by Susan J. Demas

February 16, 2009

Senator Tom George

Sen. Tom George could become the first Michigan governor not to have an undergraduate diploma to hang on his wall since Luren Dickenson in 1939. But the Kalamazoo Republican would still need a place in his office for his stethoscope and scrubs.

Yes, if elected in 2010, George, 52, would be the first physician to occupy the governor’s mansion.

How this happened is a little twist of fate. The year was 1978 and George couldn’t wait to go to medical school. So the University of Michigan junior didn’t.

“I read the catalogue for (U of M’s) medical school. It said you needed 90 undergraduate credits — it didn’t say you needed a degree,” he says. “So I applied.” “It used to be common at the turn of the century,” he adds.

He realized saving an extra year of tuition and expenses would help, as George was the oldest of seven in his tight-knit Roman Catholic family from Flint (“I’m from the city. Unlike Michael Moore, who says he’s from the city, but he’s really from Mt. Morris or something,” he grins.)

So four years later, George walked away with an M.D., but still credits shy of that B.S. in zoology. Last year, the anesthesiologist started thinking about going back for his bachelor’s degree and even made some calls to U of M, but it looks like his quest to be the Wolverine State’s next CEO has intervened.

Longshot label
If there’s one word George will be trying to escape this campaign, it’s “longshot.”

When George announced his exploratory committee January 26, the dean of the Capitol press corps, Tim Skubick, couldn’t hold back his surprise in the Oakland Press. Acknowledging the doc was a “pretty good guy, hard working, does his homework,” and that “you can’t write him off,” Skubick still unleashed a devastating assessment: “Nice try, but if the Tom George for Governor thing is not a longshot, what the heck is?”

The criticism, while not surprising, still leaves George a bit defensive in interviews, as he’s quick to invoke the name of the most famous longshot in recent memory: President Barack Obama. He also notes that he even though he’s a term-limited senator, he’s not scrounging for his next meal ticket.

“I have an advantage because I can take a risk, because I have a good job waiting for me,” he says. “So I can be bold.…I think that’s a good weapon to have.”

But it’s already a crowded field with more than a dozen candidates mulling runs. With the entire elected executive branch and half the legislature term-limited in 2010, there’s no shortage of frustrated politicians with nowhere to go. So far, George, Attorney General Mike Cox and Lt. Gov. John Cherry have officially jumped into the fray, but there are other high-wattage names out there: House Speaker Andy Dillon (D-Redford Township) and former Michigan State University football coach George Perles in the Democratic field and Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson, Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land and U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Holland) on the GOP side.

“[George] isn’t the frontrunner,” said Ken Sikkema, senior policy fellow at Lansing-based Public Sector Consultants. “But when you have an election like in 2010 — and I’m thinking now of the Republican primary — everyone’s a longshot. It’s anybody’s to win.…It would be different if Dick DeVos had run again and he was the definite frontrunner.”

And Sikkema knows a thing or two about George, having been his majority leader in the state Senate for four years. George came there by way of the Michigan House, where he served from 2000 to 2002 and helped pass landmark palliative care legislation. His 2002 Senate race against former Rep. Ed Laforge was one to watch, but George emerged with a 14-point win. Two years ago, he plowed right into the Democratic electoral tsunami, but squeezed out a 4-point victory in a bitter battle with former Rep. Alexander Lipsey.

“He’s not without a pretty good political antenna,” Sikkema says of his former colleague, whom he calls “a thinker.” “It might be a common perception that he’s solely issues-focused, not politically focused.…[But] he’s had political punches thrown at him in elections and he’s thrown some himself.”

Planting seeds
If there’s a single word to describe George, it’s “earnest,” down to his easy grin and mirthful blue eyes. He’ll occasionally call something “nifty” and is one of the few men who can still pull that off. And he’s secure enough to decorate his office with Spongebob Squarepants memorabilia — notably a hard-to-ignore plush propped on his west window. The leftovers from son Matt (who’s outgrown the cartoon at 14) mingle in his messy sanctuary with a framed seating chart of an early Michigan Legislature and a star-spangled quilt stitched by his wife, Sandy, signed at the 2004 Republican National Convention by luminaries such as Newt Gingrich.

George chairs the Senate Health Policy Committee.
Photo by Dave Trumpie

George loves getting going on a good story — often an obscure anecdote retrieved from Michigan history — and when he does, his graying sandy hair flops against his temples ever so slightly. He even made a documentary on the life of World War I Col. Joseph B. Westnedge that aired on Michigan PBS stations in the late 1990s. He credits his medical background for his history-buff status.

“In training, I was always interested in why certain patterns of care developed,” he says.

The father of three is a born lecturer, so it’s no surprise he’s been on the volunteer medical faculty for Michigan State University for 23 years. George also possesses a physician’s confidence. When asked last year if he’d ever consider going back to the state House, as he still has four years left there under term limits, he gave a resounding NO: “It would be like going back and doing my internship again. I know people who have done that, retrained in another specialty, but I’m not — not quite going to do that.”

So George’s decision to seek higher office doesn’t really come as a surprise — it’s just that Congress might seem like a more logical step. But U.S. Rep. Fred Upton (R-St. Joseph), with whom George practically shares office space in Kalamazoo, isn’t going anywhere and the senator says his focus is on state issues, especially the economy and health care.

George has been carefully planting seeds for the last year, as he’s on a first-name basis with every editorial page editor in the state. As chair of the Senate Health Policy Committee, George won them over as chief opponent to Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan’s version of individual market reform. The Blues’ legislation didn’t pass last term, a first for the extremely influential organization. Blues spokeswoman Helen Stojic declined to comment on the possibility of a George governorship, but it’s safe to say he won’t be collecting the nonprofit’s endorsement.

He also served as the public face of Michigan Citizens Against Unrestricted Science and Experimentation (MiCAUSE), which opposed last November’s Proposal 2 expanding embryonic stem cell research. The constitutional amendment narrowly passed, but teaming up with Right to Life of Michigan could certainly help George in a GOP primary. George stresses he did it out of a longstanding principal to pro-life causes, not to appease far-right Republican voters.

Former U.S. Rep. Joe Schwarz, who also tried to become the first doctor-turned-governor in 2002, headed up the pro-Proposal 2 group Cure Michigan. He said there are no hard feelings, despite the controversial campaign, and calls George a “good friend” who’s “well-qualified” to be governor.

For his part, George gives Schwarz some credit for his decision to enter the political fray a decade ago. He recalls a telephone conversation with the then-senator, artfully hitting Schwarz’s militaristic inflection: “He said, ‘Dammit, you can do it. You anesthesiologists, you can work shifts. You just tell those people you work with that you’ll be in Mondays and Fridays and some weekends. And you come down here and help me.’” (Schwarz chuckles at the recollection and calls it “about right.”)

So that’s what George did. He says his experience in the ER gives him a unique perspective on Michigan’s problems that other politicians don’t have.

“It’s so eye-opening. Maybe one patient is there with her husband and it’s their first child and she is 38 and they’ve been trying to get pregnant for 10 years. And they’re so excited and they’ve got the room picked out and they’ve got all the baby stuff there. They’ve got cameras and pictures and they’re playing whale music on the CD player and they’ve got special blankets,” he says.

“And the next patient, it’s some 17-year-old girl — no prenatal care, no vitamins. She’s got 10 tattoos. I go to put her light epidural in and there’s the devil and Mickey Mouse and all this on her back. And she’s smoking two packs a day and she’s there maybe with her grandmother — maybe. And my colleagues here, you know, they don’t get that and…it’s such a different world.”

Breaking ranks
But if George defies his critics — as he’s often done — and wins on Nov. 2, 2010, he’ll have to hang up his scrubs for four or eight years.

That’s a bittersweet proposition, he admits, but he says there’s a lot he can do as governor in terms of health care, noting it’s a “huge drag on our economy.” He’s also casting himself as a bipartisan problem-solver (“If you’re looking for someone to get into a fistfight with Democrats, that’s not me”) — an interesting gambit in a GOP primary. And George isn’t afraid to criticize his own party, which has suffered two cycles of devastating defeats.

“The top solutions of the past need to be augmented by new ideas — in that the solutions of the past largely relied on tax cutting and making government smaller. But those are not sufficient to treat the challenges we face today,” George says. “Government is going to be needed; it plays a role. In fact, some would say, ‘You know, where was it when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the banks failed? There wasn’t enough oversight.’ So it’s hard for Republicans to make the argument that we need less government oversight. It’s a hard case to make now.”

The Republican bluntly says Michigan can’t afford tax cuts right now. And when a reporter reminds him that he just voted to kill the Michigan Business Tax surcharge, George states the obvious: there has to be something to fill the budget hole.

That’s veering from the party line of his Senate GOP caucus, but George seems comfortable with that. When asked if he expects endorsements from his colleagues, George hesitates.

“I…I’ve not asked them,” he says. “I…I think that would be putting them on the spot. I don’t think that would be fair. We don’t even know — I mean, it’s way too early. There could be 10 more people running.”

Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop (R-Rochester) says he’s not planning to delve into the primary process, but praises George’s work on Blue Cross and in favor of the failed smoking ban — something the caucus leader voted against.

“I think the world of Tom George,” Bishop says. “He’s bright, he’s very sharp on issues. I’ve seen him in action — there aren’t many people I’ve seen as tenacious as Tom George in the last 10 years.”

But most Michiganders don’t know George that well. When he arrives in a hospital room, he says some folks “sort of recognize me.”

“They say, ‘You look kind of familiar — are you related to Fred Upton or anything?’” he laughs.

George has 18 months before the primary and 21 months before the general election to introduce himself to the state. With any luck, his former patients will be bragging that they know the new governor — and he just might have helped save some of their lives.

Susan J. Demas is a 2006 Knight Foundation Fellow in nonprofits journalism and a political analyst for Michigan Information & Research Service.