The Fieger Watch

May 1, 2010

“If you build it, he will come.”
— Field of Dreams, 1989
“If you hint it, they will print it.”
— Geoffrey Fieger, 2010

Okay, now for the multi-million-dollar question: Will Geoffrey Fieger really run for governor again?

Answer: Not on your life.

Certainly not this year. Most likely, not ever.

Heads were turned last week, when EPIC/MRA came out with a new poll showing the flamboyant lawyer would be far ahead of the pack if he joined the race for the Democratic nomination for governor. For weeks there has been increasing speculation that Fieger would jump into the race, which currently features three candidates who are largely unknown, largely unexciting, and whose chances of winning in November have been all but written off by the experts.

To reporters, however, the prospect of Fieger holds the promise of turning an otherwise dull campaign into Christmas every day. They remember 1998.

Twelve years ago, Geoffrey Fieger had burst into national celebrity status, thanks to his bulldog and wildly successful defense of the apostle of assisted suicide, Jack Kevorkian. He had convinced jury after jury to essentially nullify laws against what his client did.

He had gotten rich from his successful medical malpractice business, and he had a burning contempt for incumbent Governor John Engler, whom he openly described as a “fat, corn-fed bowser.”

Actually, that was one of the nicer things he said about the governor, who had pushed the legislature to toughen laws against what Kevorkian did best. Fieger also told reporters that John Engler was the product of miscegenation with barnyard animals.

He said he wouldn’t believe the governor was the father of his triplets unless their diapers were removed and they could be shown to have corkscrew tails. In one of his more moderate statements, he said that the governor “has never held a real job in his life. The only experience he has is robbing you, cheating you and lying to you.”

Geoffrey Fieger wasn’t impressed with the “mealy-mouthed” Democrats either, and so decided to get into the race.

The party responded unofficially with horror, and few expected him to win the nomination. But his opponents were lackluster. Mark Brewer and the Democratic establishment largely backed Larry Owen, a colorless lawyer whose wife, Faylene, had been an effective fundraiser for President Clinton. Doug Ross, a former state senator, also ran as sort of the principled, thinking man’s candidate.

Geoffrey Fieger spent lavishly, dominated the state’s media markets, and took the primary, with 41 percent to 37 percent for Owen and 22 percent for Ross. The Democratic establishment went into shock. Most of the state’s leading political figures put as much distance between themselves and Fieger as they could.

Nevertheless, Fieger actually appeared to believe the polls were wrong and he would win. He spent nearly six million on the effort, a huge sum in that pre-Dick DeVos era. He had defied expectations in the courtroom, time after time.

But the court of public opinion was different.

On Election Day, he lost in a stupendous landslide: Engler 1,883,005; Fieger, 1,143,584. The defeated candidate disappeared for days, and never formally conceded. (“Why would I concede to that fat nincompoop?” he snarled at me later, when I asked.)

Geoffrey Fieger seldom speaks of that campaign today. He would be the first to tell you, however, that he doesn’t like to lose.

But would he run again? I asked him that just before HBO showed the made-for-TV movie You Don’t Know Jack, in which Mr. Fieger is prominently, and on the whole sympathetically, portrayed. He looked at me. “Sarah Palin could get elected governor of Michigan this year, running as a Republican. Sarah Palin!”

He shook his head.

The fact is, besides not wanting to lose, there are other reasons that Fieger is far less likely to run for governor these days. Michigan’s governor makes $177,000 a year.

Fieger has an extremely expensive lifestyle, which includes a mansion in Bloomfield Hills; a nice house on a lake in north Oakland County; a fancy house in Arizona; another up north; and an estate on the Caribbean island of Anguilla, where he is building a luxury hotel.

He also has his own airplane, and in the last nine years he and his wife, Keenie, both of whom are now 59, have adopted three babies. All this takes some overhead. While he has partners, the law firm his father founded is largely an extension of himself.

Clients come because he is there. As for being governor, “I couldn’t afford the pay cut,” he told me finally, in a moment of candor.

But all he has to do is hint at it, and the reporters rush to come.

And for the state’s brashest (some also say, best) attorney, free publicity is never bad.

Veteran journalist and national Emmy Award winner Jack Lessenberry teaches at Wayne State University, serves as Michigan Radio’s senior political analyst and writes regularly for several publications. He also serves as The Toledo Blade’s writing coach and ombudsman and is host of the weekly television show Deadline Now on WGTE-TV in Toledo.