Running against a virtually unbeatable opponent is one of the most thankless tasks in politics. So why do people do it?
Baird is taking on Democrat Adam Zemke in western Washtenaw’s Fifty-Fourth District because the state Republican Party asked him to. The caller “said we had no one on the ballot. They said ‘we don’t expect you to win, and you can do as little or as much as you want.’ They paid the $100 registration fee but said ‘Don’t expect more money.'”
Baird acknowledges he’s got a “tough run” against Zemke. “The incumbent has two terms, and he got 65 percent of the vote both times he ran.” He adds, “I’m not a traditional politician. I’ve got no big agenda. I just want to serve.”
Randy Clark, the Republican running against Democrat Donna Lasinski in the Fifty-Second District, does have an agenda: education funding is “a big factor for me,” he says. “Proposal A needs adjustment.” Lasinski, an AAPS trustee, is focused on education funding, too–but Clark argues that “as a member of the majority party, the people in Lansing will tend to listen more to me.”
Sam Bissell, director of development for the state GOP, put his name on the ballot opposite Yousef Rabhi in the Fifty-Third. Asked why he’s running, Bissell emails, “I’m not interested in being interviewed.” His Facebook page and Twitter feed don’t even mention that he’s running for office.
Bissell’s passivity won’t improve his chance of winning–but campaigning probably wouldn’t help much. “Donna Lasinski is overwhelmingly likely to win in the Fifty-Second, and the other districts are even more solidly Democratic,” says Larry Kestenbaum, the Democratic county clerk and a longtime political observer.
The odds against Green Party candidates Eric Borregard and Joe Stevens, running in the Fifty-Second and Fifty-Third districts, respectively, are even worse. But Borregard has plenty of experience as a long shot: he lost Democratic primaries for the county board in 2008 and 2010, got just 5 percent of the vote running as a Green for U-M regent in 2012, and came in last in a nonpartisan eight-way race for Washtenaw Community College trustee in 2014. Asked how he plans to win this time, he replies “that’s the wrong question. The question is how do the people win voting for Democrats and Republicans? … I’m selling freedom and justice, not endless war or crummy roads.”
Stevens’ big idea is “election reform. I would like multi-member districts. I’m against singular positions–everybody is reduced to a one-party view.” He says his campaign “is pretty much me and my husband [Dylan Calewarts], who is running for Twelfth District of the U.S. House” against Democratic incumbent Debbie Dingell and Republican Jeff Jones.
Kestenbaum himself defeated the last Republican to hold countywide office a dozen years ago, and he doesn’t foresee a GOP comeback. “I’ve been seeing [Republican sheriff candidate] Ken Magee around town a lot lately, and he seems like a very earnest fellow. But [Democratic incumbent] Jerry Clayton is extremely popular, and I can’t see how Magee can possibly prevail. Clayton got the most votes of any candidate in the [August] primary.”
Magee says his motive for running is personal: “I lost a brother to a heroin overdose.” And he has “a plan to help save lives. I’ve come up with an acronym, PETER: prevention, enforcement, treatment, education, and recovery.” He promises to “turn part of the jail into a treatment center where inmates would have twenty-four-seven access to counseling.”
There’s also one contested city council election: in Ward Five, where deer cull critic David Silkworth is running as an independent against incumbent Democrat Chuck Warpehoski. Silkworth learned about the cull only after it had been approved by council, and criticizes the city’s efforts to engage the public in the issue prior to the vote. “I will put forward proposals that would set clear policies and procedures for when the public engagement process both should and must be used to support legislation and to establish clear definitions and rules for how the results of this process can be reported to the public,” he emails. “I will always represent the best interests of our residents over those of outside groups by strongly defending the integrity of our single-family residential neighborhoods, by supporting clean and safe drinking water, by supporting and adequately funding our city services, parks and nature areas and by being fiscally responsible.”
In this anti-establishment year, might Silkworth’s campaign catch fire? Kestenbaum doubts it: “It doesn’t look like an upset there,” the clerk says. “The overall mood of people towards city government is more positive than we realized. The notion that it’s time for a revolution is not going to fly in Ann Arbor.”
