DETROIT – Few, if any, have accomplished as much for conservative Republican causes and candidates in Michigan as lawyer and lobbyist Bob LaBrant. He was instrumental in making Michigan a right-to-work state, something once thought impossible.
As senior vice president of public affairs for the Michigan Chamber of Commerce for decades, he often successfully organized business interests to support right-leaning causes and candidates and oppose liberal ballot initiatives.
But this fall, he intends to vote to re-elect Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, and apparently the Democratic incumbents for secretary of state and attorney general. They are all liberals.
LaBrant, a 76-year-old Vietnam veteran, is deeply conservative. For him to support Democrats is as about shocking as Bernie Sanders showing up to campaign for Tudor Dixon would be.
However, he feels he has to do that because the Republicans are fielding “the most unqualified state-level ticket in recent Michigan history.” None have any qualifications for the jobs they want, he said in a stunning, blistering column in the Detroit Free Press Sept. 30. None, except Shane Hernandez, a former legislator tapped to run for lieutenant governor, have a day’s experience in government.
Nor do any have top management experience in private industry. Tudor Dixon, the Republican nominee for governor, once worked in sales for her father’s steel company, which subsequently went bankrupt. As LaBrant noted, Matt DePerno, the GOP nominee for attorney general, “is under criminal investigation for voting machine tampering.” Kristina Karamo, the nominee for secretary of state, is mainly “a featured QAnon conference speaker,” who does not seem to have a grasp on what the duties of the job are.
Polls show it is unlikely that any of the GOP candidates in Michigan will get a chance to govern. None is having much success raising money. All are behind by double-digit margins and seem to be falling even further behind with each new survey.
There’s an obvious story here — and a second, deeper one as well. Now, it must be said that in politics, “it ain’t over till it’s over,” and the only poll that really counts is the one in the voting booth. Democratic Gov. James Blanchard had a 14 point lead the weekend before the 1990 election, and then lost in an historic upset.
But events like that are rare, and if present trends continue, it will mean that Michigan Republicans booted what looked like an historic opportunity less than a year ago.
Governor Whitmer had angered conservatives with her strict lockdown policies during COVID, and irked progressives with her decision to support auto insurance “reform” which ended Michigan’s unique guarantee of full coverage for citizens who suffer catastrophic injuries in any motor vehicle accident.
Dana Nessel, the attorney general, was seen as too far left and too abrasive by many voters, and earlier this month had her department’s criminal indictments in the Flint water poisoning cases dismissed by a judge who said they were improper.
Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson was probably less vulnerable, but had upset many older voters with her insistence that all appointments be made online.
However, instead of nominating candidates who could be competitive, the GOP chose nominees who, as LaBrant noted, were chosen only because they supported Donald Trump’s false claim that the last election was stolen from him.
But beyond what looks like a case of electoral suicide on behalf of Michigan Republicans is a more important issue: Why does anyone think they should vote for candidates for high office who have no experience in government?
Politics is a complex and skilled art. Tudor Dixon showed her naiveté when she allowed Democrats to define her as an anti-abortion fanatic, and made no attempt to refute those charges for weeks, probably ending any slim chance she had to win.
But government itself is much, much harder. It involves knowing a vast amount about how systems work, and knowing how to bring people together and create working coalitions with lawmakers who may not much like or agree with each other, or you.
Whether or not you agree with her politics, Whitmer has been successful at negotiating budgets and agreement on some issues, even though her Democrats have been in the minority in both houses of the legislature throughout her entire term. Why?
Simple: She spent 14 years serving in both houses and getting to know her colleagues on both sides of the aisle. Possibly the most skilled governor in modern history, John Engler, was considerably more conservative than most Michigan voters. But he was an extremely successful chief executive because he had spent his entire adult life as a lawmaker; he was still a student when first elected.
There’s a myth that the founding fathers didn’t want “career politicians” and that their vision was a world in which any farmer could leave the plow and take a turn in Congress. That was somewhat possible when we were a small agricultural country — though most of our early leaders were educated and sophisticated men.
Even those who we think of as “non-political” leaders usually have had the equivalent of political experience. President Dwight D. Eisenhower kept a multi-national coalition together during history’s biggest war, which was probably harder than most elected jobs.
Ronald Reagan may have been an actor, but he was also the governor for eight years of our largest state, and a union official befoe that. Even outliers Jesse Ventura and Sarah Palin were successful mayors before they became governors.
Nobody, even those critical of the American Medical Association, would think of having Uncle Bob the mechanic do their heart bypass instead, no matter how skilled he is at carving the Thanksgiving turkey. So why choose someone without a day of experience to be the CEO of a multi-billion dollar enterprise called state government, an outfit that has 10 million clients?
That simply makes no sense.
