Mr. Soldano echoed Mr. DePerno during a Facebook Live broadcast on Monday, saying that relying on Election Day votes had become a flawed strategy for Republicans.
“We can’t just scream anymore, ‘Hey, just show up and vote,’ because it didn’t work,” he said.
While Mr. DePerno has nabbed the big-name endorsements, Ms. Karamo has her fans as well — including Mr. Forton, who said that if he doesn’t get enough votes to win he would support her instead.
He highlighted that after the November election — when Ms. Karamo lost the secretary of state’s race — she did not concede, while Mr. DePerno eventually did.
“To a lot of us, that makes her somewhat of a heroine,” Mr. Forton said of Ms. Karamo’s defiance.
But Mr. DePerno’s legal entanglements — including the open investigation into his role in accessing voting machines after the 2020 election — have also burnished his standing with right-wing stalwarts, according to Mr. Timmer. He described Mr. DePerno as having the “it” factor for many convention delegates.
“It’s similar to Trump,” he said.
Last August, Michigan’s attorney general, Dana Nessel, a Democrat who went on to defeat Mr. DePerno in the November election, asked for a special prosecutor to be appointed to consider criminal charges against him and eight other election deniers in connection with what Ms. Nessel characterized as the illegal tampering with voting machines used in the 2020 election.
Ms. Nessel referred to Mr. DePerno as “one of the prime instigators of the conspiracy,” but said it would not be appropriate for her to conduct an investigation into her political opponent.
D.J. Hilson, the special prosector in the case, an elected Democrat from Muskegon County, said in an email on Feb. 10 that the investigation was still open. He declined to comment further and would not say whether Mr. DePerno had been subpoenaed.
