Political pundit predicts huge seat advantage for House Democrats next month

Michigan House Democrats will build on their 58-52 seat lead next month, according to Bill Ballanger in the latest edition of Inside Michigan Politics.

Ballanger is the editor and publisher of IMP, and the former state lawmaker and respected political pundit is going even farther on predictions he made in January and June that the Democrats will retain control of the House by an astounding margin of 70-40. Ballanger said according to a quartet of micro polls commissioned by East Lansing based Practical Political Consulting, the decision by Grampy McSame to abandon Michigan will have a negative effect on some vulnerable Democratic seats.

The Republicans went from controlling the House for more than a decade and wining one of the largest majorities in many years in 2002 to suffering the worst back-to-back election cycles since the early 1940s that culminated with the loss of the House in November 2006.

The McSame pullout is also having some positive results in the race for the U.S. House. The non-partisan Rothenberg Political Report upgraded the race between Democrat Gary Peters and Joe Knollenberg to "Tossup/Tilt Democratic." The race had previously been rated “Lean Republican.” A separate poll conducted by Grove-Insight for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) shows Peters ahead of Knollenberg 46-37 percent.

The race between Democrat Mark Schauer and extremist Tim Walberg is a toss up, and a recent poll by Myers Research & Strategic Services shows the Senate Minority Leader is leading Walberg by ten points, 46 to 36 percent.

National Bush Legacy Bus tour roars into Michigan

All Michiganders have felt the Bush legacy in the form of high unemployment, the loss of manufacturing jobs, record gas prices, record home foreclosures, huge corporate bailouts and the deaths of hundreds of young people in an unnecessary invasion, and now you can see it all in one place when the National Bush Legacy Bus Tour Comes to Michigan on Saturday.

The Bush Legacy is a 45-foot, 28-ton clean bio-diesel powered museum on wheels that features several exhibits on how disastrous the Bush/conservative policies have been, and how they have weakened America's security abroad while neglecting and undermining important priorities here at home.

It is also highlighting the people who have helped Bush wrecked havoc on the county, and the bus tour will be in Battle Creek on Saturday, Sept. 20 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the backyard of Bush enabler Tim Wahlberg, where he is locked in a battle with State Sen. Mark Schauer. It will be in front of the Kellogg Arena at Michigan Ave between Macamly and N. Capital. On Monday it will be in Jackson from 11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at 120 N. Jackson St. The museum will also be in Lansing in front of the Capitol from 2-4 p.m.

On Tuesday it will be in Bush enabler Joe Knollenberg's district from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Royal Oak Farmers Market at 11 Mile Road and Troy Street in Royal Oak. Gary Peters is neck and neck against Knollenberg.

The tour kicked off on June 24 across the street from the White House, and the National Bush Legacy Bus tour has since blanketed half the country – from New Hampshire to New Mexico – and will continue making nearly 150 stops in the hometowns of Bush’s enablers in Congress and symbolic locations like the President’s home away from home in Crawford, Texas.

It will be back in Michigan before the tour concludes on Election Day in Virginia. It will be in Kalamazoo on Oct. 21; Grand Rapids on Oct. 22 and Ann Arbor on Oct. 23.

The race for the 9th Congressional District features confrontations, videotape and Dr. Death

The U.S. Congressional race for Michigan’s 9th District may be a microcosm of the presidential election in Michigan, and it will also be an interesting race to watch that has already seen confrontations, videotape and now a guy with the nickname of Doctor Death as a candidate.

U.S. Rep. Joe Knollenberg, R- Bloomfield Hills, is seeking his ninth term in the U.S. House, and he will be challenged by Democrat Gary Peters, a professor at Central Michigan University and a former state Senator, and Dr. Jack Kevorkian, the well-known assisted suicide doctor, who plans to run as an independent.

The district’s boundaries are contained entirely in Oakland County, the second largest county in the state with 1.2 million residents. The county has long been known primarily as a Republican county, but that is fast changing as it trends Democratic. The Republicans maintain a 13-12 edge on the county Board of Commissioners, and the county executive, L. Brooks Patterson, is very active and well known in state and national Republics politics.

“Oakland County has been considered Republican, and most of the county commissioners are Republicans,” said Glenn Clark, the Republican Chair of the 9th Congressional District and a Troy resident. “However, it has gone blue at the top of the ticket since 1992.”

Michigan itself has been blue since 1992, and the last time it went for a Republican presidential candidate was for President George H.W. Bush in 1988. However, the decision by Democratic presidential candidates Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama not to campaign here for the primary, coupled with the decision by the Democratic National Committee not to seat Michigan’s presidential delegation in retaliation for moving up the presidential primary in violation of party rules, makes Michigan vulnerable to going red.

“It is definitely a swing district,” said Rochester Hills resident and Democratic activitist Bruce Fealk. “The district went for (Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John) Kerry in the last election”

Fealk, who operates the blog “Vote no on Joe,” is a story himself. He has been a vocal anti-war critic, and he began following Knollenberg around at events, as well as appearing at parades, wearing a huge papier-mâché likeness of Knollenberg. Fealk tried repeatedly to get Knollenberg to meet with him and other anti-war protestors to talk about the war, as well as the veto of the bipartisan SCHIP legislation. When that failed, Fealk began following Knollenberg around with a video camera.

That led to a confrontation last October between Fealk and Knollenberg’s then chief-of-staff, Trent Wisecup, in a convenience store. The incident made state and national news, and Wisecup called Fealk “un-American,” “not a citizen” and “blinded by” his “hatred of this country.” Fealk made more news when he was arrested in February in Troy while attempting to videotape a panel discussion on Black History Month, hosted by the Oakland County Republican Club.

But Peters also has a person trailing him with a video camera. CMU student Dennis Lennox has been following Peters around for months claiming Peters should not be teaching at a public university while running for Congress. That also led to a confrontation that made state news, although it was with a CMU dean and not Peters. Lennox has used that publicity to launch a bid for the Republican nomination for the 110 District seat in the state House.

The 9th District consists of the townships of Bloomfield, Oakland, Southfield, West Bloomfield, and pats of Orion and Waterford Townships, as well as the cities of Auburn Hills, Berkley, Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills, Clawson, Farmington Hills, Farmington, Keego Harbor, Lake Angelus, Orchard Lake, Pontiac, Rochester, Rochester Hills, Sylvan Lake, Troy and Royal Oak. It is the home of many whiter collar engineers, the headquarters of Chrysler and the home of a major Division I university, Oakland University. It has elements of both suburban life and urban life.

“This is a working class area with lots of white collar workers; kind of middle of the road,” Clark said. “It’s a great district to live in, and Troy was ranked as one of the safest places to live in the nation.”

Knollenberg – a U.S. Army veteran - owned insurance offices before going into politics, and used his connections as the former chair of the Oakland County Republican Party to run a successful congressional campaign in 1992. He has the makings of a political dynasty, and his son, Marty, is a member of the Michigan House. Knollenberg is the ranking member on the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation and Housing and Urban Development.

Peters was born and raised in Oakland County, and he was a Lieutenant Commander in the U.S. Navy Reserve in a Construction Battalion unit (Seabees). In the private sector, Peters had taught at Oakland University and Wayne State University. He was the vice president of investments at UBS/PaineWebber. Peters also served as a vice president at Merrill Lynch.

His first foray into politics was serving on the Rochester Hills City Council. He was elected to the Michigan Senate in 1994 and served two terms before he was term limited. In 2002 he ran for the Michigan Attorney General and lost a close race to current AG Mike Cox by just 5,200 votes among more than 3 million votes cast. In 2003 Peters was appointed by the Governor to run the Michigan State Lottery. Last year Peters was named the Griffin Chair in American Government at Central Michigan University.

Kevorkian earned his reputation and nickname of Dr. Death by assisting in the deaths of nearly 100 terminally ill people. He ran afoul of the law in Michigan many times because it does not have an assisted suicide law, but he also managed to stay out of jail with the help of his attorney, Geoffrey Fieger. The cases earned so much media attention that Fieger parlayed that name recognition to win the Democratic nomination for Michigan governor in 1998, but he lost to the incumbent in the general election.

Without Fieger’s guidance, Kevorkian made a mistake that proved to be his downfall. On September 17, 1998, Kevorkian himself administered a lethal injection to 52-year-old Thomas Youk, who was suffering from terminal Lou Gerhig’s Disease. In past assisted suicides, the person committing suicide had injected themselves or used the machine Kevorkian designed. Kevorkian compounded his mistake by allowing the videotaped suicide to be broadcast on “60 Minutes” and then daring authorities to try to convict him or stop him from carrying out assisted suicides.

Kevorkian was convicted of second-degree murder by a Michigan jury in 1999 and sentenced to serve a 10-25 year prison sentence. Kevorkian, 79, is terminally ill with Hepatitis C, which he contracted while doing research on blood transfusions in Vietnam, and he was paroled on June 1, 2007 due to good behavior. He has indicated he plans to run as an independent. Many people have dismissed his run as insignificant, including many Democrats. Veteran Michigan journalist Jack Lessenberry, who was one of the first reporters to cover Kevorkian, dismissed it as just one more attempt at the publicity he craves.

But Republicans are hoping the lifelong Oakland County resident can drain off liberal vote for Peters.

“He’s a household name here,” Clark said. “It will be very hard to ignore him.”

As the incumbent, Knollenberg has had little trouble winning reelection over the years. He has had little trouble against a list of relatively unknown Democratic candidates, winning easily: winning 55 percent to 40 percent in 2000, 58-39 in 2002 and 58-39 in 2004. But 2006 was different. He had a close race with relatively unknown liberal radio talk show host and political activist Nancy Skinner. Knollenberg won by his smallest margin ever, 51-46 percent. Skinner indicated she was going to run for the seat again, but she got of the race early, deferring to Peters.

Ironically, she has ties to a candidate who many say may be a factor in this race. In 2004 she was living in Chicago and was a Democratic candidate for an open U.S. Senate seat in Illinois, losing in the Democratic primary election to one Barack Obama.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee took notice of that race after 2006, the current candidate and the trend of the district to designate it one of two targeted seats in Michigan.

“He is definitely on the edge,” Fealk said. “If we are ever going to unseat him this will be the year. Gary Peters is an excellent candidate and has done an excellent job of fundraising, and he has the DCCC and the unions behind him.”

Knollenberg votes with President Bush on most issues, and many people think he is vulnerable there because of the president’s low approval ratings, as well as Knollenberg’s position on the war in Iraq.

“He is very vulnerable on the war,” Fealk said. “If you look at his campaign web site, the war is not even listed as an issue. He is also very vulnerable on health care and the economy. People really need to look hard at his votes.”

Clark disagrees, and he said most people in Oakland County do not want the U.S. to leave Iraq before the mission is complete.

“That will be just one of many issues,” he said. “The fact is most people don't want to be there forever, but hey want to win. Most people I talked to who are against the war are not in favor of an immediate withdraw.”

There is also speculation on the effect the top ticket candidate will have on this race. Fealk says the historic nature of the potential Democratic nominees is sure to increase voter turnout for the Democrats, but he thinks Obama’s nomination will have a larger effect on turnout in the more urban Pontiac area and benefit Peters.

“I don’t want to make it a race issue, but I expect to see more turnout if he is the nominee,” he said. “I definitely think Obama will have a positive effect on turnout.”

Clark thinks Republican nominee Sen. John McCain will rally the district's many independent voters.

“John McCain is a candidate that will send a strong message to independents, and I think John McCain is the type of candidate we need to carry Michigan and Oakland County,” he said. “Michigan will be very important, specifically Oakland County, and I think we can win.”

Veteran journalist says no vote for income tax increase jeopardizes Michigan

NOVI - Veteran journalist Jack Lessenberry told a group of West Oakland County Democrats that the budget and economic situation in Michigan is the worst he has ever seen it.

“However bad you thing the situation is in Michigan, it’s worse,” he said. “There is no way to exaggerate the situation.”

Lessenberry has worked as a foreign correspondent and executive national editor of The Detroit News, reporting from more than 40 countries. His writing has appeared in such national publications as Vanity Fair, Esquire, The New York Times, The Washington Post and the Boston Globe. He is also a professor of journalism at Wayne State University, and his freelance columns appear in The Metro Times, The Traverse-City Record Eagle and The Toledo (Ohio) Blade. He is also a senior political analyst for Michigan Public Radio.

Lessenberry was extremely critical of the state Legislature’s inability to pass a budget, or approve a much needed income tax increase. He said no company would want to move to Michigan with the government in disarray, the roads and infrastructure crumbling and the state’s biggest assets, the schools, being starved. He says as a professor at Wayne he sees far too many promising students drop out of college simply because they cannot afford the tuition, especially in light of an 18 percent increase in tuition this summer.

“It’s not even a raise in taxes, it’s a restoration,” Lessenberry said. “I’m not a farmer, but farmers settled this state.
“They know that to prosper they cannot eat next year’s seed corn,” he said.

He lashed out at the Republicans refusal to vote for the income tax increase because of the fear of a recall from a man who has never had a job where he was not paid with tax dollars.

“Republicans believe in taxes they just believe in taxing the poor,” he said. “They are turning Michigan into Mississippi with ice storms. It’s very scary for those of us left in Michigan.”

Despite speaking in front of a room full of Democrats, he pulled no punches and also had hard words for Democrats too. He took Gov. Jennifer Granholm to task for a lack of leadership on the budget. He said she should have bought a half hour of TV time to tell people the budget situation in a quasi fireside chat and use the political capital she gained in the election with an overwhelming victory and being term-limited.

“We will be the laughing stock of the nation if we have a shutdown,” Lessenberry said. “The governor took far too long to take a principled stand. She let Mike Bishop take a major role.”
“I just do not understand why the governor did not take the lead on this,” he said. “She has no political capital to lose.”

Lessenberry was also critical of the 10 freshman Democratic House members in vulnerable seats who did not cast an up or down vote for the income tax increase during last weekend’s marathon House session.

“They are gutless wonders,” he said. “They refused to vote because they want to hang on to a job they are going to lose in six years; the state of Michigan is at stake here.”

Lessenberry had some bold predictions for the presidential primary, saying Hilary Clinton would be the Democratic nominee. He also said he did not expect Barack Obama to be her running mate no matter how well he did in the primaries because Lessenberry thinks asking voters to vote for two firsts in the same election – a woman and African-American for president and vice-president - was asking too much. He expects her running mate to be a male Senator from a Middle Western state. However, he had no idea who the front-runner was in what he called a particularity weak Republican field

“Hilary Clinton is already the Democratic nominee; she has already been anointed,” he said. “Usually, it’s the Republicans who settle this first.”

He said the U.S. Congressional districts have been so effectively gerrymandered he expects little change there, but there could be a race in the 7th District where GOP U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg faces a challenge from the Democratic Senate Minority Leader Mark Schauer and in the 9th District where long-time Republican Joe Knollenberg faces a challenge from Democrat Gary Peters.

“He (Walberg) is somewhere to the right of Genghis Khan. The last time I said that I got an angry note; Genghis Khan was angry at being compared to Tim Walberg.”

Lessenberry said he was less than excited about Peters' chances of winning because he called him a “lousy campaigner.” He said Peters was qualified, smart and capable, but he is not a good campaigner. He said he singe-handily allowed the first Republican to be elected to the position of attorney general in Michigan in almost 40 years.

“You need to get Nancy Skinner out of there first," he said. “The last thing the Democrats need is a bruising primary.”

The state House will be an interesting place next year with 44 members term-limited, but Lessenberry said it will be a good year for Democrats.

“Democrats will pick up a few more seats,” he said. “I do not see Republicans taking control of the House.”

Conservative editorial board goes over the top defending war apologist

If you need any more proof of the conservative bias of the media we have the Oakland Press editorial board attacking a liberal organization for pointing out the obvious fact that the Iraq occupation and civil war are immoral.

The editorial page, where conservatives live and rule, said we “should be upset over the outrageous tactics of a group known as MoveOn.org.” after member Bruce Fealk of Rochester Hills said U.S. Rep. Joe Knollenberg, R-Bloomfield Hills, “should urge the U.S. Senate to "vote the right way and atone for his sins as a good Catholic boy." “

I don’t see anything outrageous, unreasonable or offensive about calling on someone’s morals and religion to speak out and try and stop an immoral war. This was a war that was sold to the American people using fear, handpicked evidence and misdirection, and it is an immoral war that has seen the U.S. use and condone torture, incidents of murder and kidnapping and widespread corruption condoned and aided by the Bush White House. Knollenberg is one of the president’s and the war’s biggest supporters and apologists.

This war goes against everything the U.S. stands for and has always made us the good guys. It has also killed more than 4,000 U.S. service members and wounded, some horribly, more than 25,000 service members. No one really knows how many Iraqi civilians have died since the conflict began, but estimates put them in the tens, if not hundreds, of thousands. The United Nations estimates that 35,000 civilians were killed in Iraq during 2006 alone.

Knollenberg is for the war, but apparently against the troops and their well-being. According to the excellent Knollenberg watch blog, “Vote no on JOE,” Knollenberg voted against fully funding the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, guaranteeing them training and appropriate armor; voted to continue awarding contracts to corrupt Halliburton; and opposed expanding access to the military's TRICARE health insurance program to thousands of Reservist and National Guard members who are doing a lion’s share of the fighting and dying in Iraq.

Knollenberg has even refused to even talk or meet with groups like Americans Against Escalation in Iraq or their representatives even as more and more of his constituents join their ranks everyday.

As for the alleged religious reference, where was the Oakland Press when rightwing groups like right to life were urging the Catholic Church to refuse to give Communion to Gov. Jennifer Granholm in 2002 and U.S. Sen. John Kerry in 2004 because they did not share their point of view. To me making a statement asking someone to act morally does not compare to actively trying to stop a politician you disagree with from worshiping as they have a right to.

You can also read what Mr. Fealk has to say about his statement at “Vote no on JOE.”