This Saturday, October 11th, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mark Schauer will return to his hometown of Howell, Michigan for a pep rally to fire up Livingston County volunteers. The event begins at 6:30 p.m. and is free and open to the public. It will take place at the Operating Engineers Local 324 Training Facility, 275 E. Highland Road, Howell Township. In […]

I’ve been enjoying reading RightMI.com lately because, if you think that Eclectablog is hard on Governor Snyder, you should see what RightMI.com (formerly RightMichigan.com), reputedly Michigan’s “best” conservative blog, says about him. Today, they have a piece titled “Here Comes the Snyder Gas/Diesel Tax and Fee Hikes” that might set the state record for the most links on a blog […]

Last night, Gov. Rick Snyder held what was billed as a “public town hall” but was, in actuality a campaign rally given that the host and emcee were unabashed Snyder supporters and seven out of the eight questions he answered were softballs pitched by supporters. The room was less than half full despite Snyder’s press flacks claiming they had turned […]

After facing withering criticism for failing to agree to debate Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mark Schauer, Republican Governor Rick Snyder announced with great fanfare that he was going to do ten town hall meetings where voters could ask him questions. They said Schauer was welcome to tag along if he wanted, and then slammed him with a truly unprofessional insult, calling […]

ACCESS TO GOVERNOR’S CHIEF OF STAFF SOLD AT RECENT REPUBLICAN CONFERENCE An exposé by the New York Times shows that access to officials in the administrations of a number of Republican governors can be had by corporate America as long as they were willing to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars: [A]n error by the Republican Governors Association recently resulted […]

NOTE: With the impending election, trying to keep up with all of the news is like drinking from a firehose and, with a day job and other activities I’m involved in, I simply don’t have time to do an individual blog post for everything that is going on. I’m considering doing a “grab bag” like this one every day or […]

This past weekend, the Chairs of both the Michigan Republican Party, Bobby Schostak, and the Michigan Democratic Party, Lon Johnson appeared on Fox 2’s “Let it Rip!” program to discuss the upcoming election. Schostak showed up without a tie, carrying an aloof and almost derisive attitude. He struggled to defend his candidates time and again. In contrast, Johnson was well-dressed, […]

It’s been a terrific week of polling for Michigan Democrats. I’ve written about two polls (HERE and HERE) that statistical ties for Mark Schauer and Mark Totten with Gary Peters pulling away from Terri Lynn Land. Yesterday, a USA Today poll conducted by Suffolk University gives even better news. Here’s the synopsis: Mark Schauer leads Rick Snyder for Governor by […]

Mark Totten, photo by Anne C. Savage, special to Eclectablog Yesterday I reported on new polling numbers show great gains by Michigan Democrats. Another new poll out this morning by Detroit News-WDIV (Local 4) confirms those numbers. (Cross-tabs are HERE.) The race for Attorney General continues to be surprisingly competitive and shows how weak a candidate Bill Schuette is. Schuette […]

Mark Totten, photo by Anne C. Savage, special to Eclectablog A new poll out by PPP has some terrific news for Democrats. Mark Schauer is still in a statistical dead heat with Governor Rick Snyder, down just a single point – 42-43%. Snyder is under water with respect to his favorability with 51% of those polled holding viewing him unfavorably […]

Politics have many unofficial rules and philosophies that have been followed for years. Pundits of all political persuasions sometimes use these “excuses” to strengthen their point of view, or to protect their party’s candidate and to justify inconvenient truth(s). One such inconvenient truth is that incumbents for office, like Governor, for example, don’t need to debate their opponent. The conventional […]