It was another contentious Michigan republican gubernatorial debate on Wednesday night with candidates Garrett Soldano and Keith Rinke accusing frontrunner Tudor Dixon of being an establishment candidate and Rinke telling Dixon “the Devos family owns you.”

Ryan Kelley added to the targeting of Dixon by telling her to “bring solutions, Tudor” after she called out Governor Whitmer for vetoing adoption funding in the budget. Kelley also targeted Rinke. When asked a question about their support of funding for tourism, Kelley brought up past lawsuits against Rinke where he was accused of racial slurs and derogatory comments about women.

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But one thing they all agreed on is that Michigan schools are teaching Critical Race Theory (CRT) in one form or another and they don’t like it. Last night’s debate was held at Oakland University’s Oakland Center in Rochester and was moderated by Chuck Stokes of WXYZ in Detroit, Doug Reardon of WXMI in Grand Rapids and Elle Meyers of WSYM in Lansing.

The moderators explained that the theme of the night was “Pure Michigan” and that the order at the podium and of the questions were chosen at random and would be the same throughout the night, giving candidate Ryan Kelley first crack at answering the questions throughout the debate.

The candidates at the debate were the ones who will appear on the ballot on August 2nd which include Tudor Dixon, Ryan Kelley, Ralph Rebandt, Kevin Rinke and Garrett Soldano. James Craig was not at the debate because he is a write-in candidate. The debate was streaming online but didn’t appear to be televised anywhere in the top 2/3 of the lower peninsula or in the Upper Peninsula and it was Dixon who was the only one who even mentioned Northern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula when she was talking about the challenges of finding daycare.

Two of the moderators, Stokes and Meyers, threw in some editorializing when asking some of the questions, seemingly on board with democrat talking points and policies. Meyers first question was more of a statement than a question. She said, “Let’s talk a little bit about education…I know you all have all touched on critical race theory. It looks like critical race theory is not being taught in Michigan. There are no plans to have it taught in Michigan according to the Michigan Department of Education. So how would you, as governor, guide schools to teach about diverse populations, race and racism here in Michigan?”

All candidates pushed back on the question. Kelley said, “So that’s an absolute false statement that you made in regard to critical race theory not being taught in schools. That was something that was decided at the State Board of Education as well as FOIA requests that came from the Novi school district that said yes in fact, that they are teaching critical race theory.”

He went on to say that on day one as governor, he would sign an Executive Directive that would terminate all of the DEI (Diversity, Equity; Inclusion) positions in all of our state schools because it violates Article I, Section 26 of the Michigan Constitution. He said American history “does teach all those different aspects of culture and diversity” and told the moderator that her baseless claims of it not being taught in schools is absolutely inaccurate.

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Soldano says he doesn’t trust them (State Board of Education) and said CRT is being taught in the schools and described it as a fundamental racist belief system fueled in the faulty ideas of marxism. He pointed out that they’re also teaching gender and sexual theory and calling it “essential” to the kids. As Michigan’s next governor, Soldano said he’d be banning CRT, sexual and gender theory and diversity, equity and inclusion training. His answer to her question was to “teach the right history…all the history.” Rinke said he doesn’t know what they call it in Michigan but that CRT or forms of it have been taught. He said “it has been acknowledged that it was a college course and it’s filtered its way down through K12 and lower – and it’s wrong.”

He said that the first thing in regards to education that we need to address is literacy and said that we have an “epidemic of illiteracy in our kids. Roughly 50% of the students in public schools in Michigan are considered illiterate when you look at their reading level proficiency and we can’t teach anything to our children if they can’t read.” He said his first step as governor is to bring up our reading literacy to over 90%. Dixon said that the Department of Ed maybe should talk to Detroit Public Schools because “their superintendent was quoted as saying ‘we are deeply using CRT in our schools’ so he is obviously coming out and saying this is absolutely being taught.” She reached out to a Detroit school teacher to ask what he’s seeing in the classroom and he said, “our kids feel like they have no opportunity. CRT is being deeply used in our Detroit public schools and these kids are being told that they are being held back. They don’t have the opportunity.”

She went on to say that she’d like the students to be taught an accurate history of what’s happened in the United States… “the good and the bad… and highlight the people who have done great things so that they know that they can do great things too.” Rebandt answered the question by saying that he was at the Farmington School Board meeting at the beginning of this year when they addressed this very issue and

“Farmington Public Schools being applauded for being the first to come out with this 30-day challenge so that the kids would go home and deal with these issues to try to find out their white privilege and all these other things so that they could better get along with each other.”

He continued, “But it’s really against what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was teaching. He aid that we shouldn’t be judged by the color of our skin whether we’re white or black but by the content of our character.”

He said that CRT and SEL (Social and Emotional Learning) are nothing more than “indoctrination of our children” and that they teach our kids to hate each other. The candidates had other issues they agreed on as well including the importance of the second amendment, clean drinking water and that promoting Michigan tourism and competing with other states to get people and jobs into Michigan was extremely important.

The latest MIRS-commissioned poll conducted by Mitchell Research & Communications on July 17th & 18th shows a tightening race with Dixon at 28%, Rinke 20%, Kelley 15%, Soldano 10% and Rebandt with 1%. The polling reports a 4.3% margin of error. Former President Donald Trump hasn’t endorsed any of the candidates yet and in a Facebook post on Wednesday, Soldano called on him to stay out of the race because

the “grassroots will be extremely, extremely unhappy” if he endorsed the “establishment-backed” candidate.

The next debate for these candidates will be hosted by the Oakland Country Republicans and will be at the UWM Sports Complex Auditorium in Pontiac from 7 to 8pm on Wednesday, July 27th.