08/26/2026
"So, what do you actually do here?"
By Vance Patrick, Chairman, Oakland County Republican Party — August 26th, 2026
I get asked this a lot by first time visitors to our HQ in Bloomfield Hills. It's a good question. They genuinely don't know, because historically, our party hasn't done a good job of explaining: what does a county party actually do?
Our job is to build the car so our candidates can get in and drive it across the finish line themselves — the voter data, the digital tools, the training, the legal muscle, the ground game. The infrastructure that makes a campaign possible in the first place.
This is almost entirely a volunteer effort. None of our senior leadership — myself, our Vice Chair, our Secretary, our Treasurer, our Youth Chair, or our Finance Chair — take a penny from OCRP. We have one paid staffer: our phenomenal Executive Director, Denise Elias, who is responsible for making sure the office is staffed, events are coordinated, and the trains run on time. No one from the RNC or MIGOP is staffing the office this cycle — it's all on us, which gives us the freedom to help our candidates the way we KNOW works.
Every county party either builds that car, or it doesn't — and if it doesn't, every one of its candidates is left trying to build their own from scratch, alone, usually without the time, money, or expertise to do it right. Since I took over in 2023, building that car has been the whole project. Below is what's actually in the garage right now, and what it's already done.
BY THE NUMBERS
$14.7M+ — Estimated candidate savings this cycle from free access to our data and tech tools
60,000+ — Voters reached by our bi-weekly newsletter, every issue, at no cost to candidates
40+ — Invalid signatures our legal team found, disqualifying a Democrat clerk candidate in Southfield
$131.7M — Annual property tax hike we helped defeat, in an August primary, the hardest format to beat one in
THE CAR WE'VE BUILT
OaklandGOPSlate.org
A voter-facing tool where Oakland County voters can enter their address and instantly see every Republican and Republican-endorsed candidate on their ballot, top to bottom, plus absentee ballot requests and polling-location lookup. Built so the county party, district committees, and clubs can put it directly on slate cards and literature — giving every down-ballot candidate a boost through one shared link.
Visit OaklandGOPSlate.org: https://oaklandgopslate.org
Free i360 Voter Data Access
Candidates and volunteers have had free access to i360 — the same best-in-class voter data and voter contact technology leading campaigns pay for — since early 2023. In the 2024 cycle, this provided an estimated candidate savings of $12.7 million, based on an analysis of positions available, i360's rack rate, and a comparison to OCRP's package.
Voter Guides & Slate Mail
Numerous judicial and nonpartisan candidates credit OCRP's 2024 voter guide and slate mail with getting them over the finish line. We've been working hard to raise the funds to do it again in 2026 — to raise the tide for every Republican and Republican-endorsed candidate — and thanks to our supporters, we're in a great position to do exactly that.
Chip In: https://secure.anedot.com/ocrp/ocrp_donation
GOP Training Center
A purpose-built online platform, free and available to Republicans across Michigan, with continuously-added courses to develop candidates, campaign staff, and grassroots activists. Day-one courses included Fundraising Fundamentals, Running for Office 101, Email Marketing & List Building, Message Development & Framing, Michigan State Government & Legislative Process, FOIA-based political research, and Social Media for GOP Organizations.
Visit GOP Training Center: https://goptraining.center
GOP Action Center
A free digital "action center" platform giving candidates and party organizations tools for petitions, surveys, and coalition-building — the kind of activation-funnel infrastructure that typically runs about $1,200 a month per State Senate candidate through commercial vendors. We estimate this saves Oakland County candidates over $2 million this cycle.
Visit GOP Action Center: https://gopaction.center
Event Support
OCRP covers the cost of making sure candidates have a presence at major events like the Arts, Beats & Eats festival over Labor Day weekend and the Woodward Dream Cruise — enormous opportunities to meet voters and generate earned media that individual candidates would otherwise have to fund and organize themselves.
A Bi-Weekly Newsletter
Gives candidates the opportunity to put their events in front of 60,000+ voters on a recurring basis, at no cost to them.
Research
We worked with investigative journalists to break stories about the corruption that envelops Democrat County Commission Chair Dave Woodward.
Opposition Microsites
OCRP builds dedicated microsites to define Democrat opponents so our own candidates don't have to carry that fight themselves. A great example is CrookedCarlson.com (https://crookedcarlson.com), launched months ago targeting Democrat State Senate District 13 candidate Sean Carlson.
THE SCOREBOARD
This infrastructure has already delivered wins — in the toughest terrain in the county.
Southfield City Clerk: Gabi Grossbard
OCRP's legal team successfully challenged Democrat candidate Wynett Guy's nominating petitions, resulting in her disqualification after an appeal to the Secretary of State confirmed more than 40 invalid signatures. That forced Democrats into a write-in effort — the Michigan Democratic Party threw multiple rounds of direct mail and significant ground presence at it, forcing them to waste money in an area they shouldn't have had to spend it, and reducing their war chest. Republican Gabi Grossbard won the race, in a city where Gretchen Whitmer took nearly 89% of the vote in the last gubernatorial election.
Defeating the Oakland County Regional Enhancement Millage
OCRP ran the first, and by far the largest, voter education campaign against a brand-new, unrestricted 1.5-mill property tax that would have taken an estimated $131.7 million a year out of residents' pockets for six years. The effort included OaklandTaxFacts.com (80,000+ visits) and MillageMadness.com, an interactive web game built to reach low-propensity and younger voters (6,000+ unique users), 450,000+ "Vote No" emails, 79,170 texts, and 1,000 yard signs distributed through party headquarters and volunteer networks. Voters rejected the millage in the August primary — an election format where tax increases are notoriously hardest to defeat, which is exactly why they get placed there. This took months of sustained, disciplined voter education, only possible because of the infrastructure we've been building since 2023.
Taken together, this is a party that built the shared data, digital, and field infrastructure most candidates could never afford individually, is actively using it to define opponents and educate voters, and has the scoreboard to show it works — even in the toughest terrain in the county.
OaklandGOPSlate.org, free i360 access, the Training Center, the Action Center, our legal team, our field program, and everything else above exists because members and donors like you make it possible. Every dollar goes directly into the infrastructure our candidates rely on to win. If you believe in what we're building, we need you to help us keep building it.
Become a Member: https://secure.anedot.com/ocrp/ocrpmembership
Donate Today: https://secure.anedot.com/ocrp/ocrp_donation
Thank you for asking what we do. Thank you, in advance, for helping us keep doing it.
Vance Patrick
Chairman, Oakland County Republican Party
