After some legal disputes were resolved, the Emergency Financial Manager (EFM) legislation for local governments has been placed on the November ballot.  As you may know, Michigan has had a provision for a state-appointed EFM for over 20 years now, but the recent Public Act 4 of 2010 gave the Emergency Financial Managers considerably more powers (to void labor contracts, sell assets, outsource services, and so on).  Among the Michigan local governments operating under an EFM are Ecorse, Benton Harbor, Flint, Pontiac, and the Highland Park School District, which recently outsourced instruction to a charter school.  Moreover, the city of Detroit has been close this past year.  The city has been in negotiation – and in conflict – with the state trying to prevent both a bankruptcy AND the appointment of an EFM.

Critics of the new act argue that the EFM has too many powers, and among other problems, this side-steps democracy, but it at least temporarily voids voter choice, representation, and democratically elected city officials, in favor of a single financial manager.

Supporters argue that democracy failed to keep these local governments from going bankrupt or near-bankrupt, and difficult short- and long-term solutions (that elected officials haven’t made) must be made in order for a local government to survive.

Because the matter of PA 4 has been approved for the November ballot, the previous EFM legislation is now in effect.  If PA 4 is overturned by voters in November, presumably the original act will continue to be in effect. 

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.  My guess is that most Michigan voters will likely support PA 4, because the average voter will focus on results, rather than the politics that surrounds this issue.  If an EFM can balance a city’s budget, cut local employment, and put a city back on track toward financial sustainability, then I’m guessing there will be support for retaining PA 4. 

If this occurs, we are probably looking at the beginnings of a new model of local government, where many services are contracted out (to private firms or to other governments), where there are very few public employees, and where there are more inter-local agreements to share costs and provide services.  Not sure what will happen to the revenue side (isn’t this what caused Pontiac’s and Flint’s problems in the first place – massive revenue loss when GM left both cities?), but I guess that is a different story still to be told.

John Klemanski

Here is an interview with Professor Dulio and WXYZ Channel 7’s Tom Wait about the 14th congressional district.

With primary day upon us tomorrow, a few key dynamics are at play. Beyond the winners and losers that will set general election matchups there are important developments with these races that should be discussed.

There are many important races that will be decided tomorrow, but at the top of my list are these:

The GOP Senate contest between Pete Hoekstra, Clark Durant, and Randy Heckman

On all measures, Hoekstra should win this race easily – he’s got a significant advantage in west Michigan and has enjoyed a sizable lead in fundraising over the entire campaign. Durant, however, and his allies, have made a push at the end with some advertising dollars aimed squarely at Hoekstra. ads

There hasn’t been much public polling data available for this race but all of it shows Hoekstra with a big lead. The question for tomorrow is will the ads run by Durant (and Prosperity for Michigan, a so-called superPAC) be enough to close the gap all the way. My guess is no. Hoekstra wins this easily.

The race in the 11th district to find a successor to Thad McCotter

This is a fascinating race given the drama that surrounded the resignation of McCotter and the battle over what would happen next. The real interesting part of this race, of course, is the fact that only one name will appear on the ballot on the GOP side – Kerry Bentivolio; the other candidate – Nancy Cassis – is waging a write-in candidacy.

It is incredibly difficult to win as a write-in candidate. But some polling shows Cassis with a lead. Leading in a pre-election poll is not the same as getting the most votes on Election Day. For Cassis, it will take a large effort on the last day of the campaign – when everyone associated with the campaign is dog tired – to scratch out a victory. What is more, with a write-in candidacy, even if the candidate’s campaign can get their supporters to the polls, they have to count on voters writing out Cassis’ name correctly. What if someone spells it “Casis,” or “Kassis”? What if the voter only writes in the last name? What if a voter only does what the Cassis campaign jingle tells them to do “write in Nancy”? If it’s a close race, the Wayne and Oakland County boards of canvassers will have to make some tough decisions about what counts as a vote for Cassis and what does not. Remember the images of the 2000 Florida recount in Bush v. Gore??

There have been some tough – and questionable – ads in this race too by the candidates and outside groups. Which message will be the one to get through? This one is too close to call given the dynamics of the race.

The 14th district campaign between U.S Rep. Gary Peters, U.S. Rep. Hansen Clarke, former magistrate Robert Costello, Southfield Mayor Brenda Lawrence and former state Rep. Mary Waters

(See my colleague John Klemanski’s thoughts on this race here.)

Gosh, where to start in this one…

I guess it all goes back to redistricting. After Michigan lost a House seat after the last round of reapportionment, Democrats had to know they were going to be targeted. After all, when there is unified government at the state level and those elected offices control redistricting, the party out of power is likely in trouble. And, one could have predicted that the Michigan GOP was going to target Gary Peters. He was the one who took the old 9th district from Joe Knollenberg in a tough race during 2008. How the GOP would try to oust Peters was a little unclear.

In the end, the new congressional district plan created a scenario where there was a lot of jockeying for position among at least three Democrats – Peters, Hansen Clarke, and long-time member John Conyers. Each of these three incumbents was thrown into a uncertain situation. Given the law in Michigan that allows a candidate for Congress to NOT live in the district he or she represents, questions about which district each of these incumbents would run in sprouted. Peters and Clarke settled on the 14th and Conyers the 13th.

One of the fascinating things about the race in the 14th is that it is one of two majority-minority districts (along with the 13th in MI) where a majority of residents are from an under-represented group in the population. The idea behind creating majority-minority districts when the idea was spelled out in the amendments to the Voting Rights Act during the 1980s, was to create districts that are more likely to elect minority candidates to office. Per the rules of the Voting Rights Act and its amendments, Michigan must keep its two majority-minority districts; hence the goofy looking boundaries of some of our soon-to-be congressional districts.

Chances are very good that Gary Peters wins this contest. He’s done a lot of work cultivating votes in this new district, he’s had a decided money advantage over his rivals, and he’s stayed out of the dust up over race in the campaign. Recent polling would concur that Peters looks like the winner.

Other thoughts on the primaries

Primaries are often heralded as a great development in democracy as the direct primary took candidate recruitment and selection out of the hands of the “party boss” who ruled politics in the late 1800s and put it back in the hands of the people. Well, like most things, there are plusses and minuses. Yes, primaries let the people – rather than party big wigs – choose who their candidate will be. But they also help breed what is seen as a big problem with American politics today – polarization.

In most primary campaigns, the winner is going to be the most extreme partisan in the contest. (See below why this isn’t always the case in MI.) This is because the electorate in the Democratic primary is going to be mostly comprised of the hard-core partisans on the Democratic side. The candidate that has the advantage in the primary is the most extreme candidate because that’s where the most primary voters are. In other words, the candidate that can “out liberal” the Democrats most often times will win the primary.










The same thing on the Republican side – the most likely winner of a primary is the one who can “out conservative” the others in the race.

There is another dynamic that makes this even more likely. We are in an era where the vast majority of seats in the Congress are considered “safe” – where one party’s candidate is nearly assured of victory. This is because there are so many voters of one party in a particular district, the outcome is almost pre-determined; this isn’t only a Democratic or only a Republican thing – both parties play this game. For all practical purposes, in these safe districts the winner of a primary is very likely going to be the winner of the general. We can use the same two graphs used above to depict primary constituencies to depict whole districts. Here, this district will nearly always elect a Democrat because all the voters are on the left. So, when the extreme candidate comes out of the primary and runs against a Republican, who wins? The extreme candidate. The same thing is true on the GOP side. So now, when these two general election winners go to Washington to represent their districts, we have two very extreme candidates. And we expect them to get along and work together. Primaries along with redistricting and gerrymandering lead to extremes in Congress and that leads to gridlock.

Now, in Michigan, this is tempered a bit. (In addition, I should say that in the three races I noted above, I don’t think this scenario plays out at all. I think the winners of the three races [if it should be Hoekstra, Cassis, and Peters] are all relatively moderate.) One big reason is that we have open primaries in Michigan. The scenario I painted above of a completely skewed Republican or Democratic primary electorate isn’t as likely to come to fruition in MI as it is in states with closed primaries.

In the end, primary day is an important one in every election season. In Michigan in 2012, it’s more interesting than normal.

Dave Dulio

Dave Dulio’s insightful observations last week (“The Money Chase”) reminded me of the importance of early money in a campaign.  Political scientists consider “the money primary” to be a key to a candidate’s ultimate success or failure. The money primary period is generally thought of as the time just after a candidate’s declaration to run to the period just before the first primaries and caucuses are held.  A candidate who can raise lots of money can stay in the race longer, can purchase more TV ads, can hire more staff in each primary state, and can make it difficult for other candidates to raise their own funds.

As you look at the 2011 Year-End reports submitted to the Federal Election Commission , two conclusions jump out.  First, Mitt Romney (and his most active associated Super PAC, Restore Our Future) substantially outraised and outspent his opponents and their Super PACs during the money primary period.  Mitt Romney’s campaign committee raised $57.1 million in 2011; Restore Our Future raised $30.1 million.  Moreover, even though these committees spent a fair amount of money calendar year 2011 as part of the run-up to the primaries, both Romney’s campaign committee and Restore Our Future still had lots of money available to spend entering into the primary season.  Second, Super PACs already can be seen as an important factor in the election – to put it another way, Restore Our Future’s $30 million raised in 2011 was more than the amounts raised by any Romney opponent and his or her Super PAC combined.

The next highest fundraiser was Ron Paul at $26.6 million, but his Super PAC raised only $1 million.  Rick Perry started late (and left early), but still raised $20.1 million, and his Super PAC raised $5.4 million. At the low end, Rick Santorum raised only $2.1 million, while his Super PAC raised less than $1 million.

Romney’s total of $87 million raised in 2011 gave him a solid win in the “money primary.”  In states such as Florida (with lots of media markets), a candidate with lots of money to spend on TV ads can have a significant advantage, and this likely helped Romney win the Florida primary and give his candidacy a huge boost. Remember Newt Gingrich had just previously won the South Carolina primary.  The Florida win shifted the momentum back to Romney.  While the other candidates had to make strategic decisions about where to spend their primary money, Romney could cover more primary states with more TV ads aired more frequently.

John Klemanski

                                                                                       

The August 7 primary is next Tuesday, and because so many House districts are “safe” (no major competition in the general election), whatever competition that may occur comes in the primaries. While there are other candidates in this race, most of the attention has fallen to the two incumbent House members who are running against each other in the Michigan 14th – Hansen Clarke and Gary Peters.

One story about this district would have to be about how this district was re-drawn, but my comments will focus on the backdrop of racial politics in this election.  First, the 14th is one of two “majority-minority” districts in Michigan, meaning that a majority of the district’s population (about 58%, I believe) is African-American.  The district includes a part of Oakland County (Pontiac, West Bloomfield, Southfield and several other communities), cuts across to the east (along 8 Mile Road) while picking up some north Detroit neighborhoods, then extends down into the Grosse Pointes and into Detroit again along the Detroit River.

Peters, who beat incumbent Joe Knollenberg in 2008 in the Michigan 9th district, then hung on to win re-election in the 2010 “Republican wave” election, has worked smart and hard in 2012.  He has picked up lots of endorsements, including Detroit Mayor Dave Bing, the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce, and a bunch of labor unions.  Hansen Clarke has received only a few endorsements compared to Peters, but he also knocked off Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick in the 2010 13th District primary.

A recently conducted poll has Peters about 20 points ahead of Clarke, and because it is a Democratic district, will likely win the general election as well.  Whoever is elected to represent this district, they will face the challenge of identifying the priorities and needs of an incredibly diverse population.  This is a district with among the wealthiest communities in the state as well as those that are among the poorest.  Moreover, the district includes parts of Oakland and Wayne counties – historically at odds with each other on many issues.

The symbolism attached to a Peters win cannot be ignored either.  Should he win, he will be a white representative of a district that was created to protect minority representation in Congress in compliance with the Voting Rights Act.  However, what I know about the records of both Peters and Clarke, I’m guessing Peters would likely be a more effective representative of this district, in terms of sponsoring legislation that successfully passes the House, and working with members of both parties in trying to fix our economy and enacting sensible legislation.  Given the endorsements he’s received from a number of minority leaders and organizations, maybe racial politics isn’t that important in this election.

John Klemanski