Jack Lessenberry

It is now difficult to imagine that Michigan Democratic Party Chair Mark Brewer can win election to another term when his party holds its state convention 17 days from now.

Yesterday, every single Democratic member of the state congressional delegation -- both U.S. Senators and five congressmen -- endorsed his little-known rival, Lon Johnson.

Earlier, both the United Auto Workers and the Teamsters said it was time for Brewer to go. Yet in what has to be embarrassing for all concerned, Brewer is still fighting to keep his job.

This appears to show that he is in hopeless denial of reality, and cares far more about clinging to a job than the good of his party.

In this week in Michigan politics, Rina Miller and Jack Lessenberry discuss Governor Rick Snyder’s upcoming budget address, the final days of the Kwame Kilpatrick trial, and how 200 administrators in Grand Rapids Public Schools got pink slipped.

When Carl Levin was first elected to the U.S. Senate, Barack Obama was a 17-year-old high school senior.

That was more than 34 years ago. Today, of course, not only has that high school boy become President, he has run in his last election. But not only is Carl Levin still in the Senate, he may very well run for a seventh term next year.

And politicians of both parties are anxiously waiting to find out. Democrats, perhaps a little more anxiously than Republicans. Here’s why. If Carl Levin runs, they automatically hold the seat.

Last week, Detroit City Council faced a choice. The state was offering to take over Belle Isle, the largest island city park in the nation, fix it up and run it as part of the state park system.

Had this happened, Belle Isle would have had a new lease on life. The city is unable to maintain it adequately, and many of its once-lovely features have been falling into a shabby state of disrepair.

The city would have still owned Belle Isle, and could cancel the lease and take back park operations in ten years if it decided to. In the meantime, turning Belle Isle over to the state would save the cash-poor city more than six million badly needed dollars a year.

This was a no-brainer of a deal. But alas, brains were not involved in the decision. What prevailed instead were toxic, self-destructive racial identity politics.

Today, as you probably know, is Groundhog Day. Frankly, I want to say on the record that I couldn’t care less if Punxsutawney Phil or any other rodent sees his shadow today.

What I know is that it is cold and depressing, this winter already has lasted too long, and I really don’t want to go outside until I see the forsythia blooming along the back fence.

Beyond my crankiness, however, I have to wonder if we in Michigan are caught up in a version of Groundhog Day ourselves.

The Michigan League for Public Policy released its annual Kids Count data book yesterday. Unfortunately, it didn’t get a lot of attention in most of the media.

To the extent that I did hear or read about the Kids Count report across our state, the coverage emphasized two things:

Much of it focused on how kids were doing in a particular area, since for the first time, the report ranked individual counties on a wide variety of indicators. Beyond that, we did hear that the overall well-being of our children got significantly worse in the years two thousand and five to two thousand and eleven. That’s something you might expect, given the Great Recession.

But to me, that’s not the real news, and none of the media gave this report nearly the attention it deserved. This report, which anyone can read online, reveals that more than half a million Michigan children are living in poverty. Half a million!

Two days ago, the  expectation among many Democrats was that Senate Minority Leader Gretchen  Whitmer would be their candidate for governor next year.

Attractive, articulate  and charismatic, she has been the party’s primary and most visible public voice  since Rick Snyder became governor two years ago.

Yesterday, however,  she took herself out of the running. She has two pre-teen daughters, and said,  sensibly, “to be the kind of Mom I want to be for my girls simply does not allow  me to make the kind of commitment necessary to run a successful campaign for  governor at this point in their lives.’

Some may think that is a  cop-out, that she isn’t running because she thinks Snyder is unbeatable. But I  talked yesterday to someone who knows her well and says she is being completely  honest. Her daughters do mean a lot to her, and I think you have to admire that. 

This is a dilemma, by the way, many women in politics face. Republican Danialle  Karamanos just resigned as a member of the Wayne State Board of Governors,  because she has four small children and concluded that she couldn’t do both  jobs.

Well, it’s now official: A person who ten days ago was a Michigan Supreme Court justice is now a convicted felon.

Diane Hathaway pleaded guilty yesterday in federal court to a single count of bank fraud. While on the bench of Michigan’s highest court,she temporarily transferred three of four expensive houses she and her husband owned to her stepchildren.

She did this, the federal prosecutor and the FBI said, as part of an elaborate scheme to hide assets from the bank. This was done in order to make it look like she and her husband, attorney Michael Kingsley, were suffering financial hardship.

They wanted to look worse off than they were because they wanted to convince her bank to allow her to sell yet another home they owned in Grosse Pointe Park in what’s called a short sale.

In this week in Michigan politics, Emily Fox speaks with Michigan Radio's Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry about Detroit City Council tabling discussion of the possible state lease of Detroit's Belle Isle Park.

The proposal would have let the State Department of Natural Resources manage the land as a State Park for 30 years. Now it looks like state will take the offer off the table if Detroit City Council doesn't act fast.

Jack weighs in on why the City Council is not coming to agreement on this issue.

Jack also discusses what the future holds for former Michigan Supreme Court Justice Diane Hathaway.

Hathaway pleaded guilty to bank fraud yesterday.  She could face a sentence of up to 18 months. Hathaway concealed income and temporarily transferred assets out of her name in order to get favorable terms for a short sale of her house she owned.

There’s a lot going in Michigan this week. The governor is asking the state supreme court to rule on the constitutionality of his Right-to-Work law. Detroit City Council is deciding whether to allow the state to improve Belle Isle, the city’s once-lovely island park.

The Red Wings are playing hockey again, and many of us are starting to tire of what has been a rather depressing winter.

Yet I think that the best thing we could do to clear our heads to imagine Michigan’s future would be to take a trip to the past tonight, by sitting in our living rooms. American Experience, the public television’s documentary series, is airing a new two-hour biography of the original Henry Ford.

Republicans and Democrats have many differences these days, but they are uncannily similar in terms of party structure.

In every state, party activists elect a chairperson who is in charge of rallying the troops, recruiting candidates, encouraging fund-raising efforts, and keeping various interest groups happy.

These are jobs that take a lot out of anyone doing them.  Normally, state party chairs last two years, maybe four. But in Michigan, Democratic Party Chair Mark Brewer has been on the job for eighteen years now, and wants a tenth two-year term.

This “week in review”, Michigan Radio’s Weekend Edition host Rina Miller and political analyst Jack Lessenberry discuss proposed gun laws in Michigan, who might replace former Supreme Court Justice Diane Hathaway, and the new hiring rules for emergency financial managers in the state.

While Toledo, just south of Michigan’s border, is part of Ohio, it shouldn’t be. Geographically and economically, it is more part of the Michigan economy, right down to the Jeep plant.
 Its 300,000 people tend to share our state’s demographics and the same range of difficulties Michigan manufacturing cities face as they attempt to transition to a twenty-first century economy.

Last week I spent some time with the mayor of Toledo, Mike Bell, who for many years was the fire chief. Four years ago, he got elected by running strictly as an independent -- unbossed and unbowed. He takes stands on issues, but doesn’t endorse partisan candidates. Though he’s been a longtime state official, he’s never held elected office before.

I asked him what had been the biggest surprise for him in his first term as mayor. When I’ve asked other politicians that, they’ve often said that the job turned out to be far more complex than they’d imagined. But not Mayor Bell. The shocker for him is the lack of civility, courtesy and respect people show officials these days.

Last weekend, when I was going to the North American International Auto Show, I walked by the Detroit News building.

It is an impressive structure, designed by legendary architect Albert Kahn nearly a century ago.  Carved along the top are inspirational sayings about the role of the press in a Democratic society. The News moved into that building in 1917, as the United States was moving into World War I.

Since then, presidents and would-be presidents have gone there to be interviewed, as has virtually every celebrity the nation has known. Some of the nation’s greatest journalists have worked in that building, where the editors ran the place from magnificent paneled offices and one of the world’s most beautiful newspaper libraries. In the years before radio, they set up billboards outside and crowds gathered to read the World Series scores and news bulletins.

Four years ago, then-Governor Jennifer Granholm abruptly canceled one of our state’s oldest traditions, the Michigan State Fair, which had been held in Detroit for well over a century.

The fair had dwindling attendance in recent years, though it still attracted several hundred thousand people annually. True, it was also losing a few hundred thousand dollars a year.

However, that’s not all that much in a $50 billion state budget. The normally tight-fisted legislature disagreed with the governor, and voted to keep the fair going.

But Granholm vetoed that, saying the state could no longer afford it. She also said that she thought the land might be better used for something else, which made me think she had a plan to sell it to a developer with political connections.

But nothing happened for the last year of her term, or for more than a year of the Snyder administration. The fairgrounds just sat empty. The famous big stove caught on fire and was destroyed.