The Michigan Legislative Black Caucus asked Monday for a formal investigation into an advertisement by a Republican Congressional candidate. The ad, which appeared in the Michigan Bulletin, a Black-owned weekly, lists the wrong election date.
The caucus accused former state Senator Tom Barrett’s campaign of misleading Black voters.
The Barrett campaign says it was a “proofing error” that it’s already taken steps to address.
But state Senator and Caucus Vice Chair Sarah Anthony (D-Lansing) said she doesn’t believe this was a simple mistake.
“For the amount of ads and flyers and robocalls that they are putting forward in the Black community, you would think that they would also use that intentional push to also make sure that Black voters have the correct date,” Anthony said Monday.
In a letter to the Michigan attorney general and Ingham County prosecutor, the caucus asks authorities to look into whether the campaign “intentionally distributed false information about the election process.”
The letter compared the Michigan Bulletin ad with the election date wrongly marked as November 6 to a similar ad that ran in the Lansing City Pulse that had the correct election date on November 5.
But as far as the Barrett campaign is concerned, the story began and ended with a simple mistake.
Jason Cabel Roe, a strategist working for the Barrett campaign, explained both were legacies from advertisements that ran during the state’s August 6 primary. He said an original version of the City Pulse ad also had the wrong election date, but it was caught before going to print.
When it came time to reformat the ad for the Michigan Bulletin and its Black-targeted audience, Cabel Roe said the designer was working with the wrong file.
“We were working with that previous version that had the wrong date. And the proofer just missed the date on that. And so, it got through without us noticing that it still had the wrong date on it from a previous version,” Cabel Roe said.
He mentioned that the Michigan Bulletin has already received a fixed version of the ad for next week’s issue. He also pointed to multiple other ads and mailers sent to Black voters that listed the correct election date as proof the campaign wasn’t engaging in anything nefarious.
As to why Democrats would be concerned about the issue in the first place, Cabel Roe said it could be a reaction to inroads he sees the Barrett campaign making with Black voters.
“I understand that they are very nervous that a group of voters who have pledged their loyalty to the party and gotten very little in return are looking elsewhere,” he said.
But Anthony said the ad is an example of Republican candidates falling short in Black outreach efforts.
“Any and everyone is welcome to campaign for our vote. But they also have to stand by their record. And that’s what I judge people on. Not by these performative measures,” Anthony said.
