Strange tea party soap opera at the state Capitol

Courser

MIRS news service has confirmed that three top House staffers for Republican state Reps. Todd Courser and Cindy Gamrat were booted from their jobs recently as the two tea party allies continue to draw controversy just six months into their tenure in the Legislature.

As a cost-saving move, freshmen Courser (R-Lapeer) and Gamrat (R-Plainwell) decided to share three staffers at the start of their House terms in January. But one member of the trio, Joshua Cline, recently resigned, according to MIRS, and the two others, Keith Allard and Ben Graham, left on Monday.

West Michigan Politics blogger Brandon Hall has reported that all three staffers, tea party loyalists, left under “mysterious circumstances” and that it was not a friendly parting of the ways. Rather, it was a “Saturday Night Massacre” style of departure, according to the WMP blog.

MIRS (subscription only) reported that Allard, a former House candidate, and Graham had just received pay raises about two months ago.
Beyond the office turmoil, WMP also indicated that Courser no longer attends House GOP Caucus meetings in protest of Gamrat getting booted from the caucus in mid-April.

Strangest tale of all

But the strangest tale of all that has surfaced in the middle of this Tea Party Peyton Place is a claim that a crude, sexually explicit email that surfaced in May, making numerous allegations about Courser’s private life, was actually written by Courser. Essentially, the accusation is that the Lapeer Republican secretly wrote the email so that he could play the victim.
Courser has not responded to all this drama and GOP officials have not confirmed that the legislator was the author of the message.
According to WMP, House GOP leadership was given evidence that Courser sent the email on Friday, May 22. The message surfaced in the state Capitol just as rumors began to swirl that tried to link Courser and Gamrat romantically (both are married).

The profanity-laced email, apparently sent from a phony account, went much further, accusing Courser of indulging heavily in alcohol, drugs and illicit sex. It alleged that the ultraconservative lawmaker engaged in “male-on-male paid-for sex behind a prominent Lansing nightclub.”

WMP, attributing the explanation for this alleged bizarre incident to an anonymous House source, wrote that the scathing email was viewed as a “false flag” strategy, meaning that Courser supposedly wrote the email to make him look like the victim of an organized attempt to trash his reputation.