It ain’t never over till it’s over. But …
Unless the signs are all terribly wrong, this may be the best election year for Michigan Democrats since 1986, when they won every statewide office and captured one house of the legislature.
In the race for governor, Gretchen Whitmer, the former state senate minority leader, has held a consistent lead over Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette, a consummate career politician who may have tied himself too closely to Donald Trump.
Whitmer, who is 47, had a few stumbles early on, but seems to have straightened out her game and gotten a strong advertising campaign and consistent message. Garlin Gilchrist II, her 35-year-old pick for lieutenant governor, has twice been a source of minor embarrassment for the campaign, first with the discovery of pro-Hamas, anti-Israel tweets he sent almost a decade ago.
He promptly repudiated those, but got in trouble again with the discovery earlier this month that he hadn’t made promised repairs or paid the taxes on a dilapidated Detroit apartment building he bought from the Detroit Land Bank Authority two years ago.
However, people seldom (like never) have been swayed in their vote for governor by whoever the choice for lieutenant governor is. (Quick – name Schuette’s choice. Don’t cheat.) Polls show Whitmer about eight points up, and a comfortable victory seems likely.
PS: Give up? Okay: Schuette’s choice was Karen Posthumous Lyons, the Kent County clerk. Twenty years ago, her father was the GOP choice for lieutenant governor. Hey, no reason to think Democrats (Kildee, Levin, Dingell) should have the only hereditary politicians!
By the way, if you think calling Schuette a “career politician” is unfair … since 1984 he’s been a Congressman, a candidate for the U.S. Senate; director of the agriculture department , a state senator, a Michigan Court of Appeals judge, and state attorney general.
Not only that, he’s exactly the same age (65) as the hated Line 5 under the Straits of Mackinac; voter sentiment, at least for now, seems to be in favor of retiring both. As for the other statewide races:
U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow should win her fourth term easily, against John James, a Trump-loving black businessman, aviation officer, and veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
The only real questions about this race are: A) Will James get even 40 percent of the vote, and B) Will he have any kind of political future afterwards? Republicans like running black candidates in hopeless races, in an attempt to show they are color-blind.
Congress: Every two years, Michigan casts slightly more votes for Democrats than for Republicans for the U.S. House of Representatives … and that has resulted in nine Republicans, five Democrats. Welcome to the wonderful world of gerrymandering!
But this year, Democrats look very likely to gain at least two of those seats – and if a huge wave happened, they could gain four.
Democrat Haley Stevens now seems a clear favorite to beat Lena Epstein, for a suburban Detroit seat now held by the retiring Republican David Trott, who concluded after two terms, that there was less money and more frustration in Congress than in mortgages.
Elissa Slotkin, a former CIA agent in Iraq, acting assistant secretary of state for national security affairs and perhaps the most exciting candidate of the year, seems very likely to beat two-term Congressman Mike Bishop, a lackluster two-termer.
This will be the most obscenely expensive congressional race in Michigan history; total spending by both sides could approach $20 million. But when the Congressional Leadership fund pulled $2.1 million they had planned to spend on Bishop’s campaign, that was a clear indication they expected to play taps for his career.
Elsewhere, Democrats have two longer shots: Gretchen Driskell, who lost to U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg two years ago, is waging a stronger effort this time and has some effective TV ads, but the odds are against her in this district, which covers a lot of farm country north of Toledo and between Jackson and Ann Arbor.
Perhaps the most interesting – and too-little noticed race is in Michigan’s most northern district, which is a battle between retired U.S. Marines: Matt Morgan, a retired lieutenant colonel with a distinguished record of service in Iraq, is an impressive candidate who has become a progressive, favors expanding Medicare to create a single-payer health system, and cutting back military spending.
He ought to beat the first-term incumbent, Jack Bergman, 71, a retired Marine three-star general who some say spends more time at his home in Louisiana than in the Upper Peninsula. But Bergman is anti-abortion, Morgan is quietly pro-choice, and that has usually been the determining factor in this district.
In the other statewide races –
Democrat Jocelyn Benson is a heavy favorite to win the Secretary of State’s race against Republican Mary Treder Lang; she has a huge fundraising advantage, and is perhaps the most qualified candidate for that office in history.
Democrat Dana Nessel is also likely to be the state’s next attorney general, thanks in large part to the general blue wave in the state. She has run an erratic campaign with constant turnover on her staff, but Speaker of the House Tom Leonard, her Republican opponent, is not an especially strong candidate.
Were other things equal, a late-starting independent, Chris Graveline, might well win this race; he has an impressive background and the wonderful idea that law enforcement should be above politics. But he has no serious money, and many who might back him won’t out of fear that the major party candidate they like least will win.
State Legislature: Democrats need to gain nine seats in the state House of Representatives to win a 56-54 seat majority.
Odds are that they will gain, but fall short; it didn’t help when one of their most promising candidates, Jennifer Suidan, was charged with embezzling more than $100,000.
Democrats were thought to face a near-impossible task in the State Senate, where Republicans won 27 seats to their 11 last time.
But both parties expect Democrats to make gains, maybe major gains, this time. There are as many as 15 seats in play – all now held by Republicans. Few expect Democrats to win the nine seats they’d need for control; the body is too heavily gerrymandered. But picking up four or even five seats seems possible.
Ballot Proposals: Indications now are that all three proposals – the ones legalizing marijuana, ending gerrymandering, and making it easier to vote – may pass. If so, that will usher in a brave new world of politics in Michigan. More on that … after the election
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Even Engler never tried this: Since it was created in 1950, the Mackinac Island Bridge Authority has operated, vice-chair Barbara Brown told me last week, “as an independent authority free from outside influence and political pressure.”
Well, Gov. Rick Snyder is attempting to change that, by arranging what Brown aptly calls a “shotgun wedding” between the Bridge Authority and Enbridge, the Canadian firm that owns the notoriously dangerous Line 5 twin oil pipelines.
Snyder wants the Mackinac Bridge Authority to agree to own a proposed tunnel that would encase the pipeline, in case it broke. Barbara Brown thinks this is outrageous, and so do many others.
But the terms of four of the seven members of the Mackinac Bridge Authority expire November 1 – and Snyder will be able to appoint whoever he likes. Brown, who has served on the Bridge Authority since 2005, feels she has a special responsibility here.
Her grandfather, U.S. Sen. Prentiss Brown, was a primary moving force in getting Big Mac built, and served as the Authority’s first chairman, before construction had even begun.
Running a tunnel for a foreign-owned firm, she wrote in an column that ran in the St. Ignace News recently, “is not why the bridge authority was created, and it is not what we do.”
This is an outrage that needs to be stopped.
