The DeVolution of Michigan’s Gubernatorial Race

Last week, I expressed surprise that Dick DeVos, Michigan’s Republican gubernatorial candidate is trailing incumbent Democrat Jennifer Granholm in a state with a struggling, and from all appearances still deterioriating, economy. By rights, you would think that he would be up by double digits instead of trailing.

Shikha Dalmia of the Reason Foundation explained most of the problem in a Wall Street Journal op-ed last Thursday (subscription required), but missed one tie-together point that I really should have considered sooner:

….. 10 days before the election, Dick DeVos has lost his 15-point summer lead over Jennifer Granholm, the Democratic incumbent, and is now trailing by more than eight points in most polls. The fault is not in his stars but in himself: At a time when Michigan needs economic leadership, he has so far shown little charisma, creativity — or courage of convictions.

….. Ms. Granholm’s chief strategy for dealing with Michigan’s grim economic situation, comically enough, is to blame Mr. DeVos, even though the last — and only — time he held elected office was as a member of the State Board of Education a decade ago. ….. “I have never seen a sitting governor run so many negative attacks against an opponent,” notes Bill Ballenger, publisher of the respected non-partisan political newsletter Inside Michigan Politics. “She has few accomplishments to list so she knows that if she allows this election to become a referendum on her, she’ll lose.”

Although Mr. DeVos, who has spent $30 million of his own money on the campaign, has recovered from his initial shell-shock and become better at deflecting such attacks, he has done little to challenge her on economic fundamentals — her big vulnerability given that two-thirds of Michigan voters believe that the state has been going in the wrong economic direction under her. No one expects a candidate in a union state to win as a free trader. But Mr. DeVos has granted Ms. Granholm’s protectionist premises. He has countered her attacks against his company’s overseas operations by accusing her of not doing enough to convince Honda officials to locate in Michigan — as if it were a governor’s job to negotiate business deals. Worse, instead of staying focused on creating an attractive business climate by cutting taxes and government, his plan to make Michigan globally competitive involves opening offices in 10 countries to promote trade and tourism.

….. But for someone whose main campaign theme is that as a businessman he understands the challenges facing Michigan’s businesses, Mr. DeVos’s proposals, so far, are disappointing, to say the least.

He recently endorsed a law raising the minimum wage, disregarding that it will contribute to growing unemployment while making it harder for small businesses to remain profitable. He does insist — correctly — that lowering Michigan’s tax burden, which is much above the national average on a per capita basis, ought to be priority No. 1. But apart from calling for the repeal of an already repealed Single Business Tax that assessed businesses on their payrolls as opposed to profits, his only other suggestion so far is scrapping the Personal Property Tax. This tax discourages businesses from making capital investments by taxing new machines, equipment and furniture. But the problem is that it is one item in a laundry list of petty programs — not embedded in any consistent policy vision.

While Mr. DeVos’s failure to enunciate such a vision is likely calculated to position him as a moderate, in reality it is only making him less believable to independent voters. Meanwhile, his conservative base is dispirited because he has diluted his commitment to school choice and is opposing a ballot proposal banning the government from using racial preferences.

Now let’s cut to chase, and yeah, this is going to offend some people: The DeVos muddle painfully described in the op-ed is due to the fact that the man has never run a real business. All he has ever had to do is collect the money that bubbles up from the bottom layers of the Amway/Quixtar pyramid (oh, excuse me, “network”).

Amway/Quixtar may manufacture the products it sells, but those sales are predominantly, if not almost exclusively, to other A/Q Distributors (now euphemistically called Independent Business Owners, or IBOs). His products really don’t have to go head-to-head with Procter & Gamble, Colgate Palmolive, Lever Brothers, or any of the others. His “business” walls itself and its IBOs off from the rest of the world in a hermetically sealed vacuum.

DeVos appears never to have been challenged in his A/Q role — hence the backtracking on the no-brainer racial-preference ban and his supposed Holy Grail of school choice when things began to get even a little uncomfortable. It always appears expedient in the short-term to waffle; it almost never is.

Republicans in Michigan were ill-served when Dick DeVos bought the gubernatorial nomination. He is not a real businessman (one person whose work I excerpted at this post last year argues that he is more like a Mafia boss), and appears to have almost no chance of becoming an effective politician.

If disgust with Granholm and heavy values-voter turnout miraculously propel Dick DeVos into the governor’s chair (who knows, John Kerry might yet save him), I see no reason to believe that the Great Lakes State won’t be facing a four-year period just as long, and just as cold, as if Granholm wins.

Who’s the Libertarian on the ballot?