DETROIT – You might say that when it comes to the race among the Republicans trying to become Michigan’s governor, this has been the year of the zombies — in more ways than one.
The two leading candidates both have, yes, zombies in their past: Tudor Dixon starred in Buddy Bebop vs. the Living Dead, playing a character who is eventually eaten by zombies; she also acted in other low-budget zombie and vampire films. (The film’s trailer called it “offensive,” “disgusting” and “sexual.”)
Kevin Rinke, whose family owns several prosperous auto dealerships in suburban Detroit, has been running a TV ad which asks “Why Do Dead People Always Vote Democrat,” which features a lurching zombie in a dirty Biden-Harris T-shirt, an ad that’s been widely denounced as divisive, unfair, and tasteless.
The three other candidates on Michigan’s Aug. 2 primary ballot, Garrett Soldano, Ralph Rebrandt and Ryan Kelley have no known zombie connections, except that, like Dixon and Rinke, they are sort of ‘political zombies’ in that they have no previous record of work in or even interest in politics at any level.
None has ever run for any office. None has ever held any government position of any kind, except for Kelley, who was once planning commissioner for a township near Grand Rapids.
A year ago, virtually no one in the state (including me) had ever heard of any of them, and surveys show the vast majority of voters still haven’t.
Nevertheless, one of them is going to get the chance to try to defeat incumbent Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who is wildly unpopular in some circles for her tough lockdown policies early in the pandemic.
Did the GOP really blow this one?
Considering that this is also expected to be a strong Republican year, given voter dissatisfaction and ongoing high inflation, it is hard to escape the conclusion that Republicans may have thrown away a huge chance to take back the governorship in a key state.
How did this happen?
Nobody saw this coming a year ago. Republicans thought they had an extremely strong candidate in James Craig, who had won high marks in a tough job as police chief in the City of Detroit.
They had another strong candidate — Perry Johnson, a businessman who touted his success at quality control, and was wealthy enough to buy a TV ad during last year’s Super Bowl.
But in a stunning scandal, both of them, and three other candidates, were thrown off the primary ballot for submitting forged and ineligible signatures. In some cases, the phony signatures seem to have been collected for them by one Shaun Wilmoth, who, had they bothered to check, had pled guilty five years ago in Arlington, VA to having committed election fraud.
Democrats think that’s deliciously ironic, given that Republicans have been arguing that elections need to be made more secure; in this case, existing mechanisms uncovered the fraud.
But it has left Republicans without a convincing candidate. Tudor Dixon, a 45-year-old former steel company sales executive for a now-defunct family business, is probably the front-runner, since she has been endorsed by the family of former U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, and the Detroit News.
Besides Rinke, who seems to have the deepest pockets, the others include Ryan Kelley, known for organizing an armed anti-Whitmer rally at the Capitol in Lansing; The Rev. Ralph Rebrandt, pastor at a community church in the Detroit suburbs, and Garrett Soldano, a Kalamazoo-area chiropractor.
On the issues, there is very little difference. All are stoutly anti-abortion, and only Kevin Rinke would allow exceptions for rape and incest. Rebrandt wouldn’t even allow abortion to save the life of the mother. Except, again, for Rinke, the others all support the false claim that former President Trump won the 2020 election.
Bizarrely, in recent weeks drag queens — men who dress up as glamorous women — have become an issue, especially to Tudor Dixon. Several courageous Michigan librarians, notably Joyce Krom of Mt. Clemens and Huntington Woods have started “drag queen story time,” in which the performers read to children to show that there is nothing wrong with being different.
Dixon wants to make that a crime. In response, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel shot back that there plenty of real issues to worry about, and added “drag queens make everything better. Drag queens are fun,” and added “a drag queen for every school,” a joke that got national attention.
Regardless of how you feel about drag queens, this, like much of what the GOP candidates are talking about, are not mainstream issues. When it comes down to social policy, polls show that a majority of Michigan voters are pro-choice, and the abortion issue could stir a larger than usual turnout of liberal voters.
All this does not, of course, mean a Republican victory in November is impossible. The Biden administration is quite unpopular in Michigan as elsewhere, and there could be an irresistible GOP tide.
Michiganders, however, are often ticket-splitters, and at least as of now, Governor Whitmer is far more popular than the President; a recent poll by the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce showed her with a 49 positive; 41 percent approval rating.
Michigan also tends to almost automatically give its governors second terms; the last time that didn’t happen was in 1962, when John Swainson was narrowly defeated by a man who was already famous, auto executive George Romney.
In politics, however, never say never. Especially in a year when zombies and drag queens are a part of the campaign.
Photo by Daniel Jensen on Unsplash
