With 31 days and just over four weeks to go until polls close, Tudor Dixon keeps struggling to right the ship of her wrong-for-Michigan campaign. Here’s how she stepped in it this week.
Last We Checked, Job Creation Was a Good Thing
No one is safe from the scorched earth rhetoric of kneejerk hyperpartisans like Tudor Dixon. For weeks, she’s been railing against a bipartisan $2.3 billion-dollar “undeniable win” of an investment slated to “create 2,350 new jobs with an average hourly wage of nearly $30 an hour” in Big Rapids.
This week alone, two massive investments totaling “nearly $4 billion” investments and creating “close to 4,500 jobs” were announced, secured through the bipartisan work of Governor Whitmer and the Republican-led Legislature. Quite the issue for Dixon to go all ‘Tudor vs. Everyone,’ but she did in the starkest contrast possible to those brave enough to acknowledge that jobs are indeed good:
- Big Rapids trustee Jerry Everett: “All these great things, who could be against it?”
- Big Rapids Township Supervisor Bill Stanek: ‘A huge investment for the west Michigan area.’
- Mecosta-Osceola Intermediate School District superintendent Steve Locke: “It’s hard not to be excited about the potential benefits to our students, families, and the whole community associated with this project…The purported massive size and scope of the project are unlike anything I have seen in our area.”
- Detroit News reporter Craig Mauger: “I mean, what a moment to have the Republican nominee for governor, essentially speaking out against what the Republican led legislature is doing.”
- Conservative talk show radio host Guy Gordon: (to Dixon’s face) “What are you going to say to the folks in Mecosta County…if I was governor, we’d watch these jobs go to Ohio, because I don’t like the company?”
It is October, so if Tudor wants something to vehemently oppose, candy corn is right there. Let’s divert 4,500 bags of that to Ohio, and keep the jobs instead. Deal?
Wealthy Families, Special Interests, and Outside Groups Do Not Enthusiasm Make…
Turns out campaigns that brag about how many special interests and outside groups are lining up behind its backwards agendas yield an equal and opposite lack of enthusiasm among working families. This is the conundrum “abandoned…outspent and floundering” Tudor Dixon is finding herself in.
Even co-signing chants of “Lock Whitmer Up” during her prominent opener billing at last weekend’s Trump rally couldn’t turn things around. Reports noted Dixon “had the smallest contingent of visible allies” and some attendees complained that she lacks “the passion that I want” while others had yet to learn anything about her. But the nail in the coffin lied with an attendee who got straight to the point: “Tudor Dixon has a lot of ties to Betsy DeVos, and I’m not a fan of DeVos at all.”
Facts are facts! DeVos sellout Dixon said as much this week, bragging about support from special interests and outside groups in the form of “a lot of ads” and “allies coming in” to prop up her wrong-for-Michigan agenda – likely to not calm the concerns of those Michiganders.
But at least she’s not alone. As Bridge Michigan noted, “there isn’t a lot of enthusiasm” for the entire statewide ticket Dixon’s anchoring as her donors barely overlap with those that the past two Republican governors counted on to line their war chests.
…But The Cavalry is Still Coming in Full Force
After a months-long disappearing act that clearly did her no favors on the genuine support front, Dixon is playing the only card she’s ever had – wealthy families, special interests, and outside groups. Next week, the Republican Governors Association is finally answering her prayers with a massive $4 million ad buy which will air alongside a buy from MIGOP valued at half as much.
Also still out there helping her “elevate [her] message in supernatural ways” is DeVos family-backed Michigan Families United, which spent over $1 million in the past two weeks. This builds on their most recently publicly disclosed investment of “more than $2.5 million” on the airwaves ahead of the primary. At the time, it outpaced Dixon’s own advertising spending 20 times over and surpassed what she raised for her campaign in total.
Other dishonorable ad campaign mentions:
- $1.6 million total this cycle from Americans for Prosperity
- Over $100,000 from Save Michigan PAC
- A $1 million ad pledge from American Principles Project PAC
- Susan B. Anthony List’s announced six figure buy
We Simply MUST Talk About The Ad, You Know Which
Imagine having something more wild to discuss than Dixon’s conspiracy theory riddled past, but that’s politics in 2022 for you.
There’s absolutely nothing about the Gratiot County Rethespians that hasn’t already been said (they even got the Colbert treatment!). But it bears repeating that the hook of this middle school drama-quality ad – that somehow took three weeks to produce, cost $1,400, and even enlisted the talent of a playwright – …was its star referring to Dixon as “the other chick” before asking the rest of the group what her name is. For an ad that was not a parody (though it had several fooled) and genuinely intended to help Dixon’s cause, we give it negative stars.
Eager for the sequel though – perhaps Dixon will offer acting lessons for the group before production begins.
Dixon’s First “Tell Me Anything”
According to reports out of Dixon’s event last night in Rochester Hills, that was the more apt description. And boy, did they tell.
Sensing they were in a room with a kindred spirit, attendees quickly devolved to conspiracy theories and extremism. They accused Governor Whitmer of being “a student of Soros” (whatever that means), spread disinformation about COVID and vaccines, were casually hostile to the LGBTQ community, and demanded assurances that Dixon would pursue all kinds of frivolous and politically-motivated investigations.
There were some classics sprinkled in there too. Dixon once again pushed the ridiculous lie that governors – who are elected and empowered to create laws – for some reason are uniquely toothless on the issue of abortion. Perhaps “Schoolhouse Rock” is also banned in Dixon-DeVos schools.
And of course, long-since-past-restless supporters asked why she let another week (the tenth in a row, in fact) pass without being up on TV.
We guess they missed the Gratiot cut.
