Jack Lessenberry from Michigan Radio

More than thirty years ago, I had just become national politics writer for a Midwestern newspaper, and was sent off to cover a national Roman Catholic Bishops’ conference in Chicago.I was somewhat indignant about that. I complained to the managing editor, a red-eyed old Irishman who seemed straight out of the Front Page. I was the politics writer, not the religion writer, I said.He fixed me with a bleary stare. He was a Catholic himself. “This has nothing to do with religion. It’s all politics,”he said. Turned out that he was completely right. I thought of this yesterday, when Brady Hoke, the University of Michigan’s football coach, was fired.This was about as surprising as the news that the days are getting shorter and the temperature colder. I am not an expert on sports. My football strategy is all about trying to avoid being trapped somewhere where I’d have to watch a whole game.But what’s been going on here has to do with politics as well as football. And it seems to me that what has happened in recent weeks – the self-destruction of athletic director Dave Brandon and the demise of his football coach – is a tremendous gift for new U of M President Mark Schlissel.That’s not saying that he wanted this to happen. I have never met President Schlissel, and am privy to nothing behind the scenes. But the fact is this: Michigan is one of many schools where the athletic department and the football team are powers unto themselves.Brady Hoke and even some of his coaches were paid more than the president of the university.President Schlissel came to the U of M from Brown University, an Ivy League school where football is not a major factor.Dealing with a powerful athletic program hadn’t been part of his responsibilities. He had never set foot in Michigan before taking this job, and there were concerns that he might be bowled over by an entrenched and politically ambitious athletic director. It was no secret that Brandon had thoughts of running for governor.But now the new president has the opportunity to select his own athletic director, and rebuild the football team and reexamine U of M sports in a new era.There’s one tradition in national politics that I think works pretty well. Whenever a new President takes office, all the members of the old President’s cabinet automatically resign, giving him, or someday her, a chance to build their own team.Occasionally, you might have one holdover, like Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. Yet basically, new Presidents are expected to come in with their own people.Universities are different, but while President Schlissel wasn’t making as much as his football coach, he makes almost twice the salary of President Obama.And he is the administrator of a multi-billion dollar operation that is hugely important to this state. Michigan is much more than a football team with a school attached to it, no matter what the guys at the corner bar think.But that team is a huge part of the school’s identity. What has happened this fall gives the school’s new president an opportunity to make the athletic program truly his.Jack Lessenberry is Michigan Radio's political analyst. You can read his essays online at michiganradio.org. Views expressed in his essays are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Michigan Radio, its management or the station licensee, The University of Michigan.

For years now, we’ve heard it said that Rick Snyder isn’t really a politician. Well, that’s nonsense. He’s been a supremely skilled one, especially in selling the people on voting for him. Four years ago, he came out of nowhere to easily win the Republican nomination for governor, then won election in a landslide. This year, despite some very unpopular decisions, he won again.He’s never lost an election. But the jury is still out on whether he’s an effective leader when it comes to governing.Well, we are about to find out. The key issue is, as it has been, the roads. We spend less per capita on roads than any state in the union, and as a result, we have almost the worst roads in the nation. Given that we are the automobile state, and that we depend on transportation for our jobs and future, this is nuts.Snyder understands this, as do the state’s business leaders. For years he’s been trying to get lawmakers to come up with desperately needed money to fix the roads. A generation ago, this would have been a no-brainer.Road funding would have been passed quickly, with probably more Republican than Democratic votes. But the Republicans who control the Legislature these days are not especially pro-business. They are irrational, anti-tax fanatics.They now have been making up nonsense to justify not doing the right thing. The latest is an asinine claim that they can’t possibly appropriate the money needed because we don’t have the contractors available to do the work.Lame-duck State Representative Pete Lund, the same guy who has been trying to rig the state’s electoral votes, said this over the weekend.What’s worse, incoming House Speaker Kevin Cotter told The Detroit News, “I wouldn’t want to flip a switch and inject $1.2 billion into that system,” claiming this would “drive inefficiency.’Well, the newspaper found this was all nonsense, that there are more than enough contractors. And actually, we don’t need $1.2 billion a year in new revenue; we need more like $2.2 billion, according to MDOT, the state department of transportation, just to get the roads we have in reasonable shape.The governor is asking for $1.4 billion.Yesterday, he and Transportation Director Kirk Steudle put hard hats on and toured a crumbling section of Detroit’s Lodge Freeway, which I happen to drive every day.Snyder candidly told reporters, “The money I’m talking about is to get us to fair-to-good roads. They’re not even going to be great roads, folks.” MDOT’s Steudle said that if significant new money doesn’t happen soon, quote, “we’re going over the cliff and this cost is going to be exponentially worse.”There’s no doubt that is right. Drivers now pay more in average vehicle repair costs than even the highest road tax would cost. But there is still no sign of rationality in the state House of Representatives, and next year’s Legislature seems certain to be even worse.So the governor has just days to show if he can lead his fellow lawmakers to solve the state’s most pressing problem. To paraphrase what they used to say in the '60s, the whole state is watching.Jack Lessenberry is Michigan Radio's political analyst. You can read his essays online at michiganradio.org. Views expressed in his essays are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Michigan Radio, its management or the station licensee, The University of Michigan.

     Edit | Remove My parents have been dead for a long time, but I feel I owe them a long-overdue thank you for saying no half a century ago, when I wanted an air rifle, otherwise known as a BB gun.I had read about them in Boys’ Life, and believe I had ambitions of shooting birds in the backyard. Today, I would be horrified at that, but young people can be insensitive. My mother’s refusal to let me have a gun probably had, however, little to do with birds, and more to do with Larry, an older kid in the neighborhood. Larry once had a friend with a BB gun, and as a result, Larry had a glass eye.Well, our representatives in the legislature, or at least those who give them campaign money, apparently would have thought my momma a spineless wimp. They are seriously considering an eight-bill package that would dramatically loosen restrictions on pellet guns, or other weapons that power a bullet by gas, spring or air.Currently, it is illegal for anyone under eighteen to have a BB gun unless they’re with an adult. That’s something that seems common sense. But that’s not how the National Rifle Association sees it. They want that law repealed – and the Michigan House has already done so. Now, it’s up to the Senate.What I can’t understand is why anyone thinks this is a good idea. I know all the arguments for rifles and handguns. Those who support what they call gun rights say we may need them to defend ourselves, against criminals or an evil government.You can also make a case in favor of hunting. However, you are unlikely to stop a murderous bad guy, or drop a bear, with a BB gun. Unsupervised kids with air rifles would be, however, in an excellent position to put out the eyes of other kids like Larry.They also could do a heck of a lot of property damage. Just ask the police in a couple of townships in Macomb County. Sometime in the wee hours Saturday, someone with a BB gun shot out the windows of more than a hundred cars.So far, nobody has been arrested for this crime. But somehow I don’t think it was a fellow middle-aged member of my generation.In any event, I’d like to see a member of the legislature tell the police chiefs in those townships that kids need more access to BB guns. Nevertheless, the state Senate judiciary committee is slated to take up a bunch of bills to do just that tomorrow afternoon at 2:30.The chair of that committee is State Senator Rick Jones. In case you wonder who thinks we need unsupervised kids with air rifles, it is The National Rifle Association.The NRA, which has evolved from a sportsman’s association into a hotbed of gun fanatics, says that Michigan has “outdated and unduly burdensome “restrictions on air rifles. And it looks like our lawmakers will do what the NRA wants. After all, they probably give more money to politicians than you do. But just for the heck of it, you might want to let your legislators know how you feel.Jack Lessenberry is Michigan Radio's political analyst. You can read his essays online at michiganradio.org. Views expressed in his essays are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Michigan Radio, its management or the station licensee, The University of Michigan.

There are those with some understandable skepticism about political junkets to other countries in search of jobs. Former Governor Jennifer Granholm was forever jetting off on trade missions to Sweden or Germany, say, and then announcing with great fanfare that some company had agreed to create maybe a dozen new jobs in Michigan.This raised a number of questions, such as, would those jobs have come here anyway? Incidentally, I’m not sure anyone ever followed up to see if the promised jobs actually happened.On top of that, you had to wonder if the governor’s time and energy might better have been spent elsewhere.Especially when you saw stories about a handful of new junket-generated jobs next to other stories about hundreds of domestic jobs being eliminated through plant closings or downsizings.However, one place Granholm never went was China, probably the biggest generator of new jobs in the world, possibly because she did not wish to anger the unions here.Well, the newly re-elected Governor Snyder is flying back today from his fourth trade mission to China, this one primarily to Shanghai. These missions aren’t cheap — the last one cost more than a quarter of a million dollars – but he thinks they are more than worth it.This morning, the governor told the Associated Press that this personal diplomacy helps open doors for Michigan businesses, and “sends a strong message” that the state is serious about trade ties.He noted that one such company, Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation, announced it would locate a new facility in the Detroit suburb of Madison Heights, creating nearly two hundred new jobs.I then asked a Democrat who is somewhat of a China expert about the governor’s travels. Tom Watkins now heads the Detroit-Wayne Mental Health Authority. But for years, he’s been a booster of stonger ties between Michigan and China.He told me“Governor Snyder has done more to build two-way cultural, educational and economic bridges with China than all his predecessors combined.” Watkins thinks Snyder “is laying a foundation that future administrations will build upon and which will pay dividends in jobs and economic investment for years to come.”Watkins, probably the state’s biggest China booster, believes there is a natural symbiosis between our state and that huge country. “Michigan has much of what the Chinese need and want: Autos, agriculture, tourism and education,” plus a market in which half a billion people have recently risen into the middle class.Building ties with China takes years and is dependent on growing a human personal presence. These trips are important even if no immediate deal is signed every time.“The governor understands Michigan is not an island,”he said. Hard to disagree, though I think a note of caution is in order.The Chinese are neither supermen nor infallible. A few years ago, Toledo aggressively cultivated the Chinese, who then bought a key section of riverfront property.Yet they never developed it, something that was a factor in the defeat of an incumbent mayor there last year.But indeed, China is the largest emerging market in the world, with more than a billion people hungry for cars and consumer goods.Jack Lessenberry is Michigan Radio's political analyst. You can read his essays online at michiganradio.org. Views expressed in his essays are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Michigan Radio, its management or the station licensee, The University of Michigan.

Be careful what you wish for, because you might get it. Members of the LBGT community – lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and the transgendered – have wanted the Legislature to take up expanding the state’s Elliot-Larsen Civil Rights Act.They persuaded themselves that the Republicans who have majorities in the state Legislature would, in the lame-duck session next month, expand its protections to include them. Some took this as a given, although they were worried that the bill might include sexual orientation and not gender identity.Yesterday, one Michelle Fox-Phillips wrote and asked me to tell people that excluding transsexuals from any expansion of the civil rights act would be wrong.Well, it became clear yesterday that she has been living in a dream world. Most Republicans have absolutely no interest in expanding civil rights protections to the non-heterosexual. They are either part of the religious right, or depend on it for money and votes.The one Republican representative who took a stand in favor of expanding Elliott-Larsen, Frank Foster of Petoskey, was defeated in his primary over this very issue.Yesterday, reality became clear. A few weeks ago, lame-duck Speaker of the House Jase Bolger seemed to indicate he might be in favor of expanding Elliott-Larsen in exchange for a so-called “Religious Freedom Restoration Act.”You might be baffled by that. I mean, you probably haven’t seen any bullies on your street trying to prevent you from joining the Methodist Church, have you? Or even your local mosque?No, what proponents of this bill really want is the freedom to discriminate against people they don’t like, mostly, gay, lesbian, and transgendered people.Well, now we’ve heard from new Speaker-elect Kevin Cotter. As one Democratic representative told me recently, he is more conservative than Bolger, and a whole lot smarter. Yesterday, he said he is not in favor of expanding Elliott-Larsen, but would be in favor of the so-called religious freedom bill, HB 5958.ACLU lawyers tell me this bill would allow an employer to fire someone who is gay, or pregnant and unmarried, on “religious” grounds. Cotter said, “For me, it is a question of can we gain some religious liberties potentially without the Elliott-Larsen.”By the way, if the Republicans want to pass this bill, they have the votes, and they will have even more votes next year. They can do what they want. The only real question is whether Gov. Rick Snyder would sign such a bill.He’s not saying, but he usually has gone along with social conservatives. And I’d bet my hubcaps that if he has to sign this to get funding for road repair, he will.Speaking of which, House Speaker Bolger yesterday floated an alternative road plan which would tie road and school spending, not to any gas tax, but to a percentage of the sales tax based on the rather naive belief that the economy will keep expanding forever.This is, well, nuts. State Rep. Brandon Dillon, D-Grand Rapids, said:“I can’t imagine there’s many people who think just funding schools (and roads) based on faith-based economics is a good idea.”Well, guess what, Mr. Dillon: Your speaker does.Elections have consequences. And they’ve only just begun.Jack Lessenberry is Michigan Radio's political analyst. You can read his essays online at michiganradio.org. Views expressed in his essays are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Michigan Radio, its management or the station licensee, The University of Michigan.

Thanksgiving always has reminded me of the famous Charles Dickens quote, “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.” Some of this goes back to my childhood, when President Kennedy was assassinated just days before Thanksgiving, and a gloomily hung over the nation in a way now hard to imagine.Add to that the fact that I seem to be deeply un-American in that I would rather do almost anything other than spend hours trapped in front of a TV watching football.Unless, that is, it involves that form of mass hysteria known as holiday shopping. Last week I overheard two excited women sharing the news that they weren’t going to have to wait till Black Friday. This year, the shopping malls will open on Turkey Day itself.You youngsters out there may not believe this, but there was a time when you had to wait until the day after Thanksgiving to get into a fist fight with a perfect stranger over a Cabbage Patch doll.But enough nostalgia. For all of us, especially perhaps Detroit, this seems to be a uniquely best and worst of times week. Today, Federal Judge Steven Rhodes is expected to set the date on which the city will finally emerge from bankruptcy.Detroit will emerge earlier than once expected, in better shape than many expected, and with some hope for a better future.Meanwhile, at the White House, President Obama today will be presenting John Dingell, the longest-serving congressman in history, with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest award any civilian can receive.These are nasty and poisonous times in Washington, but honoring Dingell has received bipartisan praise.  But on Detroit’s east side, artist Tyree Guyton is coping with having yet another of his legendary Heidelberg Project homes hit by an arsonist. That brings to a dozen the number of his houses that have been partly or fully destroyed in the last 18 months by someone who keeps evading both police and private security cameras.Guyton’s wild and fantastical folk art may not be popular with everyone, but it has won him, and Detroit, worldwide recognition; he’s been treated as a hero in Japan and Australia. Yet people here in his hometown are burning his work down, This isn’t a good sign, in a city where the post-bankruptcy future depends on everyone working together.More than 200 years ago, after the small town of Detroit was utterly destroyed by fire, Father Gabriel Richard came up with the city’s motto. You can look up the Latin; in English, it means: "We hope for better things; it will arise from the ashes." We’ve had a lot of ashes and broken dreams ever since.But incredibly, those are Tyree Guyton’s sentiments exactly. Yesterday, he talked to one of my former students, now a reporter for the Detroit News. He said, “Mother Teresa said what you spend years building may be destroyed overnight."Build it anyway.” And he added that his grandpa, on his deathbed, told him, “Son, don’t you stop – no matter what happens.”Apologies to Gabriel Richard, but for Detroit going forward, that might just be the best motto of all.Jack Lessenberry is Michigan Radio's political analyst. You can read his essays online at michiganradio.org. Views expressed in his essays are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Michigan Radio, its management or the station licensee, The University of Michigan.

There’s a century-old red brick building that used to be a convent in Detroit, in the shadow of the Ambassador Bridge.It’s next to the city’s oldest Roman Catholic Church, St. Anne’s. Inside that church is a rough-hewn box holding the bones of an immigrant who arrived without papers, a priest by the name of Gabriel Richard, one of the founders of the University of Michigan.Inside the old convent are forty living undocumented immigrants from eighteen different countries, people who fled torture and murder, fled for their lives, and are here seeking asylum.They are in less fear of deportation than most of our nation’s eleven million “illegal” immigrants. This is a place called Freedom House Detroit, and for more than thirty years, it has helped such folks win asylum in the United States and Canada.That has become harder in recent years, and the refugees, who are usually destitute, are not allowed to work while they await a decision on their fate. But the ones inFreedom House nearly always win asylum in the end.Our Constitution firmly establishes the right of victims of persecution to asylum. Freedom House has a dedicated corps of volunteer attorneys who help them make their case. The folks they serve aren’t really affected by the President’s action on immigration.But I was curious to find out how they felt about it. So last night I asked Deb Drennan, the executive director, what she thought.“How about if you just say I set off some fireworks to celebrate?”She laughed.Then, after she thought for a moment, she said “We are glad to see positive movement forward for so many immigrants who have already become part of our community.”She regrets, however, that the President’s initiative was so limited; its protections extend to less than half of the estimated eleven million illegal immigrants in the nation.She wishes the President had extended his action to “the children fleeing gang violence in Central America.” Drennan, as unselfish a person as I know, has worked with immigrants for years now.Reflecting, she told me,“a large majority of Americans want to see our broken immigration system fixed.”She welcomed what the President did, but added, “We really hope the Congress can take up the call and pass reform that will help people be on a more permanent path to membership in our society.”I’ve seen her in action, so I knew she meant it when she added, “At Freedom House, they are already family.We can’t wait until the day the United States sees them as family too.”That may be awhile, since we live in a country where millions still can’t accept that we have a black president. In his common sense remarks last night, President Obama said one thing that wasn’t true, that we are here only because “this country welcomed (our ancestors) in.” Well, not always.Not only did the Native Americans not exactly beg us to come, a lot of our ancestors snuck across some border, or were carried here against their will as slaves.Today, there are millions  among us who we can’t all deport, and who deserve a chance to stay.Now, it’s nice to know they’ll have one.Jack Lessenberry is Michigan Radio's political analyst. You can read his essays online at michiganradio.org. Views expressed in his essays are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Michigan Radio, its management or the station licensee, The University of Michigan.

I saw a poster the other day on the Internet that I really wish I could have framed and put on the wall. It said something like “Illegal immigrants refuse to learn our language, yet still get food assistance.”What it showed was the first Thanksgiving.What it could have added was that those same undocumented aliens were often guilty of tremendous violence against the native population.Today, the descendants of those illegal immigrants have been wrestling with what do to about those who followed in their footsteps, centuries later.The fact is that there are millions of so-called undocumented aliens in this country, maybe 100,000 in Michigan, and that our economy depends on them.These immigrants, by and large, do the jobs nobody else wants, working hard for little money. When they do become legal, they tend to be tremendous job creators. Gov. Rick Snyder knows this; that’s why he has asked Washington to make more visas available for immigrants with special skills to come to Detroit.There are legal immigration routes, complex and bureaucratic. But there are also millions who came without papers, or were brought here as children. They have no other home. They are, by and large, productive members of our society. But they live in fear that any day they may be found out and deported.President George W. Bush, no great liberal, wanted to set up a legal path for citizenship for many of them, but his plan was rejected contemptuously by his fellow Republicans in Congress.Tonight, President Obama is apparently going to announce a program whereby as many as four million undocumented immigrants can apply for a program that will allow them to work here legally, if they have no criminal record, and protects them from deportation.They won’t be citizens, and they will be second-class residents in every sense of the word. They won’t get federal subsidies for health care. Nor are they likely to qualify for food stamps or Medicaid.Farm workers won’t be eligible at all. Some people brought here as children will be shielded from deportation, but not their parents. The president plans to do this with an executive order, since he knows perfectly well he could never get this through Congress, especially after Republicans take full control next year.Denying them health care assistance is unlikely to appease Republicans. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas attacked the idea.Ironically, Mr. Cruz, whose real first name is Rafael, was born in Canada to a father who fled Castro’s Cuba and who did not become an American citizen until nine years ago.The senator is now a citizen of both Canada and the U.S., and his eligibility for the presidency is in some doubt. His parents were able to bring him here when he was four, because his mother was an American citizen.But he doesn’t want to allow others like himself without a citizen parent to stay. There is something to be said for basic humanity. And for recognizing reality, which is that these people are here to stay, and that our economy needs them. Thanksgiving is coming.And my guess is that the ghost of Squanto would agree.Jack Lessenberry is Michigan Radio's political analyst. You can read his essays online at michiganradio.org. Views expressed in his essays are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Michigan Radio, its management or the station licensee, The University of Michigan.

When it comes to maintaining trust in government, possibly the most important thing is the integrity of the courts. As a journalist, I spend a lot of time talking about what’s wrong with government, but today I want to talk about something that seems to work pretty well, which is the relationship between the press and the people in charge of our justice system.Surveys show that people don’t hold journalists or lawyers in very high esteem, to put it mildly. Judges do better, but in recent years the bench has also been touched by controversy and scandal, from the Michigan Supreme Court justice who went to federal prison to the Wayne County judge who had sex in his chambers.Recently I presided over two panels, completely open to the public, that were designed to explore how the press covers the courts. The sessions were mostly on the record, no holds barred, and were jointly sponsored by the State Bar of Michigan and the Society or Professional Journalists.Last week’s panel featured two of Michigan’s top prosecutors, Barbara McQuade, the federal attorney for the eastern half of Michigan, and Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy.Last night, it was U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds, who presided over the long and media-intense Kwame Kilpatrick trial. Topic A was what they thought of the press and how they felt the press covered the legal process and the courts. I was pleasantly surprised by two things. First, both the prosecutors and the judge felt the press had done, by and large, a responsible job. Oh, there were a few things they winced at.Judge Edmunds isn’t crazy about constant blogging and tweeting during a high-profile trial – though she acknowledges that we have a First Amendment right to do it.She doesn’t allow reporters to send social media dispatches from her courtroom itself, though she does allow it from a separate room where the trial is on closed-circuit TV.To my surprise, she said she thought all, or virtually all of the Kilpatrick coverage had been responsible and fair. Judge Edmunds normally doesn’t speak to the press, but that’s not out of a lack of respect for the function they play.Her philosophy is that the court normally speaks to the public through the orders and decisions it issues, and that she ought not to try to interpret the law further.But both prosecutors said they try to be as open to journalists as possible. Federal prosecutor McQuade even makes her personal cell phone available.What I found fascinating is that the judge and the prosecutors all struck me as people of magisterial integrity who remain human. Kym Worthy doesn’t believe in the death penalty, but admits she’s had cases where she’d happily throw the switch.Judge Edmunds said she agonizes over sentencing decisions, which she finds the hardest part of her job. Once, she picked up a pizza and she and the guy at the counter both realized they knew each other. Finally, he figured it out.She had sentenced him once.But no hard feelings; in fact, he offered her a free pizza. Justice, however, is not for sale, and the justice insisted on paying for her pie.Jack Lessenberry is Michigan Radio's political analyst. You can read his essays online at michiganradio.org. Views expressed in his essays are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Michigan Radio, its management or the station licensee, The University of Michigan.

The elections were two weeks ago today, although it somehow seems longer. Yesterday, I spent a little time with Lon Johnson, the chair of the Michigan Democratic Party. He’s been getting a lot of criticism about what happened.Johnson is a statistics-crunching data freak, a man who plays politics largely by the numbers. He pinned the party’s hopes this year on turnout, on getting Democrats to the polls.His operation identified nearly a million Democratic-leaning voters who sat out the election four years ago. They were targeted by his team, urged to vote, and sent absentee ballot applications.The weekend before the vote, he was convinced that Mark Schauer was going to win the governor’s race. But in the end, his candidate fell short by a little more than four points. Democrats lost ground in the Legislature, which few thought they would do. Most shockingly, despite all his efforts, turnout was even lower than it was four years ago. So I asked, as you might expect – what happened?  He told me“At the risk of sounding self-serving, we just don’t know yet.” It will be some weeks before the secretary of state’s office releases information about exactly who voted.Conventional wisdom right after the election was that Johnson’s operation had failed miserably, that despite all his efforts, he hadn’t moved reluctant Democrats to turn out.There are, however, reasons to doubt that analysis. Experts often look at the votes cast in state education races as an indicator of base party strength. Normally, the party whose candidate is elected governor or president picks up all those seats.But this time, Democrats won seven out of eight, and nearly swept the board. This could indicate more Democrats voted than  first thought, but that some just weren’t sold on Mark Schauer.True, it also could mean that ticket-splitting Republicans passed up these races. But while Democrats lost ground in the gerrymandered Legislature, more total votes were cast for them than for Republicans in both Congressional and state House races.The candidate who got the most statewide votes was not the governor, but Democrat Gary Peters, who won the U.S. Senate race in a landslide. Appearances aren’t always what they seem.After Barry Goldwater lost the presidency in a landslide 50 years ago, experts virtually all agreed that conservatism was dead.“If the Republican Party wants to commit political suicide,” one said, “they’ll nominate Ronald Reagan.”Lon Johnson said something else far more interesting, however: “What we need to figure out is what a political party should be in a post-Citizens United world,” a world in which there are no limits on what big corporations can spend to influence elections.That’s also a world where term limits mean there are no long-term state officeholders with their own power bases and institutional memories. That may make the jobs of party chairmen like Johnson both harder and more necessary than ever.  My guess is that in a year in which a Republican tide swept through the nation, Lon Johnson’s team kept his party’s losses in Michigan lower than they might have been.But we’ll have to wait for both the numbers, and the future, to tell.Jack Lessenberry is Michigan Radio's political analyst. You can read his essays online at michiganradio.org. Views expressed in his essays are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Michigan Radio, its management or the station licensee, The University of Michigan.

You’ve probably heard that the state Senate passed a bill last week that would finally raise some significant money to fix Michigan’s terrible roads. Most of us who ever have to leave the house and drive were happy about this.For years, the roads have gotten worse, and our lawmakers have done virtually nothing about them.However, there are a number of important things to know about this bill and this issue. First of all, this is not a done deal. The state House of Representatives won’t even take this up until next month. While there is a lot of pressure to do something about the roads, there is no guarantee they will pass the Senate bill in its present form – or indeed, pass any bill at all.But here’s something else you may not have read elsewhere. The bill passed by the Senate is really a pretty lousy way of coming up with money for road repair. The formula it uses is very hard to understand, and provides no guaranteed amount.What Gov. Rick Snyder proposed, and what usually happens when more road repair money is needed, is that lawmakers raise the gas tax by a certain number of cents on the gallon. Driving habits vary, but not by very much.Transportation experts can calculate pretty closely how much new revenue, say, a 10-cent-a-gallon increase would bring. But that’s not what the Senate is proposing. They would stop taxing fuel on a per- gallon basis, and replace that with a new tax on the wholesale price of gasoline and diesel fuel. This would gradually rise to 15.5% three years from now.How much money would this provide? Well, nobody can say. A year ago, that wholesale price was approaching three dollars a gallon. Today, it is only about $2.20, which is why gas is so comparatively cheap right now.That was great for me when I filled up my station wagon this morning. But under the new formula, lower gas prices would mean significantly less money for the roads. And they fall apart at the same pace regardless of the price at the pump.Why did the Senate do it this way? Well, the leadership didn’t confide in me, but I think I know.It gives the politicians more political cover. Nobody will be able to point a finger and say:“Senator Susie Schmo raised the gas tax twenty cents a gallon.”Anyone who tries to explain what she did vote for may put the confused voters to sleep. Other than that, this bill is flawed for another reason. It won’t provide enough money to do what needs to be done, especially now.Three years ago, the Legislature was eager to slash taxes and education spending to attract business to the state. Well, we can’t do that with our roads and bridges falling apart.The state House should pass an honest bill raising the gas tax and registration fees, especially for the big trucks that are grinding our roads to gravel.This should be a bill that is fair, makes sense, and is easy for people to understand. If that makes me a hopeless idealist … I plead guilty.Jack Lessenberry is Michigan Radio's political analyst. You can read his essays online at michiganradio.org. Views expressed in his essays are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Michigan Radio, its management or the station licensee, The University of Michigan.

Governor Rick Snyder probably is not a big fan of Mitt Romney’s. Snyder wasn’t eager to campaign with him in Michigan this fall, which probably made political sense.After all, Romney lost Michigan badly two years ago; Snyder has now been elected governor twice.But I’m afraid that three years from now, Snyder may wish he had followed Romney’s lead on something. Twelve years ago. Republican Romney was elected governor of Massachusetts. He got much of his program through the legislature, most notably, his version of something that looked like the Affordable Care Act. But Romney then did not run for reelection.This may have been because he felt he was unlikely to be reelected; or because he intended to run for President. But he walked way undefeated and politically more or less undamaged.  Snyder might have done the same thing. He could have said, with justification, that he had accomplished nearly all of his goals. The business tax mess is fixed. The new bridge over the Detroit River lacks only federal funding for a customs plaza before shovels can go into the ground.What if Snyder had instead spent his last year fighting to finally provide enough revenue to fix our disgraceful roads?He might have gone out both a winner and a legend. Well, now the voters have – narrowly – given him another four years.Politics can certainly surprise you. Nobody has any idea what the political climate will be four years from now. But there’s reason to believe that the best day of Governor Snyder’s second term may be the first day, and that things may go downhill from there. In fact, for him, nothing may again be as good as election night. You can already see the signs.For example:The lawmakers are now meeting in their lame-duck session. Snyder, as far as I can tell, is interested in one thing: Roads. He is hoping that with the election over, and at least a third of these lawmakers not coming back, that they may find the moral courage to raise taxes to fix the roads.But that’s not what the legislature is talking about – not yet, anyway. They’re squabbling over whether to extend the protections if the state’s Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act to the gay and transgendered. As of now, it looks like this is going nowhere.Yesterday, outgoing Speaker of the House Jase Bolger expressed support for adding “sexual orientation” to the civil rights act, so long as awmakers also passed a state “Religious Freedom Information Act,” which some interpret as a way to allow discrimination against the LGBT community.Within hours his idea was being denounced by the ACLU and other groups indignant that this would provide no protection for the transgendered.This looks like it is going nowhere. The governor has to hate that they are talking about this instead of the roads. He also must know that he needs to get road repair done now.Next term, with Gary Glenn in the legislature and moderates like Randy Richardville gone, it may be all social issues, all the time. Just what Governor Snyder hates. The next few years should be interesting. But they may not be much fun.Jack Lessenberry is Michigan Radio's political analyst. You can read his essays online at michiganradio.org. Views expressed in his essays are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Michigan Radio, its management or the station licensee, The University of Michigan.

Yesterday I talked about Congressman Kerry Bentivolio, who is running a write-in campaign to try to keep his seat after losing the Republican primary to David Trott. Bentivolio, who represents a collection of Oakland and Wayne County suburbs from Birmingham to Livonia, told me there was an unwritten rule, at least among Republicans, that you don’t challenge a congressman of your own party in a primary.That is, as long as that congressman is doing a decent job. However, as I pointed out to Bentivolio, he did just that two years ago; he filed to run against Congressman Thaddeus McCotter.McCotter later self-destructed and was disqualified from the ballot, but Bentivolio didn’t know that would happen when he filed.He then told me why he did it. Bentivolio, a Vietnam veteran who is now 63, volunteered to serve in Iraq. His neck was broken, and he had to be evacuated. While he was recovering, he found that he and his fellow soldiers got unbelievably shoddy treatment. The army would tell them medications weren’t available, when the same drugs were plentiful at a Walmart down the road. After complaints through channels did nothing, Bentivolio decided to write his congressman, Thad McCotter.“You need to know that could have been a career-destroying move,” he told me. The Army doesn’t like having its dirty linen aired in public.But he did so anyway — and never received an answer. We now have a good idea why. McCotter had essentially abandoned his job. He announced he was running for president, though nobody seemed to notice.He then, by his own admission, shut himself up in his garage to try and write a pilot for a TV show. He paid no attention to Congress, and when he failed to qualify for the ballot, just quit, which meant his communities had to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to hold a special election. Whatever anyone thinks of Bentivolio’s politics, it was clear McCotter badly let down the taxpayers.But this made me realize something else too. Candidates for Congress seldom talk about foreign affairs these days. That wasn’t always the case. They debated issues having to do with the Cold War or Vietnam.Though Bentivolio served honorably in two wars, voters didn’t seem very interested. The Democratic candidate in his district this year, Bobby McKenzie, talks a lot about jobs and preventing mortgage foreclosures. But here’s the fascinating thing about him; McKenzie is actually an expert on the Middle East who had been working for the state department, running a center designed to turn young Arab men away from groups like ISIS and Al-Qaeda.He has an in-depth perspective on how to combat radical Islam. He knows we’d be better off addressing the region’s very complex economic and social problems than just bombing whatever terrorist group is committing atrocities this week.McKenzie could be a valuable addition on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. But he doesn’t talk much about global events on the campaign trail, because that’s not what voters want to hear. We seem to be losing interest in the world.And what history should have taught us is that not paying attention may be the most dangerous foreign policy of all.Jack Lessenberry is Michigan Radio’s political analyst. Views expressed in the essays by Lessenberry are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Michigan Radio, its management or the station licensee, The University of Michigan.

Kerry Bentivolio wants you to know that much of what you’ve heard about him is wrong.For the last two years, the media has called him the “accidental congressman.” He prefers, unexpected congressman.He got to Washington after winning the Republican nomination in his suburban Detroit district when the incumbent, Thaddeus McCotter, was tossed off the primary ballot for fraudulent petition signatures. The GOP establishment recruited a former state senator to run a write-in campaign against him in the primary. She lost badly, and Bentivolio went on to win in November.But this year, he in turn was defeated in the Republican primary by attorney and mortgage foreclosure king David Trott. But Bentivolio is running a full-press write-in campaign to try and keep his job.Bentivolio has a reputation for not talking to the media, so I was surprised when he called me out of the blue yesterday afternoon. He was genial, warm and witty.Basically, he feels that Trott and the GOP establishment stabbed him in the back, have worked for two years to ruin his reputation, and he isn’t going to take it anymore.He is well aware of his image as “Krazy Kerry,” who has been lampooned as a nutty reindeer farmer and part-time Santa Claus.In fact, he seems himself as a principled conservative whose first and greatest love is constituent service.At one point, he put a staff member on the phone line, who told me that the two cardinal rules in his office were “transparency” and “never lie.” He also told me that his reputation for shunning the media was the fault of a former campaign manager who never passed along requests for interviews. "They believe you have to be anointed to run for office - that you are supposed to kiss the ring. That's not how the founding fathers saw this country." - Rep. Kerry Bentivolio The only bad things Bentivolio had to say were about the GOP establishment.“They believe you have to be anointed to run for office - that you are supposed to kiss the ring,” he told me, adding, “That’s not how the founding fathers saw this country.”I told him that some Republicans saw his effort as sour grape resentment, and he admits that he does feel some of that.Bentivolio also knows that his write-in effort could well help Democratic nominee Bobby McKenzie, but he feels that when a Republican congressman is doing a good job, he doesn’t deserve to be challenged in his own party’s primary.Not only did Trott do that, but Bentivolio feels he unfairly smeared his reputation.When he left some of those attacks up on the internet after the primary, Bentivolio announced he would write his own name in “as a shot across his bow.”But Trott still didn’t take the offending material down, and meanwhile, Bentivolio’s staff members in Washington started hearing they would be blacklisted from new jobs.That did it.Kerry Bentivolio, a career army officer and former teacher, is not a wealthy man.He doesn’t know what he will do if he doesn’t get reelected, and may be looking at personal bankruptcy.But he told me he felt he’s done his best in Congress, and has never been afraid of a fight. “There’s something flattering when a guy spends $5 million to beat you,” he said of Trott.This race may end up more interesting than we thought.Jack Lessenberry is Michigan Radio’s political analyst. Views expressed in the essays by Lessenberry are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Michigan Radio, its management or the station licensee, The University of Michigan.

Thirty years ago, I was briefly involved in the dog show world, when we had a collie that went on to become a champion.That was during the long ago and now long-forgotten race in which President Ronald Reagan was running for reelection against Walter Mondale.Both offered vastly different views of America. There were a some people who were very passionate about that campaign, either because they loved Reagan, hated his policies or were excited about the first woman on a major party ticket, Geraldine Ferraro.But when I came off the campaign and consorted with regular humans, I learned that wasn’t true for most. The show dog people I knew, for example, were more bitterly passionate about their rivals and paid more attention to the idiosyncrasies of the various judges than most people did the election.Most of them could recite their dogs’ pedigrees at the drop of a hat, or point at a collie and say – “see, you can tell from his hindquarters that he’s out of Champion La Estancia Travolta.” The woman who told me that did ask me once “who’s that guy running against Reagan?” but I think she did so to be polite. I don't think most people look to politics and politicians to improve their lives, though they are afraid they WILL do things that will hurt their finances or screw things up. I don't think most people look to politics and politicians to improve their lives, though they are afraid they WILL do things that will hurt their finances or screw things up.What I took away from this is that America is a land of a million subcultures, and increasingly, politics is just one of those.There are big differences between the candidates for governor this time, and the candidates are spending tens of millions to try and get your attention in the hope that you might actually vote. But we know already that most people won’t. Apart from the candidates themselves, I’ve seen just two races this year where people seem energized and excited. One is in Charlevoix County way up north, where just about everybody seems to have a lawn sign for either Joe Hayes or Mary Beth Kur, each running for circuit judge.The other place where I’ve seen real passion is over the ballot proposals that are designed to prevent the legal hunting of wolves. Ironically, the Legislature, which wants wolves to be hunted, passed a law designed to make whatever voters do irrelevant, but those who want to protect the wolves want to show that the voters are behind them.But beyond that – why aren’t people more involved?I think I know the answer, and it is a bit frightening.I think most people don’t trust any of the candidates to do what they say.More importantly, I don’t think most people look to politics and politicians to improve their lives, though they are afraid they WILL do things that will hurt their finances or screw things up. Increasingly, too, we have a harder time finding out what these candidates’ credentials are, or even what they say they will do.Mainstream media, especially newspapers, are in rapid decline. Fewer and fewer people read them. And some conservative politicians, including Congressman Tim Walberg and GOP Senate candidate Terri Lynn Land, now essentially refuse to talk to traditional media at all.We seem to be moving towards a politically polarized nation in which much of society has tuned in, been turned off and dropped out. If this doesn’t worry you, I’d suggest there’s something really wrong.Jack Lessenberry is Michigan Radio’s political analyst. Views expressed in the essays by Lessenberry are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Michigan Radio, its management or the station licensee, The University of Michigan.