In Michigan, a Sale the GOP Can't Close --Dionne, WaPo

[Demeter]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/26/AR2006102601257.html?referrer=email&referrer=email&referrer=email


In Michigan, a Sale the GOP Can't Close

By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Friday, October 27, 2006; A23



HOUGHTON, Mich. -- While Republicans scratch their heads over why a seemingly good economy is not helping them nationally in this year's elections, Michigan is where the party once hoped a bad economy would help it seize a governorship.

The heavy hits sustained by the auto industry's Big Three have left the state with a 7.1 percent unemployment rate, just below the 7.2 percent rate for Mississippi, which endured Hurricane Katrina. The job hemorrhage seemed the ideal issue for billionaire businessman Dick DeVos, the Republican nominee, against Gov. Jennifer Granholm. She is a nationally respected Democrat who many think would have made a fine presidential candidate if only she had not been born in Canada.

DeVos, a conservative whose wealth comes from his family company, Amway, is auditioning for her job by insisting, Kennedy-style, that Michigan can do better. "We have gone backward while the country has gone forward," he said during a debate on Monday. "It's just unacceptable."...Spending heavily from his own fortune, DeVos was on the verge of making the sale. A Detroit News Poll in mid-June found him leading Granholm 48 percent to 40 percent. But Granholm has come back. The News poll in mid-October had her ahead, 51 to 42 percent. More recent polls give her a comparable lead. Her recovery helps explain why the economy is not helping the Republicans elsewhere.

The problem for the GOP is that while voters in better-off states seem to be voting on Iraq and other issues, those thinking most about the economy live in lagging industrial states such as Michigan and Ohio, and they are blaming President Bush and national policies for their troubles. In the Ohio Senate race, for example, Rep. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat, has built a lead over incumbent Republican Mike DeWine using hard-hitting advertisements on trade and the loss of manufacturing jobs.
For her part, Granholm is doing everything she can to turn the argument on Bush and Washington. "My opponent began advertising way back in February trying to put the blame for Michigan's economic contraction on me," she said in a telephone interview, "when most people who work in the plants know that the shift of jobs to India or China is much more the result of federal policy and these trade agreements."
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"We have a national policy that says if you work for less, lose your health care and lose your pension, then we can compete," Stabenow says of the status quo. "The No. 1 way we could help employers in this country is to change the way we fund health care."