Being governor of Michigan isn’t always the most exciting job in the universe. Twenty-plus years ago, when Geoffrey Fieger was starting to think seriously about running, I suspected that he didn’t really understand everything the job included.
So I showed him what the governor had done the day before, which was to appoint members to the asparagus board.
Fieger, to put it mildly, showed little enthusiasm for asparagus board appointments, or for gripping duties like Cherry Festivals. But he could not, alas, be persuaded not to run. He won the Democratic nomination, but lost badly to the incumbent, John Engler, in November.
Naturally, I’ve always thought the world would be a better place if he had taken the money he eventually spent on that race ($6 million or so) and given it to me instead. Such is the stuff dreams are made of, but as we know, life isn’t fair.
Seriously, however, it really does matter who the governor is – and it is important that you vote not only in the Nov. 6 general election, but in the primary Aug. 7.
Few voters usually take part in primaries, and things could very easily go wrong. For example — what if we were to elect a venture capitalist who had no government experience, and decided the key to prosperity was to tax poor people’s pensions? That’s something someone like that might do, to give big business a tax break, on the theory that somehow that would lead to their creating jobs. Later, a guy like that might sign union-busting legislation making this a right-to-work state, and appoint emergency managers galore, mainly in poor black communities that were financially strapped.
You could even imagine his appointees in Flint forcing an entire mostly poor, mostly black city to drink bad water to save money, water that eventually gave them lead poisoning.
Yes, if we didn’t pay attention, we might well wind up with a governor like that… except, whoops … we already did!!!
Now for the really scary news:
Hard as it may be to believe, we might easily end up with worse than Relentlessly Positive Rick Snyder. True, for eight years, he caved in and signed most of what the right-wingers in the legislature wanted. But he occasionally rose above that.
For example, he vetoed a bill recently that would have weakened standards protecting ship’s ballast water from being infected with invasive species.
He managed to push enough Republicans into passing the vitally important Medicaid expansion, which means more than 600,000 people now have health care who didn’t.
Snyder also handled Detroit’s bankruptcy about as well as anyone could have, and may have been the only politician in either party who could have negotiated the deal to get the new — and vitally necessary — Gordie Howe Bridge constructed.
None of that makes up for what amounts to criminal negligence in Flint, and baffling slowness to do anything about it once it was clear that there was lead in the water.
But again, we could have gotten worse, and we might. Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette will almost certainly be the Republican nominee for governor this year, after he blows by the inept lieutenant governor, Brian Calley, loopy State Sen. Pat Colbeck and nonentity Jim Hines in the August 7th primary.
Schuette is a ruthless right-winger who has bitterly opposed medical marijuana, same-sex marriage and adoptions, and is now fighting to keep the Voters Not Politicians anti-gerrymandering state constitutional amendment off the ballot.
This is a man so personally wealthy from Dow Chemical money that he seemingly “forgot” that he used state employees to notarize and witness his selling off $7. 2 million of dollars in Virgin Islands real estate he happened to own.
In other words, it is essential that we elect someone, anyone else in November. The odds would tend to favor the Democrats. Since 1982, whenever a governor has voluntarily retired, Michigan voters have replaced them with someone from the other party – and Snyder is leaving less popular than most.
Voters also tend to turn on the party of the President in midterm elections – and though Donald Trump won a narrow victory here in 2016, a solid majority of the voters disapprove of his job performance.
But Schuette is a wily politician who has been in office, elected or appointed, since 1984 – most of his life.
He’s only once miscalculated in an election, when he took on U.S. Sen. Carl Levin in 1990. He hasn’t lost since, and will say or do anything to get elected.
So who should we vote for in the Democratic primary?
First of all, Bill Cobbs is a nice sensible man, a retired executive and the only African-American in the race. He is waging an underfunded write-in campaign, and has no chance.
Shri Thanedar is familiar to anyone with a television, because he has spent millions on slick ads promoting himself. He also has no political experience whatsoever, seems hopelessly naïve about how government works, and apparently left dogs and monkeys that he was using to test toxic chemicals locked in a building after a previous firm went bankrupt.
Don’t even think about it.
Abdul El-Sayed undoubtedly has the most charisma and brains. His positions on the issues are closer to mine than any other candidate; he wants to invest heavily in education and wants Michigan to establish a single-payer health system.
But he has two potentially fatal drawbacks: For one thing, it is difficult to imagine voters choosing a Muslim governor.
Two years ago, Democrats nominated Ishmael Ahmed, one of the most respected people in the state, for a seat on the state board of education, a basically advisory body.
More than 200,000 people voted for the other nominee – who also lost – but refused to vote for Ahmed.
What does that tell you?
More importantly, El-Sayed has no experience in Lansing and no real experience in government, other than about a year as director of Detroit’s health department.
Our last two governors got to Lansing with no experience dealing with the legislature, and it hurt both of them.
That leaves former State Senate Minority Leader Gretchen Whitmer, who really does understand how government works. She is an attorney and former prosecutor; has served in both houses of the legislature, and cares about education and has a practical plan to fix our infrastructure.
Yes, she sometimes has been too timid, even wishy-washy; yes, she needs to spend more time in Detroit and do more to reach out to the African-American community.
But she’s got the credentials to govern – far more than Jennifer Granholm had. There really isn’t any choice.
That is, if we have any hope of once again having a government that cares about people who don’t have trust funds.
***
Most important book of the summer: If you read only one book this year, make it Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha’s What the Eyes Don’t See: A Story of Crisis, Resistance and Hope in an American City. (One World/Random House, $28)
“Dr. Mona,” as the world now knows her, is, of course, the splendid pediatrician who did more than anyone to alert the world to the fact that the children of Flint were being systematically lead-poisoned thanks to actions taken by the government, which was busily trying to cover up their crimes.
You may be pleasantly surprised to discover that Hanna-Attisha is as wonderful a writer as she is a public health hero.
This book is also about a lot more than Flint; among other things, it makes one of the most compelling arguments for why immigration is important … without even trying.
