For now, there are still only (lol) 13 gubernatorial candidates in the running. Here’s what they got up to this week.
Was it Fun? Putting Rabid Ideology Before Michigan Working Families and the Auto Industry?
This is a family roundup so we won’t use the actual word, but Newton’s Fourth Law of Motion dictates that when one messes (use your imagination) around, the timing may vary, but one eventually finds out. In the case of the Ambassador Bridge Blockade, Republicans (Kevin Rinke, James Craig, Garrett Soldano, Tudor Dixon, Mike Brown, and Ryan Kelley – who literally stood on a paralyzed patch of highway leading to the Canadian border to bend the knee to a cause stemming from a country he’s not even a citizen of) couldn’t mess around fast enough.
The finding out was equally swift. While gubernatorial candidates urged the blockade to drag into another week and actively rooted against Michigan’s economy and working families’ ability to put food on the table, the auto industry suffered to the tune of $300 million. Those losses included assembly plants at GM and Ford being forced to cancel shifts due to a lack of parts traveling across the bridge, which sacked auto workers with over $51 million in lost wages.
Hope it was worth it! (It wasn’t.) Back in our day, advocating for Michigan’s continued economic success wasn’t a wedge issue.
Kevin Rinke Doesn’t Know What Year He’s Running In
Toyota salesman Kevin Rinke longs for the simpler days of yesteryear. Like the 90s, when you could roll up to work and ask your female employees if their underwear matched and then call them “ignorant and stupid” when they don’t laugh at your super funny joke. Oh wait, sexual harrassment payouts suggest Rinke couldn’t do that then either.
Now as a candidate for governor, Rinke similarly refuses to take a glance at his $20,000 Rolex and accept that the times have changed, showing no grasp of “any clue as to what state he’s in, besides the one of confusion.” In donation solicitation emails Rinke continues to demand the removal of COVID-19 policies that Governor Whitmer lifted “nearly a year ago,” in total denial of the fact that “there are no governor-mandated restrictions.”
As Lengel put it: “Perhaps the man who owned auto dealerships is used to hoodwinking people into buying whatever he’s selling. Is this the guy we want leading our state? A guy who read the May 2021 Republican playbook and is running with it, unable to pivot and use common sense.”
Truly uninformed, or is Rinke just hoping Michigan voters are? You decide.
Self-Proclaimed Quality Assurance “Guru” Perry Johnson Should’ve Taken Another Pass at His Own Ad
One would think that someone who claims to always strive for “Perfection!” would take the time to make sure their own ad met those high standards. Unfortunately, Perry Johnson’s $1.5 million dollar ad that premiered ahead of the Super Bowl would’ve been chewed up and spit out by the ISO 9000.
Self-funding millionaire Johnson opens his ad by essentially equating Michiganders to peasants with brains too small to be interested in the same things he is (“[Perry]’s not interested in the same things that excite you and me”), then proceeds to take credit for every single job in the American auto industry, every last one. He also rattles off a number of attacks that land more like a buzzword word cloud than ideas with any grounding, and they of course lack solutions on how he would handle them instead.
When it comes to aggressively ballooning the total amount of money spent in this primary (Johnson has reportedly dropped multiple millions), some equally aggressive inflating of his record came with it.
James Craig, in Particular, Hit Several Nerves With His Blockade Support
Which, yeah. This is the same former DPD police chief that is still cashing right-wing clout checks on his decision to “tear-gas and arrest Detroit Will Breathe protesters who jammed streets and intersections two years ago.” He’s hoping it will turn into a plum commentator gig on the same chummy national cable shows he now frequents to talk anything but Michigan.
Per Craig, “I support all working people who are standing up for personal freedom.” Evidently not when that ‘personal freedom’ includes breathing without a knee in your neck.
Detroiters in 2020 had to obtain a federal restraining order that “blocked Craig’s officers from using rubber bullets, batons, chemical agents, choke holds, sound cannons, excessively tight plastic cuffs and mass arrests without probable cause.”
Craig’s total 180 on who is allowed to demonstrate and what for was made him out to be a “wavering waffler…swinging like a weather vane in a breeze” doing “an ungraceful dance of political posturing.” Deadline Detroit columnist Allan Lengel called Craig out for coming out “in support of blocking the Ambassador Bridge and hurting the Michigan and Canadian economies. He too has become a stooge for the Republican Party.”
This of course comes on top of Craig’s sustained refusal to disavow disgraced and cartoonishly corrupt gubernatorial campaign adviser and former State House Speaker Lee Chatfield, even as he remains the subject of a Michigan State Police sexual assualt investigation that has now expanded to at least 3 members of his inner circle over presumed and extensive campaign finance violations.
Safe to Say, the MIGOP is Straight Up Not Having A Good Time Right Now.
Apparently 13 is NOT a lucky number for the MIGOP, because reports out this week indicate since their coronated candidate James Craig is continuing to stumble, they are once again looking for even more candidates to jump into the crowded primary.
