The Clare County (Michigan) GOP is in even more disarray than the national Party: Police had to be called to the Saturday meeting of the state committee at the local Doherty Hotel after a physical confrontation between two of the members turned comical, according to the Detroit News.
After being told that they would be excluded from the committee members-only meeting, a group of Party members gathered in the hallway outside the meeting room, trying to eavesdrop on the meeting. When one of them tried the doorknob to check if the door was locked, Mark DeYoung, the county chairman, went to the door to see who was trying to get in. As he approached the door, someone on the outside flashed The Finger to him. But things escalated when DeYoung opened the door.
“He kicked me in my balls as soon as I opened the door,” DeYoung said of James Chapman, a Republican from Wayne County who had been in the hall. Chapman then ran at DeYoung, DeYoung claims, slamming him into chairs set up in the meeting room. Chapman claims DeYoung yelled, “I’m going to kick your ass!” Both men deny starting the fight that led someone to call police.
This isn’t the first time the Doherty Hotel had been the site of Republican violence this year: in April, Kalamazoo Republican Party Chair Kelly Sackett and Macomb County GOP Secretary Melissa Pehlis got into a fight in the same hotel after Sackett slapped a cigarette and cell phone from Pehlis’s hands, prompting Pehlis to hit Sackett with an open hand.