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by Tim Skubick
June 26, 2009

Headline: Independent Candidate For Gov Wins
(Lansing. Nov. 3, 2010) Bucking the odds and confounding the pundits, Independent Party candidate (fill in the blank) became Michigan’s next governor yesterday.

To be sure, the planets are not currently aligned for an independent challenger to defeat the Republican and Democratic parties as they battle to win the governor’s office in 2010. Conventional wisdom suggests only majority parties win elections.

Tell that to the voters in Connecticut, who years ago elected independent Lowell Weicker to be governor. Or how about our neighbors to the west who picked a former wrestler, Jessie Ventura, to be Minnesota governor. Add the less familiar names of Gov. Angus King of Maine and Gov. H. Russ Potts of Virginia, who ran as independents and did the impossible: they won.

In recent days the chatter about an independent candidate in Michigan has moved from whisper to audible. And recent events are feeding the decibel rise.

Talk to the 44 new members of the Michigan House. When they knocked on doors last fall, the first question they got was, “Are you in office now?” Translated, voters wanted nothing to do with incumbent legislators.

Talk to the voters in Detroit who had a chance to elect a guy with hands-on experience to continue his duties as mayor of Detroit. They chose outsider/non-politician Dave Bing over Ken Cockrel.

Citizens are also fed up with the two political parties, which spend too much time worrying about the next election and too little time solving the citizens’ problems. This next election will be about that anger, and the crop of Democrats and Republicans for governor have hooked their wagons to those parties.

Also on the political landscape are two state governments in exile. They were pretty much formed by outsiders because officials in Lansing were not leading and often in a state of political paralysis.

Filling in that vacuum is the think-tank Center for Michigan headed by former publisher Phil Power. He has surrounded himself with a host of business types, former legislative leaders, and others who are sick of the gridlock in Lansing.

Not far behind are the business types at Detroit Renaissance and the Detroit Regional Chamber currently working on a scheme to revamp the tax system. Rather than wait around while the governor and lawmakers ride the ship of state into the crapper, these outside forces are taking matters into their own hands.

Some “outsider” from within these groups could emerge as the next George Romney. The former head of American Motors formed a citizens committee almost 50 years ago to change the state constitution, and out of that came Gov. George Romney, who was a Republican but with an independent bent.

Some have suggested that self-described non-politician Rick Snyder would be better off to chuck his GOP strings and run as an independent. Others have mentioned current Democratic House Speaker Andy Dillon as a possible independent candidate, since he doesn’t have a snowball’s chance of swiping the Democratic nomination from labor-anointed front-runner John Cherry.

And who knows who else is out there?

Such a candidate needs lots of money and must appeal to moderates in both parties and independent voters who vote the person and not the party. The planets may not be aligned right now, but the right person could shove them into place between now and that mythical headline of November 3, 2010.

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

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Labor Bosses in the Sky

The passing of Frank Garrison, the former president of the state AFL-CIO, means all the old-school labor leaders who once prowled the political stage in this town are now gone.

To be “old school” your DNA had to contain passion, stubbornness, the ability to make a threat and keep it, and an unflinching devotion to the movement — which superceded all else.

Frank Garrison was the personification of all that and then some, and he shared those traits with the likes of Bill Marshall, Sam Fishman, Steve Yokich, Owen Bieber, Leonard Woodcock, Doug Fraser, and August “Gus” Scholle.”

Mr. Garrison was not the tallest guy in the room, but he cut a wide path at a time when labor tossed its weigh around in the Michigan House and Senate. He was never bashful about doing that, either.

Mr. Garrison had a tough exterior, but beneath it all he was a lover of his wife, Dora, his family and grandkids, who gathered at the family retreat on a lake near Cadillac, far away from the trenches of the state Capitol.

“It was good that he had time to enjoy that,” reflected one of Garrison’s former henchmen.

With Mr. Garrison you always knew where he stood. “Spin” was not in his lexicon. Neither was B.S., although he could dish it out when it served his purposes. He was never a gracious loser but always returned to the game, on behalf of his union brothers and sisters, to fight another day.

That’s what he did in a Lansing hospital bed for 21 days with his spouse at his side. At one point, it actually looked as though he would prevail, but the next morning he was gone.

He’s now in the big union hall in the sky with all the other labor bosses. Minimum wages, workers’ comp reform, civil rights, strike threats and picket lines are but fond memories up there, while the legacy of their combined efforts to improve humankind down here live on.

Graduated Income Tax Flip Flop

On three previous statewide votes, Michigan folks resoundingly rejected a graduated income tax, which seeks to squeeze more money from the rich while giving a tax break to the middle and lower classes.

If the current public and private polling data are correct, the attitude has shifted and shifted significantly. Now if the graduated tax were on the ballot, 60 percent would say yes.

It’s an almost unbelievable flip-flop that appears to be across the board. In fact, the only sub-groups in the EPIC-MRA survey to reject the concept are men and women 30-35 years of age, males under 50 and self-described Republicans. Everyone else, no matter age, gender, education, income, or region of the state, is on board.
The data are revealing in so many ways. First, you would expect those earning the big bucks would trounce this thing, but turns out 53 percent of those earning between $75,000 and over-$100,000 say yes. Sixty percent of all other income groups agree.

Everyone knows we are a divided state, with those folks on the west side of the state being “different” than those on the east side. But both areas back the tax shift: 60 percent in Wayne-Oakland-Macomb and 55 percent on the “other” side concur.

We are also divided north and south and Up North, where folks are more conservative. Sixty-six percent in the Traverse City market say yes, while the lowest support, but still a majority of 53 percent, are in the Lansing area.

While Republicans say no, 78 percent of the Democrats and, more importantly, 59 percent of the critical independent voters want the change, too.

These numbers are what’s driving the behind-the-scenes efforts to mold a new tax system with a graduated rate. Even business groups can’t deny the movement, but they want some business tax relief in return if they eventually sign off on a tax system the Democrats have wanted for decades — and may be on the verge of getting with a possible statewide vote this November.

Watch Your Language

Watch that provocative language, warns the governor as the two sides round third headed for who knows where on the bill to expand Cobo Hall.

Nobody said this would be easy, and for once the folks in this town were right. When the Detroit City Council blew up the Cobo “deal” hatched last December, everyone knew piecing together a new one would be a challenge.

Making the job more difficult is the so-called Novi language. The GOP Senate wants the verbiage but the Democratically controlled House and the governor don’t.

That provision says that if for whatever reason the North American International Auto Show does not stay in Detroit, state support would shift to Novi in Oakland County.

In effect, Gov. Jennifer Granholm considers those fightin’ words.

“I don’t want to see language that is provocative language that might cause those stakeholders to go in a different direction,” she observes while sending a warning to the Rs that the Novi stuff should be dropped.

At this read, the Rs are likely to reject the advice.

Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson continues to argue that he doesn’t want Detroit to lose the auto show, but if it does and it looks like it may go to Chicago or Los Angles, he wants to nail it for his neck of the woods.

As they say, something’s got to give, but so far no one has given anything…expect for the governor’s observation to knock-off the “provocative” lingo.