Michigan Politics
Pols Slinging Cleaner Mud Than in Past
By George Weeks

This year's gubernatorial campaign will be Michigan's costliest, thanks largely to the deep-pockets TV spending by Republican Dick DeVos. But it won't be the nastiest.

DeVos and Governor Jennifer Granholm won't sink to the level of personal attacks that 1998 Democratic nominee Geoffrey Fieger directed against Governor John Engler.

Nonetheless, even before Tuesday's primary in which Granholm and DeVos were unopposed, the merchants of mud were throwing it from both camps. Last year, the Michigan

Democratic Party began attacking DeVos because Alticor Inc., when he was head of the company that is the parent of Amway, "cut nearly 1,400 jobs from Michigan and created tens of thousands of jobs in China." DeVos says "zero jobs" were transferred to China, and contends Michigan benefits from Alticor's huge overseas investments, including about $220 million in China.

(After he interviewed Granholm at the Traverse City Film Festival last week, I asked Qunduo Xu, a reporter for government sponsored China Radio International, if he was aware of Dick DeVos and that Amway's China operation was an issue in the Michigan campaign. He was not, but said Amway products there are "very popular. The market is huge. People love it.")

When Democrats began attacking DeVos in TV ads, he countered with one that concludes: "Instead of getting down in the mud, let's get down to business - create more Michigan jobs."

But in late July, DeVos ran an anti-Granholm TV ad that so distorted the positions of two Michigan newspapers that the ad was changed after the papers complained. The original ad had the Detroit Free Press using "phony" and "demagoguery" to describe Granholm's criticism of DeVos, and the Lansing State Journal saying: "It's all negative all the time out of the Granholm camp."

In fact, in each case, the views were not of the newspaper - but of a columnist expressing a personal opinion.

When I asked Granholm last week about the ad, she said: "I have a feeling that is just the beginning."

In truth, distortions to sharpen a 2006 campaign attack did not start with that ad - or with this year's campaign. Politicians travel muddy trails.

Jabs got sharper in the final week of the U.S. Senate GOP primary between Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard and the Reverend Keith Butler.

In taping of their only televised debate (WOOD-TV, Grand Rapids), Butler accused Bouchard of conflict of interest for getting about $40,000 a year from Jackson National Life Insurance Company for a consulting role while still getting his sheriff's salary.

Bouchard, who said he is "a watchdog for policyholders," said: "I don't run a church and get paid over $1 million a year."

In a TV ad, Butler, a former Detroit councilman, rapped Bouchard, a former state senator, as "a career politician. On the ballot 14 times in the last 19 years." Bouchard dismissed the ad as "a distraction" from important issues.

There was a glitch in a Butler radio ad buy last week Up North. A commercial designed to urge Detroit Democrats to cross over and vote for Butler was heard on one northern station during the Rush Limbaugh show. Not many Detroit Democrats in that audience.

Tribal Cops

Examples abound across the northland of tribal law enforcement agencies working cooperatively with sheriff's departments and other local police agencies.

So it is not just Native Americans who will benefit from last week's announcement by Senators Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow of $680,207 in U.S. Justice Department grants to eight Michigan Indian communities to assist tribal law enforcement activities.

The grants: Bay Mills Indian Community, $123,701; Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, $112,871; Hannahville Indian Community, $43,556; Keweenaw Bay Indian Community, $53,391; Lac Vieux Desert Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, $35,700; Little River Band of Ottawa Indians, $148,988; Little Traverse Bands of Odawa Indians, $12,000; and Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, $150,000.

George Weeks recently retired after 22 years as political columnist for The Detroit News. His weekly Michigan Politics column is syndicated by Superior Features.