Clearing the Air

Chapters 1 & 2 | Chapters 3 & 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapters 6, 7 & 8

Chapter 5: Gamechanger
With the fight now in the Republican-controlled Senate, we needed new angles to exploit. Our previous polling consistently demonstrated this was not a partisan issue, with identical support from Republican and Democratic voters. Strategically, though, we decided we needed to go beyond our previous research with something direct, targeting Republicans only. We needed a way to convince Republicans that this issue wasn’t partisan, that toeing the line of protecting business owners’ rights wasn’t gelling with what most of the public wanted.

Thanks to an unlikely partnership of Michigan’s Republican and Democratic party chairs to try to make Michigan relevant in the presidential nomination process, our state’s primary was moved to January 15, against the national parties’ orders. Well, it was sort of a primary. The Democrats had Hillary Clinton on the ballot, and the Michigan delegation would not be seated at the Democratic national convention. The Republicans merely lost half of their delegates, but still had the full field of candidates on their ballot. Regardless, it gave us a chance to single out Republicans for a poll on our issue.

We polled Republican presidential primary voters all right — and wasted a bunch of money. The numbers came back identical to what we already knew. Seventy-seven percent of 2008 Republican presidential primary voters favored smokefree worksites; 67 percent favored smokefree restaurants and bars. Different polling firm (EPIC MRA); different target group; exactly the same results. We hoped it would demonstrate that conservatives liked this issue as much as liberals did. In retrospect, though, it didn’t have any effect on the Senate’s support or willingness to take up the issue.

Shutdown cleanup
In the aftermath of the 2007 state government shutdown, Majority Leader Bishop and Speaker Dillon resolved to work better together. As a show of good faith, the duo conducted a series of town hall forums across southeast Michigan in January and February 2008. We paid close attention to the dates of the town halls and encouraged our advocates to attend and ask questions on our issue at each forum.

On Monday, January 28, the Oakland County League of Women Voters held its town hall at Oakland Community College. Oakland County is home to some of our most impassioned advocates. As in most town halls, the event encouraged attendees to submit questions on cards to be selected and read aloud by the moderator. We had numerous advocates in attendance submitting a simple question, “When is there going to be a hearing on the smokefree bill?” On this winter evening, the question was the second one asked.

Speaker Dillon went first. He spoke about how the House had just passed the bill. He spoke about how he supported the bill and the fate of the issue was now in Sen. Bishop’s hands. Applause followed.

Sen. Bishop gave an answer most of the public had heard before. He spoke about how this was Big Government intruding on private businesses. He criticized the version of the bill that passed the House. There were too many exemptions, he argued. It created an unlevel playing field. He finished his answer.

The moderator asked the next question on another topic. Sen. Bishop was the first to answer this time. However, he surprised the audience and particularly our advocates by saying he wanted to add one more statement about the last question. Sen. Bishop then indicated the Senate would be taking up the smokefree issue “this year.” Thunderous applause followed.

More coffee
We credited much of the success we had already experienced in the House to the meetings with representatives back in their districts. We decided it was time to continue those events, especially in the Senate. Days before the Oakland County town hall, we held what in hindsight became our most significant district meeting.

The American Lung Association had hired a new government affairs staff person, Susan Schechter. She wasn’t your normal non-profit lobbyist. The six-foot two-inch Duke Law School graduate had been a stay-at-home mom for nearly four years. She gave up a lucrative legal practice as an expert in employment law to stay home with her three children. After years at home she decided her kids didn’t need all of her time any longer, so it was time to give back.

The Lung Association seemed like a perfect fit, especially since she had lost her own mother to lung cancer caused by smoking. Schechter brought a fresh perspective to our campaign. She also brought tenacity. She was intimidated by no one and approached anyone who looked or acted like a lawmaker to ask for his or her vote. She also brought one final, frustrating and enduring quality to our campaign: naivete about the legislative process. And there was one more thing. We had yet to meet a “soccer mom” in Oakland County who didn’t know Susie Schechter.

At 9:30 a.m. on January 25, Sen. John Pappageorge, a Troy Republican, was scheduled to meet at a local coffee shop with a few constituents about the proposed smoking ban. Some of us had met with Sen. Pappageorge in the past and never walked away putting him in the “yes” column. We felt he needed to meet some of his voters. By 9:45 a.m., Sen. Pappageorge had not arrived for the meeting. His district aide indicated politely that the senator had become tied up and she would dutifully report back to him all the comments from the meeting. Rest assured, Susie Schechter, Sen. Pappageorge will hear your comments, the aide said.

But the Queen of the Soccer Moms did not find 25 local supporters to fill that little coffee shop in order to speak with an aide. Schechter politely argued that these people took time out of their very busy schedules to discuss a legislative issue important to them, and Sen. Pappageorge owed them the respect of attending the meeting he said he would attend.

A brief 15 minutes later, Sen. Pappageorge arrived. He ended up staying another 90 minutes. Every person in attendance was given the chance to speak, and every one of them gave an emotional, sometimes tear-filled, argument why the lawmaker needed to vote for this bill and why he needed to encourage a vote soon. At the end of the meeting, just like our previous meetings, Sen. Pappageorge gave us no reason to mark him in the “yes” column. However, Schechter never gave up on him. Probably no lawmaker received as much attention from advocates as Sen. Pappageorge and, at the end of the day, he voted “yes” on every version of a smokefree bill to come before him.

Video contest
As another way to gain media attention and keep the public’s focus on making Michigan smokefree, the Campaign decided to conduct a video contest among middle and high school students statewide. The MI Smokefree Video Challenge encouraged students to create a short video telling state senators why Michigan should be the next smokefree state. Submissions were accepted for two months, then narrowed by the Campaign to the top five submissions. The public voted via our website for their favorite one.

Again, showing our strength in southeast Michigan, not only were there numerous submissions from Oakland County, but the winners were Bloomfield Hills eighth-grade students. The students received $500 for a trip to a smokefree city, and we garnered good local press on the issue.

In his winning statement, one of the students expressed a point that showed us we needed to continue pushing the health angle of our issue in our messaging — “When people come up with a list of things that kill people, they don’t even consider secondhand smoke. I think it’s completely unfair for someone to die from breathing in secondhand smoke if they have never smoked their entire life.”

Economic study
Another tactic the campaign decided to undertake was to commission our own economic impact study to prove smokefree status would not harm our state’s economy. Our opponents did a respectable job convincing lawmakers that in our already weakening economy, the state could not afford to pass policies that would harm business owners. We knew this simply was not true. We had studies from nearly every state that had already gone smokefree to disprove that. Yet we needed a report that was focused on Michigan, from a Michigan researcher.

Once we decided we needed to do a study, the first person we decided to approach was not only someone we knew would do a great job on the research, but someone who also had a unique perspective on the issue — Ken Sikkema. The former Senate majority leader had joined Public Sector Consultants, a Lansing-based policy research firm, after he left office due to term limits. While in office, Sen. Sikkema had refused to take up our issue. We were curious if we would consider our research project.

In our first meeting with Sikkema and his colleagues Emily Houk and Peter Pratt, Sikkema admitted that the evidence was stronger than he had given it credit for while in office. Even in his preliminary research, he said, he found that smokefree policies were one of the most researched and documented topics in the nation.

In the end, with a completed report in hand, not only did Sikkema help push the results with the news media and lawmakers, he went further on his own to publicly admit that had he known all the facts while still in office, he would and should have taken up smokefree air.

The report, Smokefree Workplaces: The Impact of House Bill 4163 on the Restaurant and Bar Industry in Michigan, was a review of the common issues surrounding smokefree workplaces, including the health impacts, level of public support, government regulation and economic impact. In conducting its research, Public Sector Consultants reviewed dozens of published studies, legislation in other states, public polls and Michigan’s legislative history on the issue. Highlights of the report included:

• Compelling scientific and health evidence supporting elimination of secondhand smoke exposure for all workers;
• No net economic impact on Michigan restaurants and bars;
• Increasing public support for smokefree air policies statewide and nationwide;
• Government interest and action in protecting state residents from secondhand smoke exposure dates back more than 20 years and does not constitute unwarranted regulation of businesses.

Sikkema’s report gave us compelling, empirical evidence that business would not suffer, which is exactly what we had hoped. Our opponents’ messaging immediately stopped discussing the economic impact and focused instead on the argument that passing this law constituted unwarranted government intrusion.

Cancer Society
One of the most impressive lobby days at the Capitol occurs every spring when the American Cancer Society brings in anywhere from 600 to 1,000 volunteers and staff from across the state. It’s not the number of advocates that makes the event so impressive. It’s the way the event is structured. The Society creates a Relay for Life style of atmosphere, with tents lining the sidewalks leading to the steps of the Capitol. No representative or senator can avoid walking past a cancer survivor or advocate in a purple shirt. The day has come to take on mythic proportions. We never received official word from the Senate that its vote would take place before the event, but it became our hunch that it might.

We always felt we could control the content of the bill better in the Senate than in the House. The entire Senate Democratic caucus — except one member — was committed to a vote on a smokefree bill. We also knew we had at least three Senate Republicans, leaving us needing one more vote to get it passed.

At this point, Big Tobacco was promoting a new idea — a smoking permit. A business could buy a permit and allow smoking. Give the state a mere $250 and the business would be exempt from any smokefree rules.

The Campaign’s response was a no-brainer. Status quo was better than this unhealthy and offensive idea. We took this proposal head on and labeled it either “Pay to Play” or “Permit to Kill.” The venom with which we articulated our position to lawmakers on this issue clearly had an effect. There was never a record roll call on this amendment — despite it being offered and introduced in bill form in the House by Rep. Steve Bieda, a Warren Democrat.

Hoping to have the issue off their plates before the American Cancer Society event, and being able to tell our thousand, passionate advocates that they had taken care of the bill, senators did take a vote on May 8. Although we had been pushing hard for the vote for six months, we were shocked with the outcome.

First came a vote on a Basham substitute, which was a “clean” bill — no exemptions. There were amendments offered, but none was adopted. We were fearful that if the Basham substitute was not adopted, the “Permit to Kill” version would be put up for a vote and garner the 20 votes necessary for passage. But we were astounded, and we’re pretty sure our opposition was, too, that the Basham substitute was adopted 25 to 12 with strong bipartisan support. We cheered, hugged and applauded in the lobby outside the Senate, but we were actually in a state of shock. This was not what we had expected…it was much, much better. Instead of three Republicans voting with us, we had an unimaginable nine. We had the strongest smoking ban possible, far better than the respectable ban passed by the House six months earlier.

To be sent to the governor for final approval, of course, a bill must clear both the House and Senate in identical form. Despite our joy at having a stronger Senate-passed bill, we were skeptical of our chances with it in the House. We only received 56 votes the first time around for a carefully crafted bill. Now the speaker’s two major issues were no longer exempt — cigar bars and casinos. It would be extremely difficult, but we were willing to take on that fight.

We accepted Sen. Bishop’s explanation for insisting on a clean bill, which we preferred all along. Although he was philosophically opposed to a ban, he believed that if there were going to be one it should apply equally to all. However, some of the business groups in town credited him with an ingenious strategy to kill the ban. He and Senate Republicans could take the high moral ground of approving and insisting on an absolute ban, knowing full well House Democrats would never pass such a measure and tick off the Detroit casinos.

Regardless, the Senate vote dramatically changed the debate. No longer was it about whether there would be a smoking ban. The debate was about whether there would be exemptions in a smokefree law. To delve a bit deeper, the debate was no longer about a laundry list of exemptions; it was limited to just two — cigar bars and casinos. The debate over private clubs, VFW halls, bars, bowling alleys, pool halls, racetracks, outdoor patios and the like was over. Now the issue was whether to create two narrow exemptions. The line in the sand had been drawn.

Not so close
When the legislature returned from its summer break in the fall of 2008, we were excited and optimistic that our long-sought victory was close. Although our ban had only passed the House a year earlier with a bare-bones majority, we were returning with a stronger bill and believed all of our previous supporters would be with us again.

Editorials from newspapers around the state rang in again — many for the third, fourth, fifth or even tenth time — that it was finally time to end this issue and make Michigan smokefree. Behind the scenes we were constantly counting votes — how many we thought we would pick up with a stronger bill, and the few we might lose from lawmakers who had wanted some exemptions — and recording them on a whiteboard that was transformed into a color-coded spread sheet in one of our computers. In the end, we still felt we had solid support to push us over 60 “yes” votes.

We engaged our grassroots support once more, again focused on the House and asking for a concurrence vote on the Senate bill. But it wasn’t our strongest push. We were overconfident.

Speaker Dillon agreed to put the bill up for a concurrence vote. The board was open for more than an hour, and we sat in the lobby and in the balcony, watching with growing disappointment. Votes we had counted on were not materializing — more people wanted certain carve-outs than we had counted on. The Republican Senate was always supposed to be the tougher hill to climb, but here was the Democratic House throwing up greater obstacles. We had underestimated the challenge of a concurrence vote in the House. And to their credit, our opposition, mostly the restaurant and licensed beverage groups, had rallied their core supporters to fight the issue.

There was a third interest group that entered the fray prior to the vote — the Detroit casino lobby. The casino interests brought their biggest stars to Lansing to try to convince the Detroit delegation of the harm — lost revenues, taxes and jobs — a bill without a casino exemption would cause Detroiters.

There were also several lawmakers who chose not to vote or were noticeably missing from the vote that afternoon. We had always believed that when faced with a vote on a smokefree law, a majority of lawmakers would always vote “yes.” We reasoned that the issue was far too popular to vote “no” a mere six weeks before an election.

We were wrong. When the board closed, we had failed to garner the needed 56 votes. The tally stood at 50-49, with 11 legislators, nearly all of them “yes” votes, skipping out. Majority Floor Leader Steve Tobocman, of Detroit, motioned to reconsider the vote — a procedural move that kept the issue on life support — and the bill was tabled for the day.

We were defeated in a vote that demonstrated, painfully, some exemptions might be needed, and we were fuming. Tempers flamed within the coalition. Those who had always wanted to go to the ballot voiced their position yet again and caused more internal turmoil. We seemed to lose focus. We had one last chance left in the remaining months of 2008 — the unpredictable lame-duck session — and our coalition had some important decisions to make about what type of bill we could or would settle for.

Chapters 1 & 2 | Chapters 3 & 4 | Chapters 5 | Chapters 6, 7, & 8