McCotter will gift political funds to St. Jude's hospital

This much is clear: If U.S. Rep. Thaddeus McCotter ever wants to run for elected office again, he’ll have to start over from scratch.

The five-term Republican Congressman from Livonia who represents part of west Oakland County announced last week that he is donating all of his campaign money at the end of the year to the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

According to the Federal Elections Commission, McCotter had $193,242 in his campaign war chest at the end of March. He also had no campaign debt at that time.

McCotter’s announcement last week almost certainly quashes any notion that he would ever seek another elected position, after he requested a state Attorney General’s Office investigation into allegedly fraudulent candidate petition signatures submitted to the Michigan Secretary of State in May.

Officials with Secretary of State Ruth Johnson’s team have said that just 244 out of the nearly 1,800 signatures McCotter’s team turned in were valid, with many of them being photocopied or otherwise altered.

That development — plus a write-in campaign that McCotter abandoned just days after he announced it — put Milford Republican Kerry Bentivolio in the position of being the only name on the ballot for 11th Congressional District Republican voters.

However, former state Sen. Nancy Cassis was tapped by Wayne and Oakland County Republican kingpins to mount a write-in campaign of her own, something that she plans on contributing $200,000 of her own money toward.

Dr. Syed Taj, a member of the Canton Township Board of Trustees, and William Roberts, a Lyndon LaRouche activist, are the two candidates squaring off for the Democratic Party’s nomination for the 11th Congressional seat in the Aug. 7 primary election.

The new 11th Congressional District includes Waterford, West Bloomfield, White Lake, Commerce, Wolverine Lake, Walled Lake, Wixom, Milford, White Lake, and Highland after being redrawn last year following the release of U.S. Census data.

U.S. representatives serve two-year terms and currently earn $174,000 annually. The general election is scheduled for Nov. 6.