LANSING, Mich. — On Tuesday, Feb. 8, state Senate candidate Mike Detmer appeared at a rally on the Capitol steps to spread lies and conspiracy theories around the 2020 election. Detmer recently told a crowd at a Livingston county event, regarding the 2022 elections, “we need to be prepared to lock and load” and to “show up armed” to their polling places. House Democratic Leader Donna Lasinski (D-Scio Township) issued the following statement:
“Mike Detmer comes to town today to spread these election lies mere days after he encouraged political violence.”
“Anyone encouraging a crowd to bring loaded weapons into our political process is a grave concern and not ‘legitimate political discourse’. As a legislature we have seen this intimidation before in our own chamber. We will not allow this atmosphere of fear, intimidation, and personal insult to become the normal course of conducting the people’s business. We uphold our democracy as sacred and this behavior is a direct attack on our ability to keep it. It is shameful enough to use our Capitol building to peddle baseless and debunked election conspiracies but to bring his violent, anti-democracy rhetoric to the seat of government is dangerous. Any representative in government should be ashamed to be associated with him and his campaign, and those in government who have helped create an atmosphere where violence, harassment and intimidation have been normalized should be held accountable.”