The Truth Behind the Malicious Attack Mailers Targeting Abbie's Campaign
Last Updated on July 14, 2026
Last week, a dark-money-funded political attack mailer hit mailboxes across State Senate District 29. As with previous dirty political moves supporting our opponent, our campaign responded by countering misinformation with truth and quickly moving back to our core campaign messages.
Yesterday, another one arrived in mailboxes. These mailers are specifically timed and specifically targeted to influence the members of our community both most susceptible to misinformation and most likely to vote in the Primary. They purposefully aim to take advantage of the vulnerable to benefit the powerful.
This article, which will be updated whenever new attack mailers are sent out to voters in this race, will be updated to provide the truth behind each smear tactic. We view each misleading claim to be an opportunity to illuminate Abbie’s integrity, commitment to values and the courageous leadership she demonstrates even - and especially - when no one is watching.
(A note on the structure of this article: for those who don’t have a lot of time, the first section below will provide quick summaries and facts behind all of the mailers. For those interested in more details and context, separate sections on each mailer will follow.)
Mailer Summaries and The Truths Behind Them
These mailers are produced and paid for by a dark money political PAC named “Michigan Deserves Better.” The group is organized as a 501(c)(4), which means that they are not required to disclose their financial donors. The President of “Michigan Deserves Better” is a Lansing-based political operative named Joe DiSano, who is a frequent contributor to the various campaign and political committees of State Representative Phil Skaggs.
The “Michigan Deserves Better” dark money PAC has a history of sending highly targeted, aggressive and misleading mailers in tightly contested primaries and local elections, including the current mayoral race in Ann Arbor. DiSano has faced legal action for slander in the past and been banned from at least one social media platform as a result of his tactics.
The first attack mailer hit mailboxes on or around July 2, 2026, imposing Abbie’s face between those of Betsy DeVos and Donald Trump, and attempted to deem her employment at a nonprofit organization as collusion with Betsy and Don to destroy public education.
Here are the facts:
Abbie has spent her career working to support and improve public education and has served as an elementary school teacher, a PK-8 school principal, a policy leader at the Michigan Department of Education and a provider professional learning and individualized coaching for teachers, principals and district leaders.
She is running on a platform to fully fund Michigan’s public schools so that students receive the supports and resources they need; educators are paid professional, livable wages; and historic and enduring equity gaps in educational outcomes are closed.
She was employed by a national nonprofit that received funding from the Doug and Maria DeVos Foundation, Steelcase Foundation and many other philanthropic organizations. In this role, she provided racial-equity-focused leadership coaching and professional learning for school and district leaders across the Grand Rapids, Kentwood, Wyoming, Godfrey-Lee and Godwin Heights Public School Districts.
She resigned from this position in 2021 when the DeVos Foundation made demands that the program change language and elements to eliminate content related to anti-racism, cultural responsiveness and racial equity amidst the cultural uproar over critical race theory.
Abbie is the strongest, most experienced advocate for public education in the Senate District 29 race. She stood up to the DeVos family and refused to compromise programming for public schools.
The second attack mailer hit mailboxes on or around July 8, 2026, reiterating false claims about Abbie being “bought and paid for by the DeVos clan” and adding two new claims about Abbie voting against hiring a “minority-owned janitorial business” and failing to support a wage increase for city workers, “dismissing the pleas of the workers and their union.”
Here are the facts:
Abbie is still not bankrolled by any members of the DeVos family.
In February 2024, Abbie refused to approve a contract that pays workers poverty wages to clean City facilities, citing the City’s ability to pay more to workers (and highlighting the egregious inequities inherent in being asked to approve contracts that pay $200-$300/hour in the same meeting.)
Last month, Abbie abstained from a vote on a new contract with one of the City’s workers’ unions because she had not been provided an opportunity to see or review the contract that she was being asked to vote on, nor hear any feedback or input from the union members themselves. Her fierce advocacy for labor unions and workers’ rights demand that she be able to understand and explain the details and benefits of a collective bargaining agreement for which she bears responsibility.
Abbie is a champion of thriving wages for all workers and is the only candidate in the Senate District 29 who is currently a card-carrying labor union member. She knows firsthand how vital labor representation is to protecting workers and their families, and she is running on a platform to expand worker protections and increase minimum wage to a thriving wage.
Mailer #1 In Detail
It’s as absurd to look at it the fiftieth time as it is the first. Abbie’s face imposed between Betsy DeVos and Donald Trump, surrounded by purposefully misleading statements, inflammatory accusations and “facts” taken out of context.
The mailer provides citations to several sources, including writings by Jeff Smith in the Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy blog (wherein Mr. Smith was quick to publish a rebuttal entitled “My response to a Phil Skaggs-endorsed mailer that insultingly cites GRIID to smear a campaign opponent”).
The Story Behind the Nonprofit and Its Funding
Abbie served as the Director of the West Michigan Leadership Academy (WMLA), a place-based program of a national nonprofit, The Leadership Academy, from 2017-2021. WMLA was supported by a number of revenue streams, including the Steelcase Foundation and the Doug and Maria DeVos Foundation. The program provided racial-equity-focused leadership coaching and professional learning for school and district leaders across the Grand Rapids, Kentwood, Wyoming, Godfrey-Lee and Godwin Heights Public School Districts.
In 2021, The DeVos foundation demanded that WMLA change its program language and elements to eliminate content related to anti-racism, cultural responsiveness and racial equity amidst the cultural uproar over critical race theory. Abbie refused to capitulate. When the Doug & Maria DeVos Foundation pulled its funding as a result, she resigned as the program’s director to allow the program to keep its remaining commitments to the local school districts.
Below is an email sent by Abbie to the nonprofit’s leadership team in July of 2021 team amidst the DeVos Foundation’s demands. (The email was saved by members of her team five years ago and sent to her this week in encouragement and support).
The email reads:
Thanks again for giving the WMLA team the opportunity to really crystalize and share our “line in the sand” related to our position with DVF. Here are our thoughts and position:
We have grounded our thinking and “line-drawing” here in our personal and professional values (just like we coach our Fellows to do) – in this case, integrity, courage and commitment to our community are our north stars. We want the work we’ve done to this point to be honest work – to not be subject to corruption by white supremacy. We cannot build a program aimed at dismantling white supremacy and then knowingly and purposefully act in a way that reinforces it. We know that working at the intersection of leadership and equity requires courage, that it brings detractors and rests squarely in the political sphere – and that leading for racial equity requires committing and re-committing to a willingness to take positions and make decisions that may be uncomfortable and may entail high levels of risk, especially when we don’t know what the outcome will be. We understand the risks of our position. WMLA serves our own community – it impacts our colleagues, our friends, our children. As a program and as individuals, we have a reputation for the work we do in advancing racial equity and are resolutely committed to the integrity of that work, to continuing to do that work with the same passion and quality that has created and grown the program in impact, reputation and demand.
We are willing to make small adjustments to language (i.e., using “dominant culture” instead of “white supremacy culture”) within the program curriculum. There may be other terms we could find compromise language for in further conversation, but there are also terms that we are much less willing to compromise (i.e., “antiracist” – we advertised the program to prospective Cohort 4 Fellows using this language, use it frequently, and don’t believe there’s an adequately meaningful substitute). Our current cohort of Fellows specifically sought out and signed up for a program that commits to cultivating their “culturally responsive, antiracist leadership.” This is the support they want and the support we have committed to provide.
We are not willing to remove the work of Ibram X. Kendi from our program curriculum. Through a process of reviewing and workshopping other ways to connect systems thinking and systemic racism and oppression, Kendi’s work has been the most clear, resonant and helpful in supporting Fellows in their work to identify and dismantle inequities. It would be unconscionable for us to use his ideas without crediting his work. Further, we’ve already introduced definitions from and purchased and delivered “How to Be An Antiracist” to Fellows and assigned reading from it for our next session. We don’t feel we could walk back this content without sacrificing integrity.
We have approached the last four years of program development and implementation from a purposeful stance of continuous improvement. The Foundation has been closely involved and invested in program planning, content review and implementation evaluation for the duration. None of our curriculum content is new or surprising to them. In fact, we organized a “field trip” for our Fellows in Fall 2019 to participate in a book talk by Ibram Kendi and participate in discussion and community-building following the event – with the full knowledge, support and encouragement of the Foundation. There can be no substantive issue with our curriculum content. It is reactionary (and dangerous) politics, not a good faith effort to move toward a shared perspective or mutually-agreeable programming.
From the larger Leadership Academy perspective, we can certainly appreciate that there is perceived risk involved in our “line in the sand.” The organization may be perceived or painted as radical, inflexible or unresponsive to client needs. There is a danger that this could be ill-received by the Board and/or lead to a loss of business and revenue. We wonder, though, about the opportunities it could create – the opportunity to purposefully craft our own narrative about courageous leadership in the face of white supremacy; the opportunity to be not just experts in our field, but trailblazers in pushing back and taking a stand against the CRT misinformation campaign; the opportunity to bring in new business from partners who want to emulate the courage we demonstrate.
We wonder if the Foundation is willing to pull the rug out from under our school leaders, the teachers they support and the students they serve mid-year – to sacrifice their own reputation as champions of public education and supporters of those doing the work. Maybe they are. Ultimately, however, we believe that it’s more important and valuable for our Fellows – and the program – to model courage and integrity by being willing to walk away – rather than to try to keep the program afloat for even six more months by giving in to white supremacy.
I know this may feel like a lot – and with only a little time to process – but looking forward to starting conversation about it this afternoon.
It’s no secret that nonprofits in West Michigan – and across the country – are funded by billionaire family and corporate foundations. Nonprofits that serve essential needs in our community grapple with this tension every day. The services that our communities need should not be dependent on the benevolence and worldview of those who unfairly benefit from the current system. It’s one of the reasons Abbie is working for a fair-share tax system in which wealthy individuals and corporations are finally required to pay their fair share in state taxes.
But all of that information is open and freely accessible. Abbie has talked about this experience in a number of campaign events. She has been, and remains, transparent, accessible and candid in sharing who she is and how her experiences have shaped her.
Thus, the true story behind the mailer, stripped of its inflammatory statements and purposefully misleading information amounts to: “Abbie was employed by a nonprofit organization, for which she was paid a salary. Some of the funders of the nonprofit were members of the DeVos family. When they made demands that violated her professional integrity and undermined the purpose of the work, she willingly took the hits behind the scenes to stand up to them and do what was right for her community.”
Mailer #2 In Detail
In addition to continuing to claim that Abbie is “bought and paid for by the DeVos clan,” this mailer adds some new accusations (that may be verging into libel, despite the inclusion of footnotes, but we’ll leave that be for now) that “Groff-Blaszak continues to vote against people of color and good-paying jobs.”
These claims originate from issues that Abbie has considered in her service as a City Commissioner in East Grand Rapids.
Debunking “Groff-Blaszak voted against hiring a minority-owned janitorial business”
At the February 4, 2024 meeting of the City Commission, Commissioners were asked to approve a contract recommended by City Staff for a third-party organization to provide janitorial services across City buildings. City staff noted that it was both the cheapest contract overall and the one that paid the highest wages to the workers doing the cleaning. The “highest wages” were $15.00 an hour. Abbie’s comments on her vote can be viewed starting shortly after the 1:45:30 mark in the video below:
She says,
“I’m struggling with this… I recognize budgeting issues and we can’t squeeze blood from a stone when it comes to city budgets. I just think it’s a very stark comparison in our agenda tonight that we’re approving contracts that pay $200 to $300 an hour and we are also approving a contract that pays $15.15 an hour, which by just about any study you look at is considered low income. And when you look at income levels for families, if someone were trying to support a family on $15.15 an hour, that is poverty level. If it’s a family of three, two or one, that’s still considered ‘low-income’ at less than 200% of the poverty level.
That is my struggle with this, knowing people will say I’m comparing apples and oranges and I recognize the differences. I recognize we can’t put out an RFP to pay an engineer $15 an hour.
I also just wonder if we are capable or if the City, when we talk about our strategic planning session on Saturday, how we take this into consideration, where if we have the means as a City, we have the value as a community for people who are providing a very important service to our community, that we are not paying… a low wage, but a livable wage.”
Abbie is steadfast in her belief that all work is valuable work and must be compensated as such - that all work should provide enough income to meet an individual’s or a family’s basic needs, and allow them room for recreation, rest and self-determination. AND she consistently uses her position and the tools available as a result thereof - whatever that may be in whatever context may present itself - to push for these most basic of human rights.
Debunking “Groff-Blaszak didn’t support a 5 percent wage increase for city workers dismissing the pleas of the workers and their union”
At the June 1, 2026 City Commission meeting, the Commission adjourned into a closed session to “receive updates on 8c of the Open Meetings Act.” The information shared in this closed session was the first information about any collective bargaining efforts that City Commissioners had received for the current bargaining cycle. (Commissioners never had an opportunity to interact with city workers or their representatives to understand their desires or perspectives.)
When the City Commission returned to an open meeting following this brief closed session, the City Manager called for a motion to approve the proposed labor contract.
Abbie pointed out that this vote to approve had not been indicated on the agenda, and asked to be provided with a copy of the contract that the City Commission was being asked to approve (around the 28:05 mark in the video below). When others balked at the request, Abbie abstained from the vote. (There follows an extended and awkward back and forth among the Mayor, City Attorney and City Manager about whether or not she is “allowed” to abstain from the vote. It’s weird. Give it a watch.)
She is clear that her abstention is because “I have not had the opportunity to review the proposed changes… I don’t want to vote ‘no’ because I may very well be in agreement with the changes. I just have not had the opportunity to review them.”
While it would have been easier to simply vote “yes,” and assume that the contract had been developed with the best interests of the parties involved, Abbie has always been fully committed to understanding the issues before her and in ensuring her ability to fully explain to any constituent or observer why she votes the way she does. (She publishes a Substack newsletter as a City Commissioner to publicly provide that information and invite questions and public participation.)
Another Dark Money Mailer - With a Twist
A mailer supporting Abbie’s opponent also hit mailboxes over the last few days. It’s funded by a different dark money PAC than the one sending the attack mailers. This mailer, pictured below, is funded by “Blue Mitten Action.”
Blue Mitten Action is a 501(c)(4) dark money PAC that was incorporated on June 17, 2026 - less than a month ago - by an attorney named W. Alan Wilk.1
Wilk is a governmental affairs attorney with Dykema Gossett, based in Lansing (the Dykema Gossett PAC, like Joe DiSano, is also a frequent contributor to the various campaign accounts of Phil Skaggs).
He is a member of the Republican National Lawyer’s Association and has recently pivoted from running a number of dark money groups supporting Mike Duggan now that Duggan’s gubernatorial campaign is over.
Dark money purposefully creates so much chaos and misinformation that one could easily overlook this twist: while one group falsely accuses Abbie of being bankrolled by Republicans, an actual Republican dark money group IS bankrolling her opponent.
The Real Story of Money in the Senate District 29 Race
While we cannot even begin to assume the full range of motivations behind these mailers, we have to believe that some amount is to distract folks from what’s easy to see if they know where to look.
Because the real story of money in this race isn’t made up. It’s been in plain sight the entire time. It also wasn’t a story that our campaign was going to tell.
Candidates - especially women - have a narrow line to walk when it comes to public perception, and in this era of soundbites, information oversaturation and purposeful misinformation and it’s challenging to draw a distinction between truth-telling and mudslinging.
But the story of these mailers, the dark money that funds them and their contribution to the cumulative effects of dishonesty and corruption in politics requires us to once again “go honest” and shed light on how power moves to protect itself behind the scenes.
This campaign cycle has been saturated with calls for getting money out of politics in races ranging from small municipal elections to federal races in the spotlight - and it’s one of the reasons that Abbie is running. We have to get the money of corporations and special interests out of politics in order to center the voices of our community in the decisions that affect it.
In her current elected position, Abbie has been an early and vocal supporter of the Michiganders for Money Out of Politics ballot initiative. She and members of our campaign team served as volunteer signature collectors for the petitions, together collecting over 400 signatures for the effort. She has taken the Michigan League of Conservation Voters “No Utility Money Pledge,” refusing to take money from the monopoly utility companies in our state. She has further made a commitment to refuse all money from corporations and private-sector special interests.
By contrast, Abbie’s opponent, State Representative Phil Skaggs, has refused to take the “No Utility Money Pledge.” He has demonstrated no support for the Michiganders for Money Out of Politics initiative. Most importantly, he has taken tens of thousands of dollars in campaign donations (across two campaign accounts, “Friends of Phil Skaggs” and “Phil Skaggs for State Senate” and his own PAC, “PHILPAC”) from special interests, including utility companies, health insurance companies, multi-client lobbyists and other corporate entities.
Records of these campaign contributions are publicly available via a searchable database on the State of Michigan’s website. That being said, it can be challenging to find this database without a direct link, and once found, can be even more challenging to navigate.
So here are the records for ease of accessibility and review. These aren’t a full picture of Phil’s campaign finances. We aren’t looking to scrutinize every contribution (like those from PACs and organizations associated with labor unions, environmental groups and other social causes) or distract from the main story with some of the wilder donations (like those from the Moroun family, the billionaire owners of Detroit’s Ambassador Bridge).
This is a story of a clear and continued pattern of Representative Skaggs soliciting and accepting money and influence from a multitude of corporate and special interests that make our everyday lives more expensive and more difficult:
(Note that due to campaign finance reporting periods and deadlines, public information on campaign contributions after December 31, 2025 will not be available until late July 2026.)
The filing for this PAC is so new that a simple link cannot be generated to a list of officers. However, the Articles of Incorporation for “Blue Mitten Action” can be looked up at the State of Michigan’s Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs’ MiBusiness Registry Portal (Entity #900234056).