Running Mates

by Tim Skubick
March 26, 2010

You are aware of the silly little game journalists play to see who can be first to write about a story. Be assured that this is the first time you will read anything about the GOP and Democratic nominees for governor thinking about running mates.

How absurd to even think about it. Heck, the primary for picking the candidates is a whopping 130 days away and the field is just beginning to fire up. Speculation on who will be second on the ticket is just plain silly.

Think again.

Betya each candidate in a private moment or two has allowed him or herself to drift toward that, if for no other reason than to have some fun contemplating the “what ifs” of this person or that.

A natural place to begin the search is with your opponents.

To be sure, often times primaries are such bruising events that the opponents inflict injuries on each other. And when all is said and done, the hard feelings between the contenders are palpable.

Nonetheless, after a grueling toe to toe and mano a womano battle years ago, victor Howard Wolpe picked opponent Debbie Stabenow for the Democratic ticket. This was no match made in heaven. To wit, they arrived at the announcement news conference in separate cars. But for political reasons he picked her, and the two proceeded to lose to John Engler.

So what about the 2010 race?

If Mike Cox wins the GOP nomination, the betting money is he may ask one of his opponents to join him. Whether the opponent would is another question. It is also unlikely Cox would end up as the running mate for somebody else if he loses the nomination. Some conclude he would bring too much political baggage to the ticket. The conclusion may be unfair, but it’s out there.

Pete Hoekstra is another case. Adding Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard would make some geographical sense. Hoekstra is from “that” side of the state (West Michigan) and the Mikester is from over here (East Side).

Many in this town believe the only reason Sen. Tom George of Kalamazoo remains in the hunt is to prove he could be a running mate for someone. That would make sense, too.

Rick Snyder, whether he wants to admit it or not, would want some hands-on Lansing experience if he got the GOP nod. If the self-described non-Lansing politician ever hopes to find the bathroom, he’ll need someone to point him in the right direction.

Even Snyder has admitted he would consider hiring career politicians, although his campaign literature suggests they are toxic and to be avoided at all cost.

On the Democratic side, everyone agrees that Rep. Alma Wheeler Smith has enough time in grade to be Andy Dillon’s or Virg Bernero’s second in command.

A Dillon-Bernero combo or vice versa just doesn’t look very good.

Dillon is tall; Bernero is…well, let’s just say he’s not so tall. It would be a weird picture on the tube and might draw more attention to them for all the wrong reasons.

But let’s not forget one other combination — picking a running mate from the other party.

Could you envision a Hoekstra-Dillon ticket?

The two of them actually debated last week, and they were quite in sync.

Stop laughing. It could happen. And remember, you heard it here…first.

Tim Skubick is Michigan’s Senior Capitol correspondent and has anchored the weekly public TV series “Off the Record” since 1972. He also covers the Capitol and politics for WLNS-TV6 in Lansing.

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Gutless In Lansing
Profiles in courage this ain’t. An example of pretty sharp politics, it is.

Faced with making a $255 cut per pupil, lawmakers who profess that education is their top priority are in a box.

The governor wants them to expand the sales tax to services to raise the funds to avert the cut. But in an election year, voting for anything that even smells like a tax hike is verboten. Yet those same solons run the risk of offending mom and dad back home if their little Johnny or Janey ends up in a classroom with 50 other pupils.

What’s a poor legislator to do? It’s a lose-lose, which lawmakers loathe-loathe.

Here’s what they will do: punt.

Quietly unfolding out of view is a scheme to place the sales tax question on the August ballot. And here’s the beauty of the move: if voters approve the sales tax change, the schools are saved. If the voters reject the sales tax and $255 ends up being sliced from every school kid, it’s the voters who are to blame and not the lawmakers.

“We didn’t cut education, you did,” will be the defensive rally cry of lawmakers seeking to save their own political necks this election cycle.

Pretty nifty, eh?

“I think lawmakers should have the courage to do this,” the governor advised the weary legislators the other day. Easy for her to say, she is not running for anything this time out.

But alas, she adds, if they can’t muster that courage, she would not stand in the way of allowing citizens to take the lawmakers off the hook.

So far there is not a consensus to take this escape route, but knowing these guys and gals, it’s only a matter of time before they do the math and pawn this puppy off on you.

Arf. Arf.

Explosive About-Face
For decades, when it comes to 4th of July time Michigan residents become instant lawbreakers, thanks to lawmakers who have banned really dangerous fireworks.

That means half the state travels across the border into Ohio to pick up the contraband, and everyone crosses the state line hoping the state cops don’t nab them en route to the family picnic.

But hope is on the way.

The continuing budget crunch is forcing lawmakers to get inventive, and here’s the latest scheme. Legalize those fireworks, force the seller to pay a fee, and the money would go — where else? — into a fund to cover the cost of local fire services.

It makes sense. Since the explosives are undoubtedly going to cause some grass fires or injuries, the local fire shops will need the extra money to respond to all the firework mayhem.

Chalk it up as another example of how far lawmakers will go to avoid a revenue increase. If dangerous fireworks were too risky in the past, why all of a sudden is it safe to light these things now?

Why? Because lawmakers don’t want to tax you, and if you lose a digit fumbling around with those M-80s and the like, that’s your fault, not theirs.

On a grander level, the concept of a user fee, which is what the fireworks fee would be, applies to road funds as well. But the backers of more revenue for the roads are still stuck in neutral, unable to muster enough votes to raise the road bucks the state needs.

Here again, it makes logical sense to let those who use the roads pay for the roads. Yet as noted in this space countless times before, when has logic ever been the touchstone of legislative decisions?

The road-building lobby is running out of patience as it remains clueless on how to break the logjam in this election year. The best hope now is for a vote after the November election, which means another construction season will come and go with the potholes getting bigger and the cracks in the freeway bridges getting wider. And, because Michigan can’t match the federal highway dollars it’s supposed to receive, that money will go to Ohio and elsewhere.

At least you won’t have to drive on poor Michigan roads to Ohio to get your fireworks…maybe.

Foot in Mouth Extraction
It’s trite but true: timing is everything in politics. And Richard Bernstein is like the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland — he is late…oh yeah, really late.

In case you missed it, last week the Democratic candidate for attorney general volunteered that there were many in the party, supposedly including himself, who had had enough of the United Auto Workers tossing its political weight around in the state Democratic Party.

“People are tired of being pushed around and told what to do,” the passionate Mr. Bernstein asserted.

It was a great quote and almost unheard of in the annals of state Democratic politics for someone to take on the UAW with such a direct verbal broadside, knowing that the union can influence who gets the nomination.

The comments sat out there for a week, untouched by other media outlets. Bernstein’s opponent, David Leyton, whom the UAW likes, finally weighed in by calling Mr. B.’s remarks “highly disrespectful” to the union leaders.

This prompted, out of fairness, an overture to the Bernstein campaign to assess what pushback, if any, it had suffered since the original comments.

An email dated March 17, seven days after the interview, arrived at 2:18 p.m.

“Richard is a union member,” it began. “He respects the UAW and the labor movement and will be a great partner to them if elected,” it went on.

There was no hint of an apology.

But something happened between 2:18 and 4:20, when a second email arrived with this: “I made a poor choice in words and I apologize if my remarks were off-putting.”

Yes, it was an acknowledgment that he was sorry for what he said on March 11.

But why did it take a week for him to figure out he made a mistake?

Had the apology come within hours or even a day of the original statements, it would have had some credibility. But it took the Bernstein gang one week to figure out it needed to remove the candidate’s foot from his mouth.

Hence, the apology looks more like an 11th hour political damage control move rather than a sincere and from the heart “I’m sorry.”

Maybe it took him a week to figure out he spoke out of turn.

Or maybe he still believes what he said; he just doesn’t want to stand by his opinion for fear it might cost him the party A.G. nomination?