LANSING — With yet another Republican passing on a run for governor, here’s what happened in the gubernatorial primary this week:
Betsy DeVos finally gave a straight answer on whether she thinks it’s worth challenging Governor Whitmer’s strong record directly, opting instead to stay the course on her deep-pocketed playbook of paying others to do her dangerous ideological bidding. We’ll be sure to check with Senator John James, recipient of over $7 million DeVos dollars in 2020, to see how successful that strategy was for him.
As far as actual candidates go, Tudor Dixon continued the time-honored Republican tradition of calling the things you don’t like “fake,” this time reserving the diss for the very much real Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act that is making its way to President Biden’s desk and would bring billions to Michigan. We’re still waiting on a clear answer for how job creation and crucial resources to improve our bridges and roads are a bad thing besides hating that it took a Democratic administration to hunker down and finally deliver a genuine Infrastructure Week.
But Dixon isn’t the only one to mischaracterize facts this week. James Craig, who still won’t answer questions on where he stands on any issue, found the time this week to cook MLive’s reporting on Michigan’s robust job recovery. Knowing full well that nearly 93% of Michiganders have returned to the workforce compared to the pandemic lowpoint of April 2020, Craig ignored the fact that “Michigan had a much larger gap to make up” and is clearly on pace with the rest of the nation as America’s economy bounces back.
Faced with this metric, Michigan having the fastest growing economy in the Midwest and the lowest unemployment since the pandemic began, expect Craig to lead from the front on skewing reality while Whitmer actually gets Michiganders back to work and keeps our economy going strong.
But don’t take it from us, those in Craig’s own party aren’t afraid to call him out either. Last week, The Detroit News reported that Garrett Soldano would be skipping the Mackinac Republican Leadership Conference, arguing that it caters to the “political elite…party bosses and the establishment.” Calling out the “rigged” nature of party insiders already throwing significant weight behind James Craig, Soldano echoed the sentiment of the grassroots: “We do not want the establishment and these party bosses to have any say in who we want to have represent the Republican Party.” Color us shocked that the party hellbent on decimating democracy is doing everything in its power to influence the outcome of what is supposed to be a fair primary.
