NEWS

GOP wraps up key districts in Macomb Co.

Jennifer Chambers
The Detroit News

Macomb County Republicans appeared to have secured all 10 state House seats in their GOP-leaning district, according to unofficial election results early Wednesday.

Election results as of 2 a.m. Wednesday showed wins for Republicans including Diana Farrington, Steve Marino and Jeff Yaroch over Democratic challengers in separate key state House races.

Macomb County was one of Michigan’s battlegrounds where several state House seats were up for grabs, and Democrats tried to regain control of the Republican-led lower chamber.

According to unofficial results in District 30, Farrington, spouse of term-limited Utica Republican state Rep. Jeff Farrington, won with 53.8 percent of the vote. She ran against Democrat Michael Notte of Shelby Township, the son of the late Sterling Heights Mayor Richard Notte.

“We have a victory. I am so honored people have put their trust in me,” Farrington said by phone early Wednesday.

The House Republican Campaign Committee spent $147,000 on the race between Farrington and Notte.

In District 24, Marino, a Republican Macomb County Commissioner from Harrison Township, beat challenger and Democrat Dana Camphous-Peterson of Mount Clemens with 55.1 percent of the vote, according to unofficial results.

Marino is a 27-year-old political consultant. Camphous-Peterson works in the office of Macomb County Executive Mark Hackel, a fellow Democrat.

The seat is term-limited state Rep. Anthony Forlini, R-Harrison Township.

Undercover audio recordings and reconnaissance work dominated the District 24 race.

Diana Farrington is the Republican candidate in District 30 for state representative.

Democrats forced Marino to cancel a fundraiser by revealing it was scheduled at the house of a doctor who had been indicted on charges of illegal prescription drug distribution. Marino later told the Macomb Daily he was unaware of the indictment.

A string of recordings also led Marino to disavow claims he had made in audio recordings that he paid for powerful lawmakers’ bar tabs with a lobbying firm and supported outsourcing jobs to countries without strong labor protections.

But the Republican Macomb County commissioner had said his campaign was “going very well” and voters he had spoken with seemed to care more about more pressing political issues than the recordings and other Democratic attacks.

Steve Marino is the Republican candidate for state representative in the 24th District.

Camphous-Peterson, 53, meanwhile, had said she wanted to focus on increasing higher education funding and fixing roads in the county.

In Macomb’s 33rd state House race, unofficial results showed Yaroch won with 70 percent of the vote over Democrat Yani Warda in the GOP-leaning district, a seat held by term-limited Rep. Ken Goike, R-Ray Township.

Warda owns Stellar’s and Co. Inc. a janitorial service in Macomb Township. Yaroch is a firefighter and Richmond City Council member.