Here is my Sunday column …
Just a month before the 1986 elections, The Detroit News seemed to have no clue that the Democrats were headed for a huge win at the ballot box, marking one of the wildest swings in the recent history of Michigan elections.
The ’86 election cycle came on the heels of two Democratic senators being recalled from office, including David Serotkin of Macomb Township, and the GOP scoring surprising gains across the state in 1984 on the coattails of Ronald Reagan, who scored one of the biggest landslide presidential victories in history.
But the lack of intermittent polling in ’86 meant the media did not uncover the blowback against Republicans that was about to take hold at the ballot box.
The News story focused on the unpredictability of Macomb politics, the conservative nature of Macomb Democrats, and the high degree of ticket splitting by voters. But it never hinted that the GOP gains could be wiped out by a Democratic tsunami.
Instead, the article, relying upon various sources, pondered whether the Republicans would gain more seats in Macomb — on the county board and in the Legislature — or if the Democrats could hold off the GOP momentum. No mention was made of poll numbers in the governor’s race.
Four weeks later, the GOP gamble of nominating Wayne County executive Bill Lucas, the first black man to run for Michigan governor on a major ticket, proved a colossal flop. Jim Blanchard scored his own landslide and it was the Pleasant Ridge Democrat’s chance to flaunt his coattails.
In 2011, the public rightly complains that too many polls receive far too much media exposure. But just 25 years ago, it’s apparent that more and better polling was needed in the home stretch of the ’86 campaign to truly understand the undercurrents.
After that tumultuous election, the 25-member Macomb County board had just one Republican member, Lido Bucci. And the Republican gains made two years earlier in the state House and Senate were essentially wiped out.
I’m not criticizing the News or the writers of the piece — the late, great Charlie Cain and Joan Walters, who was a solid reporter for the paper’s Macomb bureau. But it’s strange and apparent to see how we journalists and political reporters, were writing while blindfolded in those days compared to the barrage of information and data available to us on an hourly basis in 2011.
There was not one mention of Reagan Democrats anywhere in the story. Maybe that label had not yet caught on, though I don’t remember it that way.
The story suggested that Macomb voters were fickle because they’re not grounded. The electorate was compared to transients who moved here recently and will eventually move on.
To carry that theme forward, former state Rep. David Evans took special note that Clinton Township had “no trees.” Just as a land without trees has no roots, Evans said, the people who move here never establish roots. In an article that was published more than a decade before the county’s housing boom, I found those comments odd.
Two other things to note:
1 — State Sen. Gil DiNello eagerly talked about his unorthodox brand of Democratic politics. The East Detroiter (this was six years before the city’s name change) was in rare form, bashing the labor unions and the city of Detroit.
DiNello assured the readers that there were no plans in the works for him to switch to the GOP. A few years later, he did just that.
2 — A young Republican county commissioner, Dave Jaye, is quoted saying that the GOP’s hot-button issues, such as crime and capital punishment and Coleman Young, would lead to more Republican gains that November. Jaye was seeking a promotion, running for the state House, and he was favored to win.
But he was shocked on that Election Day when he lost to a liberal, pro-union Democrat, Bill Browne, by one of the narrowest margins in state House election history.
I still remember the photo on our front page of Jaye, taken early on Election Night, with a self-satisfied grin on his face while signaling two thumbs up for our photographer.
Wow, that was a long time ago.
Chad Selweski can be reached at chad.selweski@macombdaily.com.
