Miller-Marrocco race turning into ugly soap opera

UPDATE: On Monday night, Tony Marrocco’s campaign manager issued an additional statement about Candice Miller’s newest campaign tactics:

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Perhaps it makes sense that an election for the job of tending to sewers and drains would get down into the muck.

The Macomb County Public Works Commissioner race took an ugly turn in the past 48 hours as the Republican, outgoing Congresswoman Candice Miller, took clear aim at a prior sexual relationship of Democratic incumbent Tony Marrocco that ended badly.

On an anti-Marrocco website, the Miller camp takes a no-holds-barred approach with this melodramatic headline:

“He hired her, he dated her, he fired her, he paid her off and now she is dead. What did Anthony Marrocco know?”

The insinuations within those few words is pretty thick.

The reference is to a Marrocco girlfriend, a married woman, with whom he started a relationship in 2002, according to court records. Marti Parker was approximately 21 years old at the time and Marrocco was 54.

The basic facts are these:

Marrocco

Marrocco gave Parker a job at the public works office in January 2004, arranged a promotion for her, then fired her after seven months. That’s according to a lawsuit Parker filed against the county in 2005, which claimed that the divorced public works boss began sexually harassing her after she broke off the relationship.

Confidential settlement

In 2006, after Parker’s marriage apparently ended, Marrocco reached a cash settlement with her that remains confidential. Two years later, Parker was murdered in a 2:30 a.m. shooting on a Detroit street, a case that remains unsolved.

The site does not accuse Marrocco of having any role in Parker’s killing. But Miller, a Harrison Township Republican, goes out on a limb by asserting Parker was previously “a victim of a predator.”

All of this plays out on AnthonyMarrocco.com, a web domain scooped up by the pro-Miller forces – a strategic campaign blunder by Marrocco’s team. Click on that address and up pops “The Truth about Anthony Marrocco.”

Over the weekend, Marrocco’s campaign manager, Michael Radtke, reacted to a Miller campaign press release that referred to the Parker lawsuit in more reserved tones, claiming that the legal action cost the county $100,000 and that the undisclosed settlement may have reached seven figures.

‘Lies from 12 years ago’

Radtke said the congresswoman had dredged up “lies from 12 years ago” to distract from her record on environmental issues in Congress and her campaign donation from the billionaire industrialist Koch Brothers, who have been accused of polluting the Detroit River.

“This race should be about clean water and the environment, not Washington-style gutter politics that have no place in Macomb County,” Radtke said in a Saturday email.

Another head-turning aspect of this election fight is that County Executive Mark Hackel, determined to see the longtime incumbent – a fellow Democrat — defeated, has filed Freedom of Information Act requests for details from the public works office.

The county’s top official went the FOIA route to dig up specifics about the Parker case and two other lawsuits filed against the public works commissioner. The vague response he received from Marrocco’s underlings earlier this month was that the legal expenses in the sexual harassment case did not derive from Marrocco’s budget. Of course, that may be nothing more than standard procedure as payouts for lawsuit settlements are the purview of the county legal counsel’s office.

Stripper/girlfriend

In June, Hackel said in a WJR-AM radio interview that Parker was Marrocco’s stripper/girlfriend. During the legal proceedings, Marrocco’s lawyer threw her under the bus, reportedly alleging that Parker “has a pattern of … exploiting dating relationships … for financial gain in order to support a drug habit and other questionable activities.”

The county executive’s aggressive attacks during that radio program also included accusations that Marrocco, a Ray Township Democrat, had routinely engaged in “pay-to-play” politics, providing county permits for building projects in exchange for large Marrocco campaign contributions from the builders. At one point, that issue seemed to be the main basis for Miller’s fall campaign. Since then, not so much.

Beyond all this, there is a Donald Trump factor in this story. And, no, it’s not about these two candidates trying to engage in mudslinging that exceeds the dirt in the Trump vs. Hillary Clinton presidential campaign.

Trump thrown into the mix

Marrocco has again called for Miller to renounce her endorsement of Trump following the release of a 2005 recording that revealed the Republican nominee engaging in a lewd conversation about a woman. At the same time, Miller has stuck by her Trump backing while briefly criticizing his vulgar statements. Yet, she has blasted the public works incumbent, claiming that he engages in Trump-like behavior.

The obviously awkward cross-connections between those Miller vs. Marrocco attacks seems lost on both candidates. The retiring congresswoman pinned her broad sides on the Parker situation and a remark that Marrocco made to stunned Macomb Chamber of Commerce officials in June that the lawmaker got “knocked up in high school” – an unplanned pregnancy that ruined her chances of securing a college degree. No evidence exists to support that assertion. Miller’s daughter was born when Miller was 23 years old.

Oh boy. What’s next? With each candidate expected to spend more than $1 million by Election Day, it’s anybody’s guess.

But those many political observers who last spring wondered why Miller would retire from Congress an engage in a ho-hum bid for a drain commissioner’s job have mud on their face. They certainly underestimated the explosive characteristics of Macomb County politics.