Pick Your Conventional Wisdom

by Tim Skubick
December 11, 2009

Popular wisdom is often unpopular and often wrong, but what the hey. The popular wisdom is Andy Dillon can’t beat John Cherry for the Democratic nomination for governor.

Here’s why the Dillonites reject that notion: (1) Cherry has only 20-percent support in the polls, which means he doesn’t even attract the Democratic Party base that makes up about 35 percent of the electorate; (2) 54 percent of Democrats are undecided; (3) Voters are fed up with career politicians and there is nowhere to hide Cherry’s 25-plus years in this town; and (4) Cherry is linked at the hip to a very unpopular governor and her policies.

Add it all up and Dillon can win…or so the popular Dillon version of popular wisdom goes.

Not so fast.

Pollster Bernie Porn from EPIC-MRA offers a different take: if Dillon gets in, it actually helps Cherry solidify the nomination.

Porn figures most of organized labor is with Cherry, and it provides “boots on the ground” to get out the vote and raise money. “Dillon has no boots.”

Next, that 54 percent undecided is a sizable chunk. In theory, if Dillon took his current 6-percent support and captured about 40 percent of those on the fence, he wins.

However, Porn reports the bulk of those undecided Ds favored a tax increase to balance the books. Dillon did, too, but he never got it in the budget “deal” he cooked up with former buddy Mike Bishop, the headstrong, anti-tax-at-any-cost leader of the GOP Senate.

If Dillon runs, Porn figures, Cherry will have commercials denouncing Dillon for being foolish to make a deal with the GOP devil.

“Dillon made a bad deal. I think he is most vulnerable just in terms of how he tried to portray himself as a leader. Cherry will be able to point out how he made a bad deal,” which, according to Porn, “doesn’t make Dillon a leader.”

Not only can Cherry bang Dillon for making a bone-headed move, he can argue Dillon was told this would happen, but he did it anyway. So not only was it a lousy deal, it was one Dillon could have avoided.

Plus Porn says this kind of argument could move undecided folks into the Cherry camp and even allow Cherry to put badly needed distance between himself and Gov. Granholm, who, despite her opinion to the contrary, is a huge drag on Cherry’s bid.

Having said that, Dillon’s ace in the hole is the mood out there. It is angry, it is anti-incumbent, it is anti-anything that even looks like a life-long politician. It is eager for change.

Dillon has strong appeal to independent voters, as he proved he could take on special interests in his own party when he was strongly advised by his political inner circle not to do it. He did it anyway.

Dillon could effectively contrast his independence with that of Cherry, who has carried the water for labor without spilling a drop. Plus, he can hammer home the point that Cherry can’t win because of Granholm. That notion scares Democrats.

But Cherry’s gang is confident that Dillon can’t secure enough independents and moderate Republicans to cross over into a Democratic primary to win.

The speaker makes his decision about all this in January.

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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Pay to Play
There’s a little fussin’ and feudin’ unceremoniously unfolding in the state GOP concerning so-called Pay to Play Straw Polls.

Here’s how that nifty little game works. A candidate running for office tries to influence the outcome of a straw poll by making sure his or her supporters show up to vote. And to make sure they do appear, financial considerations sometimes come into play — which amounts to backdoor pay.

For example, GOP candidate for governor Rick Snyder won a straw poll by offering free transportation, room and board, and other considerations for those who agreed to vote for him.

Attorney general candidate Bill Schuette recently defeated his GOP challenger, Sen. Mike Bishop, 360 to 247 in another straw poll, which prompted the Oakland County senator to not only denounce the poll but promise to stop participating in future polls.

Then secretary of state candidate Anne Norlander, the Calhoun County clerk, issued a self-righteous news release blasting the “Pay to Play” concept as a “fundraising activity [that] goes counter to everything I believe in [and] I can no longer participate in ‘Pay to Play’ voting fundraisers.”

And, in case you missed her indignation, she tacked on: “this is counter to one person one vote and defies everything we believe in as Republicans” concerning the “integrity of the ballot.”

She called on other Republicans to join her in renouncing the process. It’s likely that the statewide candidates who don’t have a ton of money to spread around will join her, and the ones who do have a ton won’t.