Poll Tries to Polish Granholm Legacy

July 9, 2010

They are quietly passing out the polish deep inside the Granholm administration as the effort continues to put a little gloss on the governor’s economic track record — which is not breaking any records, to say the least.

Even she is forced to concede that the job she is doing now to diversify the economy will not bear fruit on her watch. To which you can hear a collective “darn it” inside the Granholm inner circle.

So the legacy writers are already sharpening their pens to put a point on it when she walks out the door. The headlines will not be flattering, and she begrudgingly knows it. Which is why a document showed up the other day from pro-Granholm sources.

It’s a previously undisclosed survey conducted by the Mellman Group, which did all the polling for candidate Granholm and, as you might expect, has a different take on the Granholm economic blame-game so popular around these parts.

Mr. Mellman writes, “Michigan voters are certainly unhappy with the present state of the economy…[but they] certainly do not blame the governor for the state’s economic problems.”

Wow. There’s a statement that goes counter to all the rhetoric reaching a fevered pitched on the campaign trail. You won’t find one GOP candidate for governor patting Ms. Granholm on the head for a job well done, and even the two Democrats are loath to hitch their wagons to Granholm for fear it could cost them the election.

Yet Mr. Mellman goes on.

He sees a hint of optimism, as other pollsters have uncovered. Fifty-two percent believe the state (read the governor) has begun the process of turning things around, while 39 percent see no real signs of change, and more gloom and doom.

He’s still not done as the survey cuts to the guts of the Granholm economic dilemma.

Asked who they would blame for this sorry state of economic affairs, turns out Madam Governor finishes dead last behind lousy decisions by CEOs, former President George W. Bush, slanted trade agreements and high taxes.

It should be noted, however, that those tax policies were her policies. So she does not get complete exoneration for messing up the works on that front, but Mellman does not say that.

Finally, Mellman asserts: the prime cause of “Michigan’s economic straits” is the long-term decline of the auto industry (64 percent), while only one out of five blames her economic policies for the downfall.

Mellman even has some free advice for the seven candidates auditioning for her job: don’t go there.

“Trying to run a negative campaign that focuses on attacking Jennifer Granholm is a risky enterprise that is likely to ring hollow and run into voter resentment,” he offers.

Bottom line. The pollster gives her a clean bill of health.

The bad news is that to erase the eight years of lousy economic news, the governor would have to spend millions of dollars in TV ads to explain all this. And the rule in politics is that if you have to explain, you are in trouble.

But maybe, being the competitive person that she is, she could go back to the porch with her coffee cup and rocker, as she did in her first-election commercial, and tell the citizens: “I tried. I really did. It was not my fault, but in five years you really will be blown away.”

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.

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

Subsidizing a Job Search
Running for governor is a full-time job, but what if you already have a full-time job on top of that?

Well, it creates some interesting challenges and can often provide an issue for your opponents to exploit.

Say hello to Congressman Pete Hoekstra, whose real job is to represent the good folks from West Michigan in the U.S. House of Representatives. They pay him a pretty good salary to be there to vote yeah or nay.

The other day when the House was voting on extending unemployment benefits, Mr. Hoekstra did not vote either way. He could not vote. He was at a fundraiser trying to cobble together enough money to secure a new job…governor of the State of Michigan.

Is he vulnerable on missing that critical vote? His opponents will answer that for him. The answer, of course, is yes.

Hoekstra is not the only one confronting this “where should I be?” dilemma, as House Speaker Andy Dillon and his Democratic opponent, Virg Bernero, both have full time jobs. Dillon runs the Michigan House here in Lansing and is very sensitive to being there when his campaign is tugging on him to attend fundraisers, knock on doors and give speeches to whomever is willing to listen.

Because the House and Senate have taken the next two weeks off…sort of a super extended July 4th break, he can now do that.

Bernero, the mayor of Lansing, does not publish his schedule, but it’s a pretty good bet that as the underdog in this primary, he has not done a lot of sitting in his office on the ninth floor of City Hall. He has a trusted aide who is running the joint and so far there’s been no tragedy in Lansing that has demanded the mayor’s attention. And unless all those oil globs down in the Gulf of Mexico suddenly find their way into the Grand River, you won’t find His Honor around these parts very often.

Years ago when Dick Posthumous ran for governor, he was also the Senate majority leader and made a choice about which assignment was more important. The West Michigan Republican missed 70 percent of the Senate votes. Seventy percent!

Posthumous’s buddy, Gov. John Engler, came to the candidate’s defense, glibly contending that this was just the way it was. That takes care of that.

All that leads to this perplexing question: if the taxpayers are paying you to do one job, and you take time off to pursue another, should they be subsidizing that job hunt or should you pay them back for the time you did not punch in?

You know what the pols would say, don’t you?

Subsidizing a Job Search-Take 2
Our last installment was about the trials and tribulations of having a dual career of being in one elective office while running for another. It focused on governor candidates Pete Hoekstra, Virg Bernero and Andy Dillon, all of whom have day jobs as they seek to replace Gov. Jennifer Granholm.

Left out of the first missive were the following: the two Mikes, Cox and Bouchard, state Senator Tom George and businessman Rick Snyder.

Of the seven in the field, Mr. Snyder, since he is a non-career politician, has the luxury of making his new job the moderator at town-hall meetings. Seems like in any little burg where there is a microphone and more than 20 gathered in his name, the Ann Arbor business guy is ready to discuss his Ten-Point Plan for reinventing Michigan.

Since part of his team is former John McCain operatives, Snyder has adopted this town-hall retail approach to the campaign. The only difference is that the former presidential candidate drew thousands to his shindigs, while Snyder is happy to see a hundred or so in front of him.

Tom George is the senator from Kalamazoo and, far as we can tell, he has not missed many, if any, Senate sessions. He’s done his job of voting and conducting hearings and has apparently left the campaigning to his off hours, although lawmakers lecture us that they are on 24/7, so they are never really off.

Mr. Cox, the state’s top law enforcement official, and Mr. Bouchard, the top cop in Oakland County, are often seen on the campaign stump during normal business hours.

To be sure, Attorney General Cox has lots of underlings tending the shop while he rounds up money and support. They are used to it, since Cox ran for reelection four years ago and was A.G. at the same time. And likewise for Sheriff Bouchard, who is no stranger to running for office while keeping an eye on the crime scene in his own backyard. Recall he did this before when he ran for the U.S. Senate, and nobody complained.

Or if they did, maybe they ended up in the slammer?

At any rate, so far in this primary, nobody has raised much of a stink about public officials campaigning while on the public clock and the public dime. Maybe you could care less, which is your constitutional right — and lots of folk are exercising it.