Obama Watching Michigan

by Tim Skubick
November 6, 2009

They pretty much bungled it in New York, but did better in New Jersey. So who knows how well they will do regarding the Democratic race for governor in Michigan.

Sources confirm the Obama White House is already watching from the sidelines.

Recall that the Obama team tried to find a new candidate for governor in New York. It was handled with all the grace of a 350-pound ballerina doing Swan Lake.

In New Jersey, with a little more finesse, the pollster for incumbent Democrat Gov. Jon Corzine was quietly dumped. That pollster was Mark Mellman, who, coincidently, did polling for one Jennifer Granholm and one John Cherry. Mellman was shoved aside, according to Politico.com, and replaced with Joel Benenson.

Joel who? Benenson just happens to be the pollster for the Obama presidential campaign.

Of course, the White House has denied that it is sticking its nose into various governor races where the Democrat could lose. (Like they’d confirm that!)

In Michigan, insiders are buzzing about White House “concerns” about Michigan and Mr. Cherry, heir apparent to the Granholm mantle.

Some Ds are worried Cherry can’t win, and since the Obama folks want a Democratic governor in place for legislative redistricting in 2011 and an Obama re-election bid after that, they are watching very carefully — and have been since last January.

This has already been shared with the Cherry team: the president is monitoring Michigan, and somebody named Dillon has huddled with White House advisors who work for David Axlerod, who is sorta close to you know who.

The president knows who House Speaker Andy Dillon is. During a presidential sojourn to Macomb County that Dillon attended, the president walked up and said, “Hi, Andy.”

The concerns about the 2010 contest extend beyond the White House. It was also the subject of a high-level confab involving state Democratic Party Chair Mark Brewer and other Michigan Ds. They huddled with the new national Democratic Party chair.

The national guy asked what he could do for them.

Find a job for Jennifer Granholm was the request, so that Cherry could run as the incumbent, which would not help Dillon.

Cherry is handicapped by his incumbent boss, the theory goes, and after the GOP gets done wrapping Cherry up in the Granholm legacy … well, you can see why the Democrats might be concerned. But not Mr. Cherry.

“I don’t buy that,” the L.G. advised the other day.

Dillon won’t make a decision until the end of November. Note that the speaker’s family, minus the 15-year-old son, has signed off on him getting in, but he’s not there yet. An informed guess suggests he’s got fire-in-the-belly issues and most days he wakes up not wanting to run. He’s also haunted by the stress he’d foster within the Democratic Party if he took on Cherry.

Regardless, avid Dillon compatriots will continue to hype this White House-Dillon link for obvious reasons: it makes their guy look good and causes Cherry fits.

Everyone assumes that if the White House wanted Cherry out — and there’s been no signal of that — Dillon would be the pick. However, Axelrod has close ties to a guy who thought about running but didn’t. So could the Obama crew talk to Dennis Archer, former mayor of Detroit?

You’re right that all of this seems far-fetched, but in politics far-fetched has a funny way of becoming reality.

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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Apathy Winning
Will it work?

The governor continues on her mission to grow the grassroots out there to pressure recalcitrant legislative Republicans to raise more buckos to re-fund college scholarships, aid to firefighters and cops, health care for the needy and funding for K-12 education.

She and her budget guru, Bob Emerson, are calculating that local pressure will build over the next two months to the point that those Republicans will cry “Uncle.”

To be blunt, it’s a long shot — and there is a long history to prove it.

This governor likes to say on the stump that she has cut more state services than any other governor dead or alive. And what has the public said? Nothing.

With more than $8 billion in reductions to date, and now another $1.8 billion on top of that, the governor has sliced every which way to balance the budget. No one knows how many programs have been reduced or just wiped off the books … and there’s been no outcry from the unwashed.

Sure some of the citizens have felt the cuts, but they are small in numbers and if they complained, the gripes never made it into the MSM, never raised concerns in the legislature beyond a “sorry we had to do it” response.

But now the governor figures, hopes and prays that massive cuts to the K-12 budget will change the story line. Take $292 away from every school kid and you might have something. Add to that the veto of $52 million to schools that spend more on students than the rest of the state and you have cuts approaching $600 per pupil. Plus next year, her story goes, if nothing is done now the cuts will go beyond that.

In other words she’s warning: look up Michigan. The sky is tumbling and if you allow it to fall, your kids will fail.

But apathy is alive and well in the hinterland as we moan about the summer that never was and the winter that surely will be. Can this governor with the above-average communicative charm and talent wake the masses to get in the game and demand that lawmakers raise more money for schools?

Believe it when you see it.

George’s Hail Mary
The wily and dumb-like-a-fox former coach of the MSU football team is at it again. Since November of 2008, George Perles has been shopping the story that he may run for governor. And we’ll have an average temperature this winter of 75 degrees, too.

And then this week, an unsuspecting sports reporter got statewide attention as he wrote that Perles was going to announce his candidacy just after New Year’s Day.

The equally unsuspecting scribes at the Associated Press dutifully picked up the story, and Perles got thousands of dollars of free advertising for his impending bid for governor.

The only thing wrong with the story is that it is not true. Other than that, it was a fine piece of political journalism. (Note to sports writers: stay in your own lane, please.)

Once the new angle hit, Tim Staudt, a journeyman sports guy in Lansing, called up the coach on a radio call-in show and asked about all this.

Perles back-pedaled faster than Lance Armstrong in reverse.

Seems Perles really said that he would have an announcement on what he would do after the first of the year. Notice that making a decision one way or the other is not quite the same as saying you are running. That’s a distinction that makes a huge difference.

The A.P., when given a heads-up, to its credit revised the story.

Meanwhile, an entrepreneur on EBAY, the do-it-yourselfer Internet department store, is offering Perles for Governor T-shirts at 15 bucks a pop plus another five smackers to ship it out.

“Show Your Spartan Pride,” the sales pitch suggests.

It even perpetuates the incorrect story line on the impending announcement. But hey, it’s the Internet, where accuracy tends to get in the way of a good story.

So get ’em while they are hot before the true story gets out that the affable jock isn’t running for anything accept maybe his handkerchief to muffle that laughter you hear over at the Perles household.

Oh btw, the shirts are not returnable. How fitting.

Now What!
Oh, oh. Now what are they going to do?

Since the first of the year, the 44 members of the freshman legislative class of Republicans and Democrats have been itching to change the culture in Lansing and, as noted in this space too many times to count, they’ve not even scratched the surface.

So the speaker of the House is giving them a chance to do what they claim they want to do: fix the K-12 budget/funding mess.

What a cruel man that speaker is.

Those poor innocent babes in the woods are about to confront the harsh reality of trying to drain the school-funding quagmire and build a new pond.

First a little history. The speaker has given them until December 20 to come up with something. When Bill Milliken was governor he launched an education reform agenda that began in 1970 and ended two governors later in 1994 with Proposal A.

If the gang of 44 can pull off in two months what it took others who were wiser and had more experience almost 25 years, each should be given the Nobel Peace Prize or something like that.

But undaunted, they are taking this on. “How do you turn down the speaker?” reflected one of the newcomer leaders.

Dillon was not trying to set these guys up for failure. His motives were pure, but still the task is impossible with a capitol I.

But let’s cheer them on. Let’s light a candle. Let’s see what they can do.

A friendly hint, however. This is going to take more revenue, and that may mean a new tax scheme along with reforms to squeeze money out of the bloated education system.

Well, there go the GOP freshmen from the bipartisan fold.