Tag: 19th

The 19th, you'll remember, was technically vacated at the beginning of the year when Mark Schauer broke his word to his constituents and took a seat in Congress, becoming a part of what polling data consistently tells us is one of the least popular legislative bodies in American history.  

Our readers in Calhoun and Jackson Counties, their friends and neighbors, have been without representation in Michigan's upper legislative chamber for the last one-hundred-plus days and will be until the end of 2009.  The Granholm-Cherry administration, fearing a potential partisan swing in the District and an expanded GOP majority in the Senate, delayed announcing a special election for months.  

Remember, they've got a lot more than one Senate seat to lose.  Whoever winds up being the incumbent in the 19th come the 2010 general elections will have a leg-up on the challenger.  Should the Democrats lose the 19th their path to taking control of the Senate becomes significantly more difficult with nothing less than the holy grail of legislative tasks at stake... redistricting.  

Whoever controls the Supreme Court and the state Senate come January 2011 will control legislative redistricting and partisan electoral potential for the next decade.

The man who has the liberals spooked?  Mike Nofs.

Read on...

Chairman Weiser was kind enough to speak exclusively with RightMichigan.com to answer a few questions about his approach to the coming cycle and where the Party's focus will be in the coming year.  (I'll give you a hint... it starts with the number "19" and ends with "th state Senate District.")

-Aside-

Should note, too, that this is the Chairman's FIRST official statewide interview... and he granted it to the Right Roots, not the same old traditional gate-keepers.  That's a reflection of the weight each and every one of you carry right now... the strength of Michigan's conservative blogging community!  So kudos to the whole Right Roots team.

Over the last two months, residents in Calhoun and Jackson Counties have been without representation in the Michigan State Senate.  Despite the Governor's announcement, that won't change anytime soon.

Instead of calling the special during the local May elections, she's decided to wait until August for the Primary and November for the General.  Unclear immediately just how many extra tax dollars will be wasted by forcing local clerks to ramp up otherwise unneeded efforts in August but I'll see what I can do to crunch some numbers.

Worth asking the question why she'd bite the bullet and waste the extra cash, though.  The answer won't surprise you.

The unofficial scuttle-butt around the Capitol today is that Dem polling looks down right ugly.  Rumor has it they had a poll in the field, testing a variety of candidates.  Republican Mike Nofs positively cleaned the floor with likely Democrat candidates, Reps Mike Simpson and Marty Griffin.  A certain freshman Democratic Rep fared better than the longer tenured Dems but even she lost in the head-to-head.

I spoke with Senate Republican officials at Convention this evening and they claim to have polling that shows the exact same thing.

By holding off, avoiding an election as long as they can, the Granholm-Cherry administration is hoping against hope that the local political environment will shift back in their favor.  This was a Dem seat and it looks like a real GOP pick-up opportunity.