Electoral thoughts



A few brief comments for the benefit of future candidates:

Try to spell words correctly and write in complete and coherent sentences in your responses to the League of Women Voters' questionnaire. It's not very impressive when a candidate for the board of regents of a major flagship university states that "Having an educated populous helps the economy," as one candidate does here.

Also, try to avoid going into irrelevant rants about E-Gold and the evils of the Federal Reserve System when asked about policy recommendations for the state's educational system.

Breaking the taboo

As for me, I avoided voting straight-ticket Democrat in major state and federal offices only because the Republican Secretary of State here in Michigan seems to have performed her role with rather bland competence, avoiding the blatant partisanship of her counterpart in Ohio. Nothing that DeVos's campaign came up with convinced me that Jennifer Granholm was personally responsible for Michigan's economic woes, and however bland she may be, at least she's not from Amway. I dutifully voted for a couple of Dems for state legislative districts even though I strongly suspect that the local suburban counties will go solidly Republican even in the middle of a surging tide running the other direction.

As for the US Senate race, I figured that Democratic incumbent Stabenow was not any more blatantly horrible than her opponent, and it was necessary to throw the maximum possible weight on the opposite side of the scale from Bush and the rubber-stamp Republican congress that has aided and abetted his dangerously arrogant administration.

I think I may have voted for one or two Republicans for university regents boards. As much as I could, I relied on the scant information I was able to find out by way of electronic newspaper archives about regents candidates' individual attitudes and track records, rather than party affiliations. I voted for one U. of Mich. regent, without knowing her party affiliation, solely because I found a news article that reported that she had voted against the University's grandiose expansion of its football stadium.

Voting Democratic was a strange and unfamiliar sensation to me in 2004, and the strangeness still hasn't quite worn off. It seems, from the polls, that a good many other people have decided it's time to clean house of the current bunch of (mainly Republican) incumbents. We'll see how that works out.