Once again, Macomb GOP insults voters with hapless candidate lineup

The 2016 election year has featured brutal criticism of our two-party system, as rancorous battles in the Democratic and Republican primaries led to two presidential nominees that are disliked, putting it politely, by voters of all stripes.

But voters in Macomb County know that a one-party system is infinitely worse, as it produces candidates who make the Donald and Hillary show seem like the standard form of democracy. In key races, the county GOP is AWOL.

As in every county across the state, the top Macomb offices are the “Big Five” – the prosecutor, clerk, treasurer, sheriff and drain commissioner. Though Macomb is the site of hard-fought campaigns and a rather evenly divided county on a partisan basis, the Democrats have dominated the Big Five offices for a few decades.

In the three most current election cycles, the Dems have barely broken a sweat while cruising to re-election. That’s because the dysfunctional Macomb Republican Party has put up a wacky lineup of candidates for these countywide posts in each of the three most current election cycles.

Candidate recruitment nonexistent

This embarrassing pattern emerged in 2008 and somehow continued in 2012. This year, the candidates are just as incomprehensible, marked by bizarre behavior, skeletons in their closet, a bigoted reputation, or not the slightest knowledge of how to run a countywide campaign.

Worse yet, two of these hapless GOP candidates, running for prosecutor and treasurer, are back for a third try after winning the party’s nomination and losing badly in the November general election eight years ago and four years ago. Yet again, they came out on top in the GOP primary this past August.

Clearly, recruiting efforts by the local party to snag quality Big Five candidates is nonexistent.

Since the emergence of the tea party movement, the county Republican leadership has been a revolving door. The ugly infighting has consisted of resignation letters by party officials spiced with bitter accusations, claims of corruption and nepotism, and threats of lawsuits.

At one point, the Macomb GOP went through four party chairs in a little over four years. A changing of the guard will take place again next month as Shelby Township Clerk Stan Grot is slated to take over as chairman.

The one obvious exception to the laughable lineup on Tuesday’s ballot is Candice Miller, the outgoing Republican congresswoman who is embroiled in the most hotly contested county election in Michigan history as she butts heads with incumbent Democratic Public Works Commissioner (drain commissioner) Tony Marrocco.

But Miller wasn’t recruited, she made her stunning decision without consulting anybody in the Macomb GOP. It should be noted that the last time the Republicans won a Big Five office in Macomb occurred when Miller was elected treasurer, ousting an entrenched Democrat, in 1992.

Democrats enjoy the show

So, in addition to Miller — a former Michigan secretary of state who has experience at the local, county, state and federal level – here are the other GOP standardbearers:

• In the race for sheriff against incumbent Democrat Anthony Wickersham, Republican Paul Smith has no background in law enforcement though he is known for getting into tussles with the cops. Over the past five years, the former Sterling Heights city council member experienced several minor run-ins with the city police due to belligerent behavior, including an incident last year when Smith was hauled out of City Hall by officers after shouting profanities at the city’s mayor. He has directed crude remarks at gays, Muslims and President Obama. At a tea party rally Smith (pictured with his wife, Moira, above) he held aloft a protest sign featuring an illustration of Obama impaled through the skull by a spear. He later said he wanted to see the president executed. During his one term on the council, from 2011-13, some of his colleagues repeatedly demanded his resignation due to Smith’s outlandish behavior. When he tried to make a political comeback last year, he got walloped in the Sterling Heights mayoral race.
• The Democratic Prosecutor Eric Smith has been sitting back, enjoying the GOP show, as the Republican candidate once again is the eccentric Mike Wrathell. Wrathell has previously
  

  Wrathell

  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 once promoted a short film he created that was entitled “James Dean vs. Godzilla.” During his first run 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. Wrathell is on Tuesday’s ballot after running unopposed in the August GOP primary.

• The Democratic candidate for treasurer, Derek Miller (no relation to Candice), who was just appointed to the office in February, caught a break when he was pitted against Republican Larry Rocca. A perennial candidate, Rocca has a history of legal troubles and has tried to cash in on the Rocca name for two decades, though he is not related to Sal, Sue or Tory – the Roccas who have served in the Legislature. In his 2008 bid to become the county’s tax collector, 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.
• With the clerk’s seat open for the first time in 24 years, the Democrats nominated county Commissioner Fred Miller (no relation to Candice or Derek) and the Republicans chose Karen Spranger. A gadfly from Warren, Spranger has no experience within government except for ongoing battles with the city over her refusal to pay property taxes. She has failed to pay her taxes on time in 12 of the last 14 years, according to county records. The ramshackle house she claims as her home has no water service and is in foreclosure but Spranger claims she deserves a poverty exemption from paying her tax bill, an argument she pursued until she lost her case in the state Court of Appeals. So far, with the help of a few friends, Spranger has spent a barely perceptible $1,400 on her countywide campaign.

With candidates like these, who needs a second party? Is this the best the Macomb Republicans can do for the top elective offices in the county?

Voters would assume that the Grand Old Party has a duty to ensure that qualified, respectable
candidates are running under the GOP banner, offering a solid alternative to the Democrats.

But not even the most ardent Republican activist could argue that these four nominees are not headed for landslide losses on Election Day. Meanwhile, the county party’s main reason for existence seems to be to act as an extension of the Republican presidential campaign. In the competition for the Big Five, they surrendered long ago.

The voters deserve better.