Throwing Stones at the Bus

August 20, 2010

Pete Hoekstra would have been fun to kick around as governor. You got a glimpse at his no-holds-barred persona on the tube the other day.

Trying to figure out what went wrong is a touchy subject for most candidates. They often go on a scavenger hunt for someone else to blame, rather than looking in the mirror.

Hoekstra gazes in the mirror and admits he missed the “impact of Right to Life” in the contest.

You see, the anti-abortion group plunked for Mike Cox, leaving the other three Right to Lifers in the contest to fend for themselves. After the group ran ads saying that Cox was the only one with the RTL endorsement, Hoekstra spent a ton of unwanted time trying to convince everyone he was anti-abortion, too.

So when given a chance, he unloaded on Barb Listing, the long-time president of Michigan Right to Life.

Question: If you were on the board, would you make a motion to remove her from office?

Hoekstra: “Probably, I would.”

Then he claims Listing and company tossed him and his fellow anti-abortion candidates “under the bus.”

“There’s a lot of people in Right to Life who are saying either there’s new leadership or they’re going to be looking for another pro-life organization to align with,” he contends.

For years, Listing has dominated state GOP politics. But now, Hoekstra argues, “They damaged themselves long term as a political influence in this state.” He argues the group is “not a reliable partner.”

Larry Galmish, who works with Listing, shouts “sour grapes” and contends Hoekstra ran a lousy campaign. End of story.

Not quite.

Listing had a plan. She wanted to block Rick Snyder from winning the GOP nomination. She instinctively knew that if she endorsed Cox, Mike Bouchard, Tom George and Hoekstra, it would divide up the Right to Life vote and propel Snyder into the winner’s column.

So the decision was made to go with one — and that one was Cox.

And Listing got Snyder anyway. Talk about your bad day at the office.

As the TV interview unfolded and Hoekstra adlibbed his way around the post-election analysis, you could not envision Rick Snyder doing the same thing. And Hoekstra made note of that, too.

“He’s a candidate with a cocoon about him and it has to be broken,” he says, offering some free advice to the winner.

On the stump Rick Snyder is no Jennifer Granholm, nor does he aspire to be. And in his defense, his town hall performances are not all that bad. He’s not Al Gore stiff any more, but he’s not electrifying either. After all, as he points out, “I am a CPA.”

But how will that play in the debates? Democratic underdog Virg Bernero is quick on his feet. No CPA genes in him.

If Mr. Snyder starts to read from his Ten-Point Plan to Reinvent Michigan, he could be in trouble.

Hoekstra concludes: Snyder “has not gone through the meat grinder of unscripted access to the public, unscripted access to the media…he is absolutely not authentic.”

Snyder, however, can control this process and minimize his “exposure” to unscripted moments, which is why he will rely heavily on television commercials — where nothing gets on the air unless it is just what the candidate wants.

Hoekstra was a different kind of candidate, which is maybe why he’s on the sidelines and Mr. Snyder is vying for the job Mr. Hoekstra wanted.

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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Show or Work Horse
Besides losing the race for the GOP nomination for governor, candidates Mike Bouchard and Tom George share something else. After months of campaigning, their support never budged an inch.

Senator George is now known as “2% Tom” and his sidekick Mr. Bouchard forever will be tagged with “10% give-or-take-a-point Mike.”

So how could the popular sheriff of Oakland County fail to move the needle?

Let us count the ways.

Late start. While the others in the field were moving into high gear, Mr. Bouchard, because of political protocol, sat on the sidelines to give his buddy L. Brooks Patterson plenty of room to decide if he would run.

As the clock ticked, candidate Mike Cox swooped into Oakland County and vacuumed up most of the money that Bouchard would need if he ran. And by the time L. Brooks bowed out, Bouchard was hoping the Oakland County megafunders would abandon Cox and come home.

Bouchard is still waiting.

He did do something unique. He picked a running mate right out of the gate. Problem is, Terri Lynn Land did not produce the energy, excitement and oomph on the west side of the state where she was going to cut into the lead held by fellow west Michigan guy Pete Hoekstra.

She did not. Call it a dud.

Where’s Mike? That was a common theme in the political press corps. Was he getting around the state to work the party conservative base? Where were his TV ads? When he finally popped the first one, folks in this town went, “What the heck was that?”

It was the sheriff standing next to a vending machine. Was he trying to swipe a candy bar, trying to fix the thing, or exactly what was the message? It was not a good launch.

To be fair, he did very well in the debates. He was engaging, funny, showed a deep command of the issues and you could see him being governor. But that failed to move the numbers, too.

Seeing that he was, indeed, stuck in the mud at 10-12 percent in the polls, the sheriff moved into his Hail Mary phase of the campaign.

There was the “Right to Work” commercial. Nicely done by the performer/candidate, but it didn’t work.

In the end, there was some talk that he might do something really bold over the last weekend of the race, i.e. drop out and shift his support to somebody else.

That would have been a nifty move, but at the end of the game the Bouchard camp was touting its internal polls that he was going to win.

Ha.

Maybe the tag “Mike is a show horse and not a work horse” really says it all?

New State Slogan
Michigan already has a slogan about seeking a pleasant peninsula, but the Michigan Legislature should adopt another one: Why do today what you can do tomorrow?

Fixated on getting re-elected, most of the state’s 148 legislators abandoned the people’s business to take care of their own business this summer.

Since July 4 they’ve done virtually zippo to adopt a new state budget, and here we sit with Labor Day’s shadow in view, and they are just now getting down to business.

“I see no sense of urgency,” lamented the state budget director the other day. Bob Emerson confirms that nothing was done on the budget this summer, but putting on his happy face he opines, “There is no reason for us not to get this finished. This is a fairly easy thing.”

Easy?

Lansing doesn’t do easy. If it did, the budget would have been wrapped up on July 1st, which is the target date the governor set last February.

The governor was asked to grade the legislative budget “homework” to date, and she dropped back five yards and punted. “You know I don’t like to give grades, but it’s an incomplete right now.”

No kidding.

But alas, the governor now has a budget reduction plan that she’s been fine-tuning all summer and there is a window of opportunity to get this job done. And since it does not have a tax hike in it, the GOP leadership is all smiles.

However, first things first. There are two political conventions at the end of the month where all the pols rub elbows and try to grease their way towards re-election. After all, that is Job One and there’s plenty of time to meet the deadline of October 1 for finishing the budget.

Cue the new state slogan.