Follow Election 2012 with Michigan Radio

The Michigan Supreme Court ordered the Court of Appeals to issue a ruling by Monday on whether the "Protect Our Jobs" constitutional amendment proposal should go on the November ballot.

The referendum seeks to to protect collective bargaining rights in Michigan.

From The Detroit News: 

Once upon a time, the rules of politics were fairly clear. When you got caught in a scandal, you resigned, as gracefully as possible.

That is, unless it happened to be in Japan, where you were expected to kill yourself.

There was also an extremely quaint idea that the cause and your party was more important than you were.

Thirty years ago, I interviewed a candidate for the U.S. Senate who had no realistic chance to win. He wasn’t just a name on the ballot; he was reasonably qualified. I asked him why he was running.

Speaking off the record, he told me he knew he had no chance, unless his opponent were to die. But he was running because he believed the voters deserved a decent choice between ideas. His party had asked him to run. Now, there was the mostly unspoken understanding that if he did this, and did a credible job, they later would see that he was put up for a race he could win.

That, or perhaps appoint him to something. These days, however, we live in a different world. Ayn Rand, once one of Republican Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan’s political heroes, once wrote a book called “The Virtue of Selfishness.”

We are now fully into the silly season in both news and politics, something that commonly happens in late summer and in this point in campaigns, especially perhaps presidential election campaigns.

More ballot measure news today as Michigan voters face a November election that will likely include  about a half a dozen ballot measures.

The Michigan Court of Appeals will hear arguments next week from supporters and opponents of a ballot measure that seeks to add collective bargaining rights for workers into the state constitution.

A group called Protect Our Jobs collected nearly 700,000 signatures to get the measure on the ballot. The group Citizens Protecting Michigan's Constitution challenged the petition, saying the ballot proposal was unconstitutionally broad.

In an order released today, the court says oral arguments in the case will be heard Wednesday in Lansing.

An appeal to the court was made after the Board of State Canvassers deadlocked 2-2 this week on the Protect Our Jobs ballot proposal.

This week, it’s a trickle down edition of It’s Just Politics. Trickle down: as in how Mitt Romney’s selection of Paul Ryan as his running mate will play down on the rest of the November ballot.

Wisconsin Republican Congressman Paul Ryan is best-known as the author of a controversial budget plan. And, it’s that plan that’s really been driving most political conversations this week which means Paul Ryan is not only Mitt Romney’s running mate, but is on the ticket with every Republican running this year, including Michigan lawmakers.

We’ve seen the Democratic messaging about how the Ryan plan will  end Medicare, "as we know it." In fact, even Romney has said the Ryan budget plan is not his budget plan, but every Republican is, at least, being asked where they stand on it. So, while it may create some problems for congressional candidates – say, a Republican like Dan Benishek in northern Michigan, where there are a lot of seniors, it also allows them to talk about the need for “entitlement reform.”

Speaking of Entitlement Reform…

This week a memo was obtained by the online news site Politico that outlines the new nomenclature that is to be used by Republican candidates when talking about the Ryan budget and federal spending. So, out with “entitlement reform,” “privatization,” and the phrase: “every option is on the table.” Instead, the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee suggests these words: “strengthen,” “secure,” “preserve,” “protect.”

Closer to Home

This messaging fits pretty snugly into the campaign narratives that we’ve seen already in Michigan. In congressional races, they’ll talk about Medicare, Social Security, and the nation's debt. In state House races, the issues will be on a parallel track, framed around the unpopular pension tax, funding for schools and roads and what Republicans in Lansing will say were tough, but responsible, decisions to get the state’s budget house in order.

Meanwhile, in the U.S. Senate race, Republicans have been trying for months to make an issue out of the fact that Senate Democrats – including incumbent Debbie Stabenow – still have not approved a permanent federal budget. GOP Senate nominee Pete Hoesktra is trying to hang her with the nickname “Debbie Spends-A-Lot.”

The Hoekstra campaign therefore was no doubt prepped and ready for that “adult conversation” about federal spending going into this week, when it was hit with a blast from the past. A Democratic operative made RollCall.com aware of an interview that Hoekstra had done on WAAM in Ann Arbor in which he comes out against the 17th Amendment – the direct popular election of U.S. Senators. “The direct election of U.S. Senators made the U.S. Senate act and behave like the House of Representatives.  The end result has led to an erosion of states’ rights,” Hokestra explains.

The Michigan Board of State Canvassers has approved two measures for the November ballot, and deadlocked on a third.

Voters this fall will be able to decide if Michigan should amend the Constitution to require utilities to generate 25 percent of their power from renewable resources by 2025, and whether or not the Constitution should be amended to allow home healthcare workers to unionize.

We are now three days out from Tuesday’s Primary where there was a lot of attention paid to the state’s Republican Senate primary and various U.S. Congressional races. So, we thought it was time to give state lawmakers and their races a little love.

Primarily Speaking

In just about two thirds of these local races the primary pretty much determined who the winner will be in November. Because of the way the lines are drawn, most districts are decidedly Republican or Democratic. So, the primary settles the question three months before the general election.

That leaves just about a third of the races left; races that are really fought between a Republican and a Democrat… where incumbency, the strength of the national and statewide tickets and fights over issues and policy matter.

Can Democrats Win Back the State House?

Control of the state House is in play this year. In 2010, largely on the strength of a surge nationwide for Republicans, the GOP took a commanding majority – 64 to 46 – in the state House.  Out of 110 seats, Democrats need to turn at least 10 of them to win back control. That’s a lot. But we’ve seen dramatic swings in recent House elections. So, Democrats see it as tough, but do-able.

In the Thumb, Democrats lost the Republican primary. That’s because incumbent Republican Kurt Damrow ran into some problems and he had become such a liability that his local Republican Party kicked him out. Former Democratic Representative Terry Brown won’t have as easy a time against Dan Grimshaw.

In Grand Rapids, Democrats won the Republican primary when the badly damaged Roy Schmidt barely won re-nomination over a write-in opponent, but only on the strength of absentee ballots cast before the scandal over how he switched parties and tried to rig his own re-election by recruiting a fake Democrat broke into the news. Political-newcomer Winnie Brinks is the Democrat on the ballot. And, Schmidt’s name is toxic. Candidates typically love high name identification, but not this kind.

When I voted on Tuesday, there were several things I needed to know. 

The toughest thing was figuring out who to vote for among all of the candidates for several obscure township boards and lower-level county offices.  These people do important things, but their work is almost entirely below the radar-level of most media.  Their names, and even the offices they hold, are relatively unknown.  It is sometimes hard to even know, without help from the ballot, whether I’m voting for just one candidate, or “two of five” names, or even all four of just four names on the ballot.

Every Thursday, Michigan Radio's Jennifer White talks Michigan politics with Susan Demas, Political Analyst for Michigan Information and Research Service, and Ken Sikkema, former Senate Majority Leader and Senior Policy Fellow at Public Sector Consultants.

This week, Michigan's primary election results were not very surprising, but Sikkema says, it's an unusual election year, nonetheless. Plus, they explore what happens next, now that Public Act 4, Michigan's Emergency Manger Law is suspended.

Here's a selected list of the August Primary Election results.  Follow the links on the names of many of the candidates to read more about them. Winners are in bold.

Senate Race

State Representative Roy Schmidt has won in the 76th District State House GOP primary over write-in candidate Bing Goei.

Goei entered the race a few weeks before the primary, and looked like he might outpace Schmidt throughout the night.

In the end, Schmidt defeated Goei with the absentee ballots that were cast before his involvement in a political scandal with House Speaker Jase Bolger (R-Marshall) became public knowledge.

Reports show that Representative Mike Rogers (R-Brighton) has won decisively in the GOP primary, closing out with a whopping 86 percent of votes counted.

Republican candidates Brian Hetrick of Brighton and Holly resident Vernon Molnar finished far behind Rogers, winning 9 and 5 percent, respectively.

The Detroit Institute of Arts millage easily passed in Oakland and Wayne Counties, and squeaked by in Macomb County, with a .5 percent difference once all the votes were counted.

The Detroit Free Press reports supporters of the DIA ran a $2.5 million campaign to pass the millage.

More from the Freep:

As most polls predicted, incumbent Gary Peters beat out another incumbent, Hansen Clarke, in the Democratic race for the U.S. House of Representatives in the state's 14th district.

With almost all of the votes in, Peters had 12 points on Clarke.

Both candidates are technically incumbents, due to redistricting.  Michigan Radio's Sarah Cwiek explains,

In the 12th District U.S. House of Representatives democratic primary, incumbent John Dingell is ahead of opponent Daniel Marcin by 58 points with most of the votes counted.

Dingell is the longest-serving member of the United States House of Representatives in history. If he is reelected this November, it will be his 30th term.

On the Republican side, the race is much closer.  Cynthia Kallgren and Karen Jacobsen are neck-and-neck, with 65 percent of the votes tallied.

-Elaine Ezekiel, Michigan Radio Newsroom