Fred Miller’s inside track to succeed longtime Macomb County Clerk Carmella Sabaugh just became more slippery as Miller implausibly insists he was not given special treatment on an easy path to the clerk’s job.

In response to my blog post, “The fix was in for Carmella Sabaugh successor,” which was published online earlier today, Miller has just responded in a rather irrational manner. In effect, Miller, a prominent Macomb County commissioner and one of Sabaugh’s Democratic allies, insists that he had no inside information leading up to Sabaugh’s sudden departure.

Briefly, Sabaugh announced just minutes before the candidate withdrawal deadline last Friday (April 22) that she was retiring and withdrew her re-election candidacy. That left Miller, a Mount Clemens Democrat, in the cat bird’s seat as the favorite on the candidate list to secure the Sabaugh vacancy.

But here’s the key point: A Miller campaign video produced on April 15 shows that he filed because he (alone) knew Sabaugh was retiring. A week in advance of the Sabaugh announcement, he declared on camera that the county clerk was bowing out.

Yet, here’s what Miller posted online a half-hour ago:

The fix is in? Gimme a break!

While the video announcing my candidacy for Macomb County Clerk was indeed produced before I filed for the office, I did not know what Carmella Sabaugh’s true intentions regarding her decision to run or not were literally up until the last moment.

Carmella and I have enjoyed a good working relationship for many years and had previously discussed my interest in serving as County Clerk if and when she was ready to pass the torch. In addition to being a competent public servant, Carmella is also a savvy political operator and kept her cards held close, so to speak. That said, this is Macomb County politics after all, well-known for twists and turns. In order to be a successful navigator of these choppy political waters, one must be prepared.

I have been working hard making the necessary preparations to run a countywide campaign should an opportunity arise. In addition to formulating a social media strategy, I have also been actively fundraising, networking, and generally doing the things necessary to mount a successful campaign in a county as big as Macomb.

This version of political insider-trading seems rather obvious. Miller blew his cover but wants us to believe that he had been preparing long-term for a potential run for clerk, just in case. The question is, why did he give up his county commissioner seat when he could have temporarily “double filed”– for commissioner and clerk — and waited to see Sabaugh’s final decision?

The telltale evidence is the Facebook time-stamp which showed that Miller’s campaign video was initially filmed on April 15 – a week before anyone was supposed to know that Sabaugh was exiting the political stage.

To be clear, this is an egregious offense far beyond what it appears on the surface.

If 77-year-old Sabaugh had announced weeks or months ago that she was calling it quits, the vacant seat likely would have drawn candidates, Democrats and Republicans, consisting of term-limited state representatives, mayors, township supervisors, city and township clerks (past and present) and maybe even a state senator or two.

Instead, only Miller and Warren City Clerk Paul Wojno – who apparently relied upon the most unlikely Warren City Hall scuttlebutt –are the two plausible candidates for the seat.

This version of political insider-trading was safe for many years, before social media and instantaneous emails. But Miller was apparently counting on the old days, when normally no one caught you in the act.