He speaks in sober and serious tones and presents himself as a sane family man. Asked about his family life by an interviewer, he said that “his kids are grown and gone” and added that today “I think about my grandchildren” in the battles he takes on.
But his family life is unstable. He has been married four times and has been estranged for more than two decades from two grown children and does not know their children, family members said. (He also has two stepchildren.)
He often talks about his experience as a police officer and firefighter in Kalamazoo, Michigan. But personnel records obtained by the city’s Department of Public Safety, which he left in 1999, include the following note in his file: “Retired, poor rating, would not hire again.” A department spokesman declined to comment.
Mr. Finchem has raised more than $1.2 million, a significant sum for a campaign for secretary of state. (Mr. Lane has raised about $1.1 million, while the other two candidates are well behind.) Much of the money has come from out of state — seven of the eight donors listed as giving the maximum of $5,300 in his last two campaign filings were from other places. Major donors include Brian T. Kennedy, former president of the right-wing Claremont Institute, and Michael Marsicano, former mayor of Hazleton, Pennsylvania, who recently lost the GOP congressional primary.
For all that, he has few visible signs of a headquarters or campaign office. About three-quarters of his spending, more than $750,000, went to a Florida political consulting firm run by Spence Rogers, the nephew of Wendy Rogers, an Arizona lawmaker with ties to white nationalists, campaign filings show. Another $53,000, or nearly 5 percent of his total spending, went to payments to Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. (Many other Trump-backed candidates have done the same, including Carrie Lake, Mr. Trump’s favorite candidate for governor of Arizona, whose campaign has spent more than $100,000 at Mar-a-Lago.)
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