When Macomb County voters go to the polls in November they
will be shortchanged on one key portion of the ballot – the selection of
our “Big Five” countywide officials.The Macomb Republican Party
made no effort to recruit quality candidates for sheriff, prosecutor,
clerk, treasurer and public works commissioner. All five of those
offices are held by Democrats who are overwhelmingly favored to win
election on Nov. 6.

The Republican nominees consist of some
retreads from the whacky GOP lineup of 2008 that was handily defeated at
the ballot box, one nominee trying to make a comeback 24 years after he
first ran for office, and a candidate who is a political unknown but
nonetheless ran unopposed for the nomination in the August primary
election.
If we’re such an evenly divided swing county where
either party can win an election at any time, why have the Republicans
fielded such a weak lineup of 2012 candidates for the county’s top
offices?

Mike Wrathell, the nominee pitted against Prosecutor Eric
Smith, has previously admitted that he has not practiced law full time
in many years, preferring to concentrate on his work as “America’s
greatest relatively unknown modern artist.” On his website, Wrathell
promotes a short film he recently created that is entitled “James Dean
vs. Godzilla.”
Wrathell proved to be an especially eccentric and
embarrassing candidate for prosecutor in GOP circles four years ago, yet
he ran unopposed for the GOP nomination in August of this year.
In
2008, it was revealed that Wrathell foremost considers himself an
artist and musician/songwriter and he was, at that time, spending part
of his days drawing bizarre pictures of Plutonians — his whimsical view
of how inhabitants on the planet Pluto might look, if they existed.

Though
Public Works Commissioner Tony Marrocco has faced more than his share
of controversy over the past year – unsuccessfully pushing for big pay
raises for himself and top aides — the GOP failed to secure anyone to
run against him. A 20-year incumbent, Marrocco is running unopposed in
November. In other words, no choice for the voters.

Larry Rocca,
the contender up against county Treasurer Ted Wahby — who handles up to
$300 million in county funds at a time — has previous skeletons in his
closet that should scare most voters.
In 2008, when he lost
convincingly to Wahby, it was reported that Rocca had defaulted on a
personal loan and suffered a court judgment to pay $26,000 to a bank. He
was delinquent on his property taxes five times in a 10-year period.
And he was fined by the state for improperly handling reserve accounts
at his real estate office.
That was the story according to a trail
of county and state documents over more than a dozen years. But there’s
more: For years Rocca, who is not related to Sal or Sue or Tory Rocca,
has tried to cash in on the Rocca name, running for office several
times, yet he has never come close to winning.
In this case, the
loyalist GOP voters who went to the polls in the August primary can be
excused for their choice because the only Rocca competitor was a
Libertarian.

Clerk Carmella Sabaugh’s opponent, Debera Guenther, filed her candidacy 17 months ago, yet she has been nearly invisible on the campaign trail. Though she got off to a big head start and became the only Republican candidate to file for clerk, she entered the final stretch of Election 2012 with just $289 in her campaign warchest.

As for the race for sheriff, the so-called incumbent
is Tony Wickersham, who has never faced election because he was
appointed to succeed Mark Hackel as sheriff in 2010 when Hackel was
elected Macomb’s first county executive.
Flash back to early 2012
and some political observers at the time wondered if Wickersham, despite
his strong resume, might not survive the Democratic primary. Yet, the
Republicans sided with Steve Thomas, who has already run and lost for
sheriff twice, and secured the 2012 nomination in an extraordinarily
weak August primary field.
Thomas is labeled as a respectable guy
in Republican circles, but he retired from the Sheriff’s Department
nearly two decades ago and has since spent time as the chief of
security at Eastland Mall in Harper Woods and then moved on to lead
another security company.
Thomas’ candidacy also raises another
aspect of the Macomb GOP’s weak effort in the Big Five races – a lack of
financial support. When Thomas filed for office he claimed a campaign
finance reporting waiver indicating that he planned to spend less than
$1,000. In contrast, Wickersham proceeded into the fall campaign with a
cash balance of $52,000.

The fact that the Macomb Republicans
could not assemble a stronger GOP team for the Big Five offices is
inexcusable in a county where close elections are the norm.
To be
fair, the five Democratic officeholders are all popular politicians,
well-entrenched incumbents for the most part, who can mount an
expensive, aggressive re-election campaign if necessary.
That fact would certainly scare away many potential Republican challengers.
But, to paraphrase a line that has gotten me in trouble before: Is this the best the Macomb Republicans can do?

This
is not some obscure third party we are talking about. Doesn’t the Grand
Old Party have an obligation to ensure that qualified, respectable
candidates are running under the GOP banner, offering a solid
alternative to the Democrats?
After a 2010 election in which the
Michigan Republicans scored spectacular victories up and down the
ballot, did the Macomb GOP huddle together and plan for more election
wins in the future?
No, the knives came out and the party
splintered. The party chairman was forced out amid bitter
finger-pointing and a tea party-type was inserted as the new GOP leader.
Admirably, the traditional Republicans and the tea party Republicans
reached a sense of peace. But they never showed signs of building on the
2010 revelry in terms of recruiting new candidates.

What’s the
point of having a local political party if they can’t present effective
contenders for some of the most important elective offices in the
county? Has the Macomb GOP become nothing more than an extension of the
campaign for the Republican candidate at the top of the ticket (for
president or governor)?
The voters deserve better.
In a county
that was known on a national scale as the home of the Reagan Democrats,
on the local level it appears that in 2012 we have become – take your
pick – maybe the home of the Sabaugh Republicans?