The Michigan Republican Party filed a complaint with the state on Friday over Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s reelection campaign paying for her use of a private jet to visit her ailing father in Florida.
The law lets elected officials use political funds for incidental expenses incurred while carrying out government work.
“The Governor’s trip to West Palm Beach was indisputably not a trip for official business, as evidenced by the Governor’s own admission that the trip was to visit her father,” GOP executive director Jason Roe wrote to the elections bureau, which is in Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s department.
The March flights were valued at about $27,000. The governor will reimburse her campaign the equivalent of the cost of first-class commercial airline tickets for herself and her two daughters, who flew on the return leg. Whitmer was joined by her security detail on the plane provided by Detroit-based PVS Chemicals.
Whitmer’s campaign says commercial flights were not reasonable for security reasons and the governor also worked during the four-day trip. It contends that security costs can be covered by candidate committees, citing recent secretary of state guidance allowing officeholders to buy bulletproof vests and home security systems as long as they would not have done so as non-elected officials.
But Roe said payments for private travel are not necessary expenses and Benson never considered whether private planes can be deemed security expenses. Whitmer and her campaign, he said, “are desperately attempting to convolute Michigan campaign finance law in order to justify paying for the Governor’s personal travel.”
Brandon Hall, a Republican activist who is trying to impeach the governor, filed a similar complaint Tuesday. Benson could levy a fine if she finds a violation.
Last week, a lawyer said Whitmer’s campaign would pay for the flights after he learned PVS could not accept payment from a nonprofit fund tied to Whitmer because the company is not authorized to provide charter flights.
Michigan Democratic Party spokeswoman Rodericka Applewhaite called the complaint “bogus” and accused the GOP of “neverending obstruction” as the governor combats the coronavirus pandemic.
