Endorsements: Primary offers voters best chance to shape Michigan Legislature

 

If history is any guide 4 in 5 Michigan voters won’t participate in the state’s Aug. 5 primary election — and that’s a shame, because it’s the only opportunity most of them will have to shape the state Legislature that takes office Jan. 1.

Sure, there’s another contest between now and then: the Nov. 4 general election, in which the candidates who survive their party primaries will go toe to toe for 110 seats in the state House and 38 in the state Senate.

But the boundaries of all those districts were redrawn after Republicans won control of the state government in 2010, with the objective of herding reliably Democratic voters into the fewest possible districts while allocating stalwart Republican voters in a way to maximize the number of safe GOP seats.

So about four-fifths of Michigan’s legislative races will be settled, for practical purposes, on Aug. 5, when voters decide which candidate will represent each of the major parties in the vast majority of legislative districts where one party enjoys a prohibitive advantage over the other in November.

Today, the Free Press reveals its primary endorsements for candidates seeking state House and Senate seats in the most competitive races in Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties.

Among those districts, only one, the House 23rd District, seems likely to be competitive in November. Among the remaining House districts, whichever candidate wins the Republican primary in the 36th, 38th, 39th and 43rd districts will likely prevail in the November general election. Similarly, Democratic primary winners will likely coast to easy general election wins in the 1st, 6th, 10th, 22nd, 27th and 35th districts.

In the state Senate, Republicans are likely November winners in the 12th, 13th and 15th senate districts, while Democrats will be the prohibitive favorites in the 2nd, 4th, 5th and 11th.

So, how did we choose the candidates we endorse today, particularly in contests where none of those running share the views and priorities we articulate on the Free Press editorial page?

We first sought to identify those who had a clear and detailed grasp of the challenges confronting our state, especially the two our readers have consistently identified as their front-burner concerns: roads and schools.

Although many voters express a distaste for “career politicians,” we tend to regard previous experience in elective office as an asset. Where candidates were otherwise closely matched, we typically gave the edge to those who have already served on county commissions, city councils or school boards.

We favored pragmatists over ideologues, preferring candidates who demonstrated an interest in addressing concrete problems (such as deteriorating infrastructure or soaring college costs) to those waging more rudimentary crusades to “shrink government,” “protect the middle class,” or “make Michigan safe for the unborn.”

When all else failed, we remembered the sage advice of Keith Davey, the late Canadian cabinet minister who counseled voters to measure a flawed incumbent not against the Almighty, but against the alternative.

35th House District

(Southfield, Lathrup Village, Southfield Township)

2012 presidential vote: Obama, 81.9%; Romney, 17.6%

Four energetic candidates seek the Democratic nomination for the seat being vacated by second-term Rep. Rudy Hobbs, who is seeking his party’s nomination for a seat in Congress.

Two — Southfield City Councilman Jeremy Moss, 28, and Southfield school board member Darryl Buchanan, 59 — have previous experience in elective office. Nicole Brown, 32, is an assistant Wayne County prosecutor, and Charles Roddis, 40, is an accountant for the River Rouge school district.

In a contest in which all four candidates bring considerable intelligence, civility and relevant experience to the table, we think the best qualified is JEREMY MOSS, who formerly served as Hobbs’ district director and has been an effective and collegial lawmaker since his 2011 election as the youngest-ever member of the Southfield City Council. Moss accurately identifies repair of the state’s roads and infrastructure as a crucial economic development issue, and he is poised to be a constructive catalyst in bipartisan efforts to find a sustainable funding source for that neglected legislative priority.

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