2012 congressional campaign and petition scandal
In April 2011, McCotter was the only member of Michigan's 15-member congressional delegation who did not confirm he was running for reelection. He indicated interest in running against incumbent Democrat Debbie Stabenow for the U.S. Senate seat in Michigan in 2012, but in May 2011 announced that he would not campaign for the position.
After announcing his intention to run for reelection, McCotter was expected to win the Republican nomination easily, but on May 25, 2012, Michigan Secretary of State Ruth Johnson announced that he had failed to submit enough valid petition signatures to qualify for the August 7 primary ballot. Although McCotter had submitted 2,000 signatures, the maximum permitted by Michigan law for congressional primaries, a preliminary review indicated that fewer than the required minimum of 1,000 were valid. According to a spokeswoman for the Secretary of State's office, several of McCotter's petition signatures were duplicates. Michigan election law stipulates that if duplicates are found, both the original and duplicate are ruled invalid. McCotter had the option of running as a write-in candidate in the primary election or as an independent in the general election if he failed to qualify for a primary ballot spot.
At the time the apparent fraud was uncovered, McCotter was on a congressional trip to Taiwan. On May 26, a source within McCotter's campaign told the Detroit Free Press that McCotter conceded that the signatures would be ruled invalid, and that he was considering a write-in effort. McCotter confirmed this to Nolan Finley of The Detroit News, adding that he did not understand what happened with the signatures on the petitions.
Later that day, state officials announced in two separate reviews that more than 85 percent of McCotter's petition signatures were invalid. The Secretary of State's office said its review revealed only 244 of 2,000 signatures were valid. Numerous petition sheets appeared to have been copied—in some cases, as many as three times—and in some cases a different canvasser's name was attached to one of the copies. Michigan elections director Chris Thomas conducted his own review, and said there was evidence signatures from 2010 petitions had been cut-and-pasted onto the 2012 sheets. Thomas also said that McCotter had only turned in 1,830 signatures, and all but 244 were invalid. His office's review revealed that dozens of petition sheets appeared to have been copied in what he described as an "unprecedented level" of fraud.
Late on May 27, the Secretary of State's office announced that it found the potential fraud egregious enough to ask state attorney general Bill Schuette to look into the matter. In an op-ed that ran in the May 29, 2012, Detroit News, McCotter announced he would mount a write-in campaign in the Republican primary for his seat. He also acknowledged that the signatures in question were indeed invalid, based on his own legal team's review. Likening himself to George Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life, McCotter said that he was running a write-in campaign to "clean up my own mess."
On June 2, McCotter announced that he was ending his bid for reelection and would leave the House at the end of his term. In his statement, he said that he felt obligated to fulfill his duties in Congress and assist Schuette and Johnson in getting to the bottom of the petition fraud. These obligations, he said, made mounting a write-in bid for Congress impossible. "One can't clean up a mess multitasking," he said. McCotter was the first sitting congressman since the late 1940s not to qualify for his party's primary.
A month later, on July 5, The Detroit News reported that McCotter had spent much of the time since his presidential campaign failed writing a television pilot script for a comedy/variety show starring himself, to be called Bumper Sticker: Made on MoTown. It featured characters with the same nicknames he used for members of his staff and a guest appearance by conservative commentator S. E. Cupp. "They take pot shots about McCotter's ill-fated bid for the White House while spewing banter about drinking, sex, race, flatulence, puking and women's anatomy", the newspaper wrote.
