WELCOME COMMITTEE

We’re sure U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson is more accustomed to adoring crowds and fawning Republican members of Congress. But that’s not what he got when he checked into the Townsend Hotel in Birmingham on Tuesday, August 26, a night ahead of a fundraiser the next day at the home of Bobby Schostak, Michigan GOP chairman from 2011-2015, on the board of the real estate development company Schostak Brothers and founder of the Templar Baker Group, a strategic political and business consulting company that counts among its partners the noted Peter Karmanos. Instead, about 50 protesters positioned themselves outside of the luxury hotel, replete with signs, anti-Trump administration chants and a message projected on the side of the Townsend calling Johnson a “Guardian of Pedophiles.” Birmingham police provided assistance to U.S. Capitol Police while waiting for arrival of Johnson at the hotel, according to an incident report we pulled from the department. The next morning the Oakland County Sheriff Department had road blocks or check points on the Birmingham street where Schostak lives. Sheriff Mike Bouchard told us that his department is often requested to provide varying degrees of security assistance when political pooh-bahs are in town. No word on whose behalf the fundraiser was being held, although a couple of party insiders speculated it could be for Congressman Tom Barrett who is seeking a second term for U.S. House District 7, which is centered around Lansing but sprawls as far away as a small portion of Oakland County. When Barrett first ran and lost an election attempt in this district against now-Senator Elissa Slotkin, the race cost well over $30 million, the most expensive House contest in the history of the country.