February 26, 1999

Legislative & Political Week in Review

• "Capitol chaos—protestor’s fury delays vote 2½ hours," was the Detroit Free Press headline summarizing the top of the week’s news. In a meeting unanimously reported as "raucous," members of the Senate Education Committee voted to send the Detroit school takeover bill to the full chamber after having been driven from their meeting room by a crowd of some 100 protestors led by House Democrats. Capitol security officers and Michigan State Police personnel joined legislative sergeants-at-arms in seeking, unsuccessfully, to maintain order. Senate veteran Harry Gast (R-St. Joseph), whose adjacent office was used as a sanctuary by committee members leaving their meeting room in the face of chanting, singing, and shouting, told reporters as he left the capitol, "Nothing like this has ever happened in 28 years." Passage of SB 297, which would legislatively dissolve Detroit’s popularly elected school board and replace it with a new body appointed by the mayor, still is considered a certainty in the full Senate, where it will be taken up next week.
• In less controversial (and almost anything would be) Senate committee action, the chamber’s Government Operations Committee reported out a measure to bump up Michigan’s presidential primary date. Under SB 51, the state would attract national attention with its pick for prexy by moving Michigan’s voting day up a month. In 2000 the date would be February 22—roughly two weeks after the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary. Currently, Michigan’s primary is scheduled for a month later, but proponents of the change say voters’ preferences get lost in the barrage of news coverage from some two dozen state primaries held over that ten-day period.
• Will Debbie Stabenow take on Spencer Abraham? Will Larry Owen wear Bermudas? These questions topped minority party political speculation in Lansing this week. "I’m still not putting a race together, but I am listening," Congresswoman Stabenow told Lansing State Journal political writer Chris Andrews. Andrews reports that U.S. Senate Democrat leaders have been urging Stabenow to consider facing Michigan’s junior senator in the 2000 election. As a result of his votes against the president in the recent Senate trial, Abraham is considered to be more vulnerable than once thought. "They view me as the dragon slayer," Stabenow concedes of her talks with party pooh-bahs. "I’m the only person who’s beat a [Michigan] Republican incumbent in recent memory." Meanwhile, another prominent state Democrat—former gubernatorial candidate and MSU board chair Larry Owen—reportedly has been nominated by President Clinton for a post in Bermuda. Pending U.S. Senate approval, the former East Lansing mayor could be headed to the island vacation spot, a United Kingdom territory, as U.S. consul general.
• Just three months after term limits capped her 18-year House career, former Rep. Shirley Johnson looks a likely bet to return to Lansing—this time in the upper chamber. Handily beating a former House colleague, Greg Kaza, in a special primary election for the 13th District Senate seat vacated by Michael Bouchard, the Royal Oak Republican defeated Kaza and six other GOP candidates by more than 2,300 votes. Although the March 16 special election—which she is expected to win easily over Democratic nominee Jeffrey Jenks in this traditionally heavily Republican district—is still a few weeks away, Johnson already has begun discussions with her potential Senate colleagues. If she wins the Senate seat, that body will have five female members, the highest number ever.
• Even as the state’s welfare caseload plummeted to the lowest level in nearly 30 years, a report just out says Michigan leads the nation with its number of working poor. A new study from the Michigan League for Human Services says that 145,000 state families—representing some 600,000 people—are at or below the poverty level, even with at least one wage earner in the family. From 1977 to 1995 the number of working poor families grew nationally by 48 percent, the study reports. During that same period, Michigan’s numbers grew by 152 percent. Under the 1995 federal poverty guidelines, a family of three with annual household income of $12,590 or less was considered unable to meet basic needs. The current figure is $13,650.