Wayne County’s notorious Huntington Center, where, you may recall, during the 2020, election workers taped pizza boxes over the windows so no one could observe the ballot counting.

When I invited McMurray to meet for lunch on March 7, I was hoping she remembered me. She did, but unfortunately, the timing was bad for a job offer. McMurray was just finalizing the sale of her website.

A few weeks later on Friday, March 31, 2023, my instinct to abandon Church Militant and look for another job was confirmed. I was among the 20+ CM staffers dismissed in an en masse post-evening prayer announcement.

The organization’s demise was obviously picking up speed, and I said so at the time, specifically calling out problems with the organization’s governance and its staff management, and trying to warn both colleagues and donors recovery was unlikely.

But I wasn’t entirely devastated. I had just gotten a text from the newly-elected GOP state chair, Kristina Karamo. McMurray hadn’t been able to hire me as a reporter, but she had passed my name along to Karamo, urging her to talk with me about fundraising. The Party was 18 months away from the November 2024 Presidential election.

Meeting with Karamo about Fundraising

I was pretty darn excited about the prospect of working with Karamo. Since Trump’s loss in the 2020 election, I was fired up to get involved in politics. I was living in Wayne County, Michigan, one of the most Democrat counties in the nation! What better place to try and make a difference?

In August, 2022, I ran for Republican precinct delegate in the city of Detroit and won; I became a member of the Wayne County Republican Committee’s governing board, I was an active member of Michigan’s 13th GOP Congressional District Committee. I had gotten to know some key party leaders. I was beginning to get the lay of the land, but I was still very new to Michigan politics. Now that I was unemployed, I would have time to really dig in!

So I was excited about getting the text from Karamo, but I was also cautious.

It seemed odd she wouldn’t already have someone serving in the role of chief fundraiser. Karamo had been favored to win the race for MIGOP chair, a role primarily responsible for raising money. Going into the February convention, wouldn’t the favored candidate already have a chief fundraising officer lined up so on February 19 the organization could hit the ground running? Wouldn’t a candidate for GOP chair already have a fundraising strategy in place and be ready to roll?

I also was puzzled someone without political fundraising experience and who was a relative newcomer to the state — me — could be a contender for the position. But I set that aside, confident a lot of the principles of political fundraising and charitable gift fundraising were the same. And I’ve discovered over the years being an outsider can be an advantage in fundraising. People entrenched in the community are often reluctant to ask their friends for money. I wouldn’t have that problem.

Initial Meeting with Karamo

At our first meeting, I learned a number of basic facts about the new GOP chair’s approach.

Karamo had a goal of $50M. My brain lit up. The amount of money to be raised didn’t trouble me as much as the 18-month timeframe. A fundraising clock began ticking inside my head.

I explained that the key to success would be data. The first and most obvious step would be to identify a list of top donors who had given in the past and to start booking meetings. I told her, “For the next 18 months, you should never eat lunch alone.” She rejected that approach, saying past major donors were all RINOs and wouldn’t give. Hmmm. Okay …

I pivoted, pointing out a herd of brand-new, enthusiastic delegates had just been elected. From that group there would certainly be prospects with giving capacity. Karamo rejected that idea as well saying she had surveyed that group and learned they weren’t inclined to give. Hmmm. Well, okay …

She thought the answer was to reach out to small businesses. I was stumped. How would that work? Get out the Yellow Pages and start calling? Work with local chambers of commerce? While targeting small businesses wasn’t a bad idea, it didn’t seem realistic to me given the timeframe.

And then came the biggest hurdle, Karamo told me political fundraisers traditionally work on commission. I let her know that was troubling. In charitable gift fundraising, it is considered unethical to work on commission.

“The Association of Fundraising Professionals and the National Council of Nonprofits agree: compensating fundraisers by paying a commission on contributions is not ethical.”

Then I did the math. “So if I reach the $50 million goal, I can expect to earn $5 million over the next 18 months?” I asked.

“Oh no,” Karamo told me. The commission would be laddered.

So the devil would be in the employment contract details. That wasn’t going to work for me, but I thought I might be able to offer an alternative of salary plus bonus.

I left the meeting disturbed but promised to provide some ideas and direction for our next meeting.

Second Meeting with Karamo

I went home and got former Congressman Steve King (R-IA) on the phone. A wonderful Catholic, King had been interviewed by Church Militant several times. As producer, I had arranged those interviews so I had his contact information.

He was completely aware of what was happening here in Michigan. I asked him point blank: “Is $50 million a realistic goal?”

King told me, “I don’t think we would be able to do that in Iowa because we don’t have the urban centers, but it might be possible in Michigan.”

I prepared a basic gift pyramid for a $50 million goal. It is a basic organizing structure in fundraising that projects how many gifts are needed at various levels to reach a specific dollar goal.

I also did research on grassroots fundraising and learned former Presidential candidate and Congresswoman Michele Bachmann was considered a masterful grassroots fundraiser. In her 2012 bid for President, she raised more money from the grassroots than any other candidate, including Newt Gingrich. Marjorie Taylor Greene is also an expert grassroots fundraiser. I was hopeful there might be a way to build a strong grassroots component.

Karamo’s executive director joined us for a second meeting. I presented the information I had prepared, emphasizing that fundraising is, of course, about relationships, but increasingly, especially in campaigns with high dollar goals like this one, data-driven. I pressed for more information about the quality and extent of MIGOP data.

I was pretty sure the compensation piece of the discussion was the deal-breaker, and I was fine with that. I hoped I had provided some information that would be of help to the cause.

I had one last conversation with Congressman King. He told me, “The first thing Kristina needs to do is go on a listening tour. She needs everyone’s help. She should meet with the state’s establishment donors and find common ground.”

That sounded right to me. I tried to reach Kristina several times with that information. But by the end of April, I was no longer able to text her. I assume she blocked me.

There were now only 17 months to raise $50 million, and Karamo had no realistic plan. I was pretty sure things were not going to end well. I wondered how the Republican Party in an important state like Michigan could be in such trouble.

Show Us the Money!

As it turns out, fundraising is probably what doomed Karamo’s reign. She stumbled through the September Mackinac convention; but even now, no one is really clear how much money it made for candidates.

Karamo was all about ideology; she wanted to build community through her Good Neighbor program and think long-term. Those aren’t bad things, but that really wasn’t her job, and the Party’s need for dollars was urgent. Even more urgent was the need for Karamo to show her supporters that she could deliver the dollars.

By December, people were losing confidence in her leadership. The November 2024 Presidential election was less than a year away.

Voris Deals a Death Blow

Right before Thanksgiving, Church Militant announced that Voris had been forced to resign over a breach of the organization’s morality clause. Eventually, as details leaked out, it became clear the righteous crusader against homosexuality was still dabbling in his formerly gay life.

But that wasn’t all, a new round of layoffs and staff walkouts on December 1 furthered damaged the organization’s reputation and ability to produce content. The organization when past the point of being able to pull out of the graveyard spiral.

The final nail in the coffin was the defamation lawsuit which has now settled but is probably going to lead to the closure of both St. Michael’s Media and Church Militant.

While it has not yet been officially announced, there are indications closure is imminent. At least one employee has been laid off as of today.

Two others, William Mahoney and Ryan Soules, have made public their affiliation with former employee Joe Gallagher’s new production company Truth Army. It’s not clear if those are permanent side gigs or transitional side gigs in anticipation of CM’s closure.

Gallagher, former head of Church Militant Resistance and at one time, Voris’ heir apparent, is trying to raise $35,000 in support of his for-profit, culture war venture on GiveSendGo. On Monday he launched an email campaign to raise capital for the business.

Time for a Funeral?

The long, slow death of Church Militant left many of us stranded in Detroit, although most have now relocated.

Thanks to Karamo loyalists, the political drama drags on. Weeks ago I decided to quit watching.

Meanwhile … Rome burns.