On the eve of the Michigan Primary
While local candidates buy livestock at the fair, Trump endorses gubernatorial candidate
The Market Livestock and Still Life Auctions highlighted the final two days of the just-completed Fowlerville Fair, with 4H’ers, FFA members, and other youth selling their submissions to the highest bidder. My wife and I—on behalf of the newspaper—bought a pen of three chickens. Let’s just say that they were not cheap birds; however—based on past experience—they will make nice Sunday dinners.
One of the long-standing traditions has been for local officeholders to make a purchase at the auctions, charging it off as a campaign expense while gaining some favorable notice. During an election year, as we are now in, candidates for the various offices—usually those running for a seat in the state legislature or a county post— also join the action.
Those running in a contested race tend to be the more aggressive in their bidding, with an additional strategy of making more than one purchase. The main idea is to get some publicity when the auction clerk announces the name of the successful purchaser. On Saturday—during the Small Animal Auction of poultry, waterfowl, and rabbits--a couple of candidates running for an open county commission post followed this game plan. Between them, they make several young exhibitors happy with their generous bids.
Whether these goodwill gestures garner many votes, I can’t say. But there are worse ways to spend campaign money than buying a kid’s market animal. And a fair auction is a ‘feel good’ place to be. A small break from the attack ads, misleading mailers, and vitriol that mark too much of our election process. Retail politics at its finest.
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This Tuesday voters will go to the polls to pick the Democratic and Republican nominees for the elected partisan offices. Of course, the term “going to the polls” is no longer literally true for many citizens nearly 600,000 absentee ballots have already been cast, with others soon-to-be-dropped off.
Regardless of how it’s done, August 2nd marks the date when all manner of important races will be decided, including the nominee for that open county commission office I mentioned. But while those outcomes matter, the Republican contest for governor has been the marquee event.
In an earlier column, I’d suggested that Tudor Dixon seemed poised to begin pulling away from the other four candidates given the backing she received from the powerful DeVos family and endorsements from Michigan Right to Life and the State Chamber of Commerce. That backing and those endorsements brought in money, countering the deep pockets of Kevin Rinke who seemed to be the other top candidate.
Interestingly, she did not pull away in a significant way as I (and I assume others) thought would happen. She was portrayed as “an establishment” pick, with the DeVos family and the other major backers branded as RINOS (Republicans in Name Only).
I had also suggested that, were she to begin forging ahead, former President Trump might join the bandwagon with an endorsement, effectively making it “game over.”
Well, on Friday he gave his blessing, not only climbing on the bandwagon, but hinting that he had got it rolling.
This announcement came despite nine Trump-endorsed Michigan candidates sending a letter to Trump on Thursday, asking him not to make an endorsement. “There is a war going on for the soul of the GOP in Michigan,” they told him, adding that they are part of a movement to form a “new” Republican Party in the State that was not controlled by “establishment” figures like the DeVos family. Their effort to “drain the swamp,” if you will.
At about the same time Betsy DeVos of the aforementioned family countered with a hand-written note she sent to Trump, urging him to support Dixon as the candidate who had the best chance of unseating Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and expressing her loyalty to Trump.
Given that she had resigned her post as Secretary of Education in protest after the January 6th attack on the Capitol and had possibly been part of a conversation to invoke the 25th Amendment which would have removed the former President from office, the two of them joining forces in common cause is an interesting twist. But then Michigan is a battleground state and the DeVos family—with their immense wealth and long-established connections throughout the state—are not to casually be dismissed, or made enemies of.
With the 2024 Presidential campaign not too far off—in fact, it’ll begin the day after the November General Election—and with Trump hinting at another run for office, that consideration possibly played into his decision. Having a friendly governor in Lansing and making peace with the DeVos family would be an asset.
But there’s another possible scenario to consider; one that may play out in the future as well.
In making the endorsement, Trump appears to have pulled the rug out from under the other four candidates—all who have supported his claim of the election being stolen, as Dixon has, and otherwise being loyal supporters. One of them, Ryan Kelley, has in fact been indicted for his activities during the January 6th storming of the capitol.
You wonder how those four and their more ardent supporters feel. Will they shrug it off and rally to the cause? Or, feeling aggrieved, will they perhaps take an interest in (let’s say) Gov. Ron DeSantis if he decides to toss his hat in the ring?
If Trump and DeSantis were to go head-to-head for the 2024 Republican Presidential nomination and Michigan were to become an important decider in that race, the endorsement may have consequences beyond the current primary.
So, there you are… a couple of things to ponder on the eve of the Michigan Primary.
Steve Horton is a mid-Michigan journalist and editor-publisher of the ‘Fowlerville News & Views’.