This diary is about the quandry I face in deciding how to vote in Michigan’s August primary.
I usually vote in the Republican primary for August, because in Plymouth Township, it’s effectively the general election. For example, this year we Democrats have a name on the ballot for only one of the seven offices up for election, and her chance of winning in November is minuscule. But I’m having a very hard time deciding which set of Republicans constitute the lesser of two evils this year, so I might just stay on our side this time around.
Background and Issues
Michigan township’s generally have seven elected officials: three officers and four trustees. The officers are both administrators and legislators; they have full time jobs as managers in township government and also are voting members of the township board. The four trustees are are part-time legislators, also serving on the township board.
My township has had a very vitriolic couple of years in local politics, with the local Republican establishment at odds with the Tea Party fringe. They have a wide variety of complaints about each other, but two stand out to me.
The Tea Party fringe is infused with a strong dose of NIMBYism (my other least favorite force in politics) and therefore went to war with the establishment over the building of an amphitheater in the township park. There were multiple unsuccessful recall petition drives which ultimately lead to the township supervisor (one of the officers) resigning and moving to Florida. He was replaced via appointment with our county commissioner.
The establishment, on the other hand, has severely soured our intergovernmental relations on two fronts.
One, the relationship with the city of Plymouth. (My township surrounds a city of the same name. The city is basically a small-town-ish central business district and some older but very nice housing stock. The township is the suburban sprawl surrounding it.) The city pulled out of a joint fire-fighting district a few years ago and ever since the township officials have been fighting with the city government about just about everything, but especially over how to split the legacy pension costs from the defunct district. (This also fuels the NIMBY-Tea Partiers, because the township closed one of the fire stations after the city pulled out and residents in that part of town are still angry about losing “their” station. However, all of the NIMBY-Tea Partiers are also promising to restore good relations with the city.)
Two, the relationship with the city of Detroit. There’s an old abandoned prison in the township that used to run by Detroit. The township and Detroit have been litigating title to the facility for sometime, I believe both the state and the county are also involved in the litigation. The township lost the most recent trial. The establishment, if re-elected, would probably pursue appeals; the NIMBY-Tea Partiers are willing to let it go.
So on the one hand, I am loath to help the NIMBY-Tea Partiers on general principal; on the other, they generally seem better on the issue of being better civic partners with surrounding communities, which I do value.
Specific Candidates
There is only one name on the ballot for supervisor, the incumbent Shannon Price. As previously mentioned, he was appointed after the previous supervisor resigned in frustration. Our state representative, Kurt Heise, is also running. But he failed to file complete petitions, was kicked off the ballot, and is running as a write-in. As a state legislator, Heise was a relative “moderate”, but in the township race, he’s running with the NIMBY-Tea Party platform. I was originally planning on voting for the incumbent, if for no other reason than that he was competent at filing his candidate petitions.
However, I received an unusually relevant endorsement letter in the mail that has me considering Heise more strongly. It came from my great-grand-boss (that is, my boss’s boss’s boss) who is a department head for a neighboring county government and also the mayor (city council chairperson) of Plymouth. He basically (but slightly more diplomatically) said that he doesn’t think relations can improve with the incumbent and endorsed Heise, who he’s worked with since Heise also represents the city.
For the other two officers, I’m leaning towards voting for the incumbent clerk and against the incumbent treasurer purely on personality grounds. As an elections inspector, I’ve worked with the clerk and she seems fine. For purely selfish reasons, I’d prefer to continue to work someone I already know. The incumbent treasurer, on the other hand, has had an arrogant and brusque manner every time I’ve seen him quoted in the local newspaper; and he seems to be the most intransigent incumbent regarding intergovernmental relations. His opponent came by door-to-door a few weeks ago and seems personally meek and inoffensive.
The trustees I can’t say as much about, except to say that trying to read Republican campaign literature to try to decide who is the most sane is a fool’s errand.
Our Side
If I did vote on our side, it would be purely for the state representative race. I find it very hard to care about Wayne County politics. For my district, we have a contest between Plymouth city councilor Colleen Pobur and Northville attorney John Sullivan. I strongly support Colleen solely on the grounds that she is a current elected official, which from a poli-sci 315 perspective makes her the higher quality candidate. Otherwise, I know very little about her, except that the great-grand-boss speaks well of her — in particular, of her tenacity.
