Election Analysis:
We All Won!

by John Lindstrom
Gongwer News Service
May 21, 2010

There is a delightful attitude in politics, as there is in life, that no matter what, you always win. Your candidates may have been trashed, your party eviscerated, your platform de-timbered and set afire, but somehow you always find a way to claim victory of one sort or another.

Your candidate for president lost, your candidate for governor lost, your candidate for the Senate ditto, your candidates for Congress and the legislature are getting ready to sell apples on street corners, but, hey, you had more voters than ever before turn out in Flapjack County and they are the future of our party, so we win!

So the message from Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Arizona this past week, and from Ohio and Utah earlier, is: we win! Who won exactly? All of us! While Michigan had nothing on the ballot this past week, how the voters acted in those states will have an effect here.

How exactly they will have an effect is uncertain, except somehow or other everyone will win. But understand that the different ways in which everyone won is already being worked into the game plan of all the candidates here.

Begin with the tea party, joyously claiming victory in Kentucky after Rand Paul won the Republican U.S. Senate nomination and in Utah after incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Robert Bennett was denied a spot on that state’s primary ballot. These are seen as portents of great change, nationwide and maybe in Michigan, and so they may be.

The tea party has not really flexed much electoral muscle in Michigan because it has had little to flex for. There are no major incumbents to bring down in the primaries. Republican elected officials in this state have largely adhered to the basic economic anti-government agenda that the tea party advocates enunciate, essentially arguments to cut government spending and lower taxes (or at least be in favor of same).

But watch the unfolding Republican campaigns in Michigan and we see the tea party attitudes at work. It goes beyond Republicans appearing at tea party rallies, though they are with enthusiasm.

The best example is in the gubernatorial campaign of Attorney General Mike Cox, which now seems to have focused exclusively on U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Holland) while ignoring the other three candidates.

The ads Mr. Cox has launched against Mr. Hoekstra have labeled him basically a big government goon, little more than a Democrat (which surely comes as a surprise to anyone who has followed Mr. Hoekstra) in his support of government spending. It follows precisely the message tea partiers want to hear opposing government spending.

Mr. Hoekstra is responding so far with two tactics: one, his ability to get things for Michigan and, second, to accuse Mr. Cox of Wayne County-style politics (and Wayne County is the home of Detroit, and Detroit typically sets off warning bells to all Republicans outside the Wayne-Oakland-Macomb axis).

Presuming, for the sake of argument, Mr. Cox wins the nomination, it is not a stretch to envision he will use another gambit that traditionally has been a mainstay of Democrats but also falls into the tea party’s cup. Because tea partiers seem to be anti-big anything. Watch their rallies, listen to their rhetoric, and it seems they hate big business, especially big financial firms, as much as big government.

As attorney general, Mr. Cox has like Frank Kelley and Jennifer Granholm before him gone after big companies. The one he has pilloried the most openly has been Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan (which raises suspicions with some Democrats because the Blues CEO, Dan Loepp, is a former top House Democratic aide).

One has to expect, should he be the GOP gubernatorial candidate, Mr. Cox will play the consumer protection card as much as he will the cut spending and taxes card, thus, picking up two tea party mantras.

He is not the only tea partying type among the GOP gubernatorial hopefuls. Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard has campaigned heavily on his theme of good fiscal management of government. But he also actively supported efforts to control illegal immigration and was the only GOP gubernatorial candidate to appear at an anti-illegal-immigration rally this past week.

Even business executive Rick Snyder can make a bit of a tea party claim, in that he is not a “professional politician,” though his business background seems to land him more in the traditional pro-business wing of the party.

Ah, but is the tea party the future of politics? In Ohio, tea-party-backed candidates for several state offices failed to win their primaries.

In Utah, Mr. Bennett decided to fall on the sword of party loyalty instead of running the risk of a Democrat winning over a divided GOP cast. Which raises the question of what will the remaining moderate to classic conservative Republicans (in Michigan those would be the Hazen Pingree-Arthur Vandenberg-George Romney-William Milliken Republicans) do if faced with tea party candidates: hold their nose and vote for them, take a pass altogether or vote for Democrats?

Which brings us to the Keystone State. No, not the defeat of U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, but the relatively easy victory of Democrat Mark Crist over Republican Tim Burns to succeed the late John Murtha in the U.S. House.

Democrats in Michigan and across the U.S., including U.S. Rep. Mark Schauer (D-Battle Creek), have been quick to promote the victory as a symbol of the true feelings of Americans. And don’t kid yourself, Republicans were extremely dismayed at losing the race and losing it by the margin they did.

The level of uber-analysis and sizzling spin the GOP has put on the race demonstrates how dismayed they were. In their efforts to now paint the district (south of Pittsburgh, industrial but also marked by an influx of upper-middle class homeowners — think Macomb County) as solidly Democratic misses the fact that it is a conservative to moderately Democratic area that will vote what it sees as its self-interest more transparently than possibly some places. More on that anon.

Is the Burns defeat as big a blow to Republicans as Scott Brown’s Massachusetts’ victory was to Democrats? Probably not, but still it denied the GOP a clean sweep early on of special election victories, and bragging rights that the Democrats are out of touch with the voters everywhere. Those go for at least the time being to Democrats, who can claim victory in the only race this past week that was between a Democrat and Republican.

Largely overlooked in all the results, however, was the stunning vote in Arizona. Arizona, now known for its legislation on illegal immigrants, that Arizona, voted for a sales tax increase. By a landslide margin, Arizonans voted for a sales tax increase. Okay, it was temporary, but it was a tax increase. Voted by the people.

And it was the second time this year the public has raised taxes on itself. Earlier, Oregon voters also approved tax increases.

Which raises new questions politicians have to face going into November: what really do the voters want? The Pennsylvania victory of Mr. Crist could be easily interpreted as those voters wanting to protect their self interests that Mr. Murtha, Mr. Crist’s old boss, promoted. The voters in Arizona and Oregon were apparently fed up with ongoing budget cuts into different programs and services and responded by taxing themselves. (It also raises a question of what might Michigan voters do if given the chance, which it doesn’t look like they will, to vote on the sales tax proposal of Governor Jennifer Granholm.)

The clarion call of most politicians, certainly all Republicans and a large number of Democrats, too, has been to cut taxes. That is true in this state especially. But do Oregon and Arizona imply a more complicated wish on the part of the public? If so, how to address it in the coming campaigns that we all win?

So everyone won this past week, and all the winners are digesting the implications of their many-faceted victories, so that come August in Michigan and then November we can hear that we all won again, and isn’t victory grand?

John Lindstrom is publisher of Gongwer News Service. For nearly 50 years in Michigan, Gongwer News Service has provided independent, comprehensive, accurate and timely coverage of issues in and around Michigan’s government and political systems. For subscription information, including a free trial, visit Gongwer online.