Jim Fouts, the eccentric mayor of Michigan’s third-largest city, Warren, has further muddied the waters when trying to explain his admiration for Bernie Sanders, a presidential candidate who has little in common with a blue-collar town that harbors an attachment to the nearly extinct conservative Democrats.
In a recent interview, Fouts seemed thoroughly confused and uninformed while trying to explain his affinity with Sanders, the self-avowed Democratic socialist.
At the same time, the mayor’s prior claim that he was nearly ousted from the March 6 Democratic presidential debate in Flint for expressing his support for Sanders too loudly has – as far as I can conclude – been verified by none of the thousands of people in attendance.
Inside Michigan Politics caught up with Fouts in the backstage spin room after that University of Michigan-Flint debate and tried to decipher how the mayor of a Macomb County city that has rejected far-left politics for decades could praise Sanders. Fouts, 73, in the accompaniment of his young assistant, Amanda Mika, explained that he appreciates Sanders’ views on policy but it would be incorrect to label the Vermont senator as a socialist.
When IMP pointed out that Sanders had routinely described himself as a democratic socialist, Fouts began backpeddling.
A retired government teacher from Sterling Heights High School, the mayor launched into a commentary in which he explained that his political hero is former president Harry Truman, but he holds admiration for Ronald Reagan and anti-corporate activist Ralph Nader. Apparently it has never occurred to the mayor that Nader has spent more than 50 years sharply criticizing General Motors while Fouts has routinely touted his tight public-private relationship with GM, including massive city tax breaks for the corporate giant.
The weirdness that is Fouts includes a track record in which he endorsed Republican Sen. John McCain in the 2008 presidential primaries, switched his endorsement to Democrat Barack Obama in the ’08 general election, and now expresses support for Sanders’ left-wing politics.
In retrospect, it should be noted that, even as south Warren transitions to a far more liberal constituency, Sanders still lost to Hillary Clinton in the Warren Democratic primary. IMP editor and publisher Susan Demas provides a full transcript of her bizarre conversation with Fouts here.
