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by Tim Skubick
March 27, 2009

Rarely do you have an opportunity to test your political instincts. But with the entrance of another business type into the race for governor…dollars to donuts, Rick Snyder wants nothing to do with the media right now.

Typical stuff from business guys who know squat about politics and, if they had their druthers, would have nothing to do with the media at all. Too bad. Ya thought this guy might be different.

But alas he’s not.

“He’s not doing any media interviews. We’re just going around the state listening,” his media person says, confirming the instincts outlined in paragraph one.

That’s really code for: Mr. Snyder is not ready for prime time. That doesn’t mean he might not get there, but at this read it is just safer to run around the state using his ears and not his mouth.

There is something in the DNA of business folks. They are more comfortable in the closed boardroom, where they don’t have to worry about what they say…because the news media never get inside to hear it.

If they screw up, the whole world will never know it.

Entering the political arena is just the opposite, and while one understands the desire not to make a mistake, you have to wonder, how long will Snyder avoid the media? And by avoiding it now, he has already made his first mistake.

Word has it that Snyder has been thinking about running for the GOP nomination for governor for 10 years. You would think that during that time he might have developed some contacts inside the state’s political media.

Yet when he fired off an impersonal press release last week announcing he was forming an exploratory committee, most everyone in the Capitol press corps went, “Rick who?”

To be fair, that’s exactly what was said when Jennifer-who? ran for attorney general. So apparently you can overcome the obscurity, but it would have been refreshing had Snyder been more forthcoming. Instead of a press release, why not a phone call or two?

“Hi. You don’t know me. I’m Rick Snyder and I might run for governor. I thought you might want to know. Can we chat?”

But again, that is not part of the business model, which is pretty straightforward: avoid the media whenever you can and keep it at bay as long as you can.

Ask any captain of industry from the Big Three on down if he or she spends any energy on cultivating the media.

“What, are you nuts?” is the likely response.

And you reap what you sow, lest anyone forget the meat grinder the auto guys found themselves in down in Washington last December. It was a first-class debacle, from the jet planes right down to their gawdawful testimony before Congress.

With his self-imposed muzzle, Snyder has made mistake number two. He is allowing others to define him while he is out there listening.

And his opponents are wasting no time trotting out all sorts of stuff about him that may or may not be true. And since he ain’t talking, all these negatives are the only stories being reported.

That means when the Ann Arbor business baron finally decides to break his silence, the public’s image of him may not be very positive.

Welcome to the world of politics, which is nothing like the sequestered and media-free world inside the boardroom cocoon.

Tim Skubick is Michigan’s senior Capitol correspondent and has anchored the weekly public TV series “Off the Record” since 1972.

Tim Skubick Extra Extra… (A bonus for Dome readers)

Policy Shift Fuels Rare Rebuke…
After you read this, you’ll know why the governor’s shop wanted to sit on this letter.

The unwritten rule in Lansing is that you don’t take on the governor in public, and although the rule has been broken, it’s a courtesy kind of thing out of respect for the office. Plus public spats can sometimes turn ugly, which hurts everyone.

With that in mind, 74 members of the Michigan House recently signed a private letter regarding Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s “shift in energy policy.”

While polite, the correspondence was a rare rebuke.

At issue is the governor’s decision to place on hold the construction of new coal-fired plants in this state. She wants a review to make sure they are environmentally safe. The lawmakers say that’s an “admirable” goal, but they want the construction jobs now.

The letter tells the governor in no uncertain terms that by delaying the permitting process, “The state is in a sense reneging on the promise of thousands of new construction jobs….” And for good measure, in case the governor missed the point, “The urgent need to create jobs trumps most all other priorities during this time of economic crisis.”

Pretty strong stuff, and to make matters worse for her, 33 of those who signed the letter are from her own party, including House Speaker Andy Dillon, who had earlier gone public rejecting her delaying policies.

The fingerprints of the Michigan Construction and Trades Council are all over this correspondence. Obviously, the union wants these jobs and it’s not happy that the environmental lobby somehow got the governor to delay them.

Nobody around here can remember the last time a sitting governor got a letter like this from so many disgruntled legislators.

Guilt by Association…

Is this logical? State Democratic Party Chair Mark Brewer says whomever the Republicans run for governor will have to answer for the failed economic policies of “George Bush, Dick DeVos and those Southern Republicans who wanted to stab the auto industry in the back.”

But then he advises that when the Rs try to link Lt. John Cherry to Gov. Jennifer Granholm, the voters will see through that.

“The voters are sophisticated enough that they aren’t going to buy that.”

So let’s see if we have this straight. When Brewer tries to play the guilt-by-association card against the Republican nominee, voters will buy it. However, when the Republicans play the same card against Cherry, if he is the nominee, the same voters won’t punish Cherry for Granholm’s sins.

If there is logic in there somewhere, please point it out.

Brewer, who appeared on the Off the Record public TV broadcast, conceded that the current governor has had a rough go of it. In 2006 she blamed Bush and her opponent DeVos for the economic downturn, and voters did not blame her.

But this is not 2006. Since then there’s been a wholesale meltdown in the domestic auto industry, which brought the Big Three to its knees. Granholm could not get elected dogcatcher today. Which is why the Cherry camp is worried. Why would voters support him when he was a key player in her administration?

“When we look back years from now, the governor laid the foundation” for an economic recovery and “she did a great job” under awful circumstances, Brewer argues.

Maybe in the long run, but Cherry is running in the short run and there won’t be a recovery by 2010. That means Granholm’s economic policies, which the GOP will say produced the highest jobless rate in 25 years, will be tattooed all over Cherry in commercial after commercial.

Then we’ll see how “sophisticated” the voters really are.

See the Brewer performance at WKAR.ORG.