Michigan’s tea party groups are creating a united front and flexing their muscles in a way that could spell trouble for Gov. Rick Snyder and Senate candidate Pete Hoekstra.
Marisa Schultz reports in today’s Detroit News that the tea party organizations will hold their own statewide convention and straw poll to pick their own Republican candidate for the 2012 Senate race. If they hold firm and actually create a coalition representing 15,000 activists, as promised, the tea partiers could sink Hoekstra’s candidacy.
And that could spark a nasty intra-party war because polls have shown the former congressman with an enormous lead among GOP voters over all his primary election challengers.
But some tea party groups demonstrated their disdain for Hoekstra in last year’s gubernatorial election and that divide seems to have widened in the early stages of a Senate contest aimed at ousting Democratic incumbent Debbie Stabenow.
After Hoekstra received a rough reception at one recent tea party meeting, he cancelled his scheduled appearances at two upcoming Senate candidate forums sponsored by west Michigan tea party organizations. That didn’t sit well with the activists.
What’s more, Cindy Gramat, founder of Plainwell Patriots, appears to be leading the anti-Hoekstra bandwagon as organizer of the tea parties’ “Michigan 4 Conservative Senate.”
Meanwhile, Snyder may have burned his last bridge – in part due to his unwavering stance in favor of a government- funded bridge to Canada – with the state’s largest umbrella organization dominated by tea party types, the Michigan chapter of Americans For Progress.
In his column today for The Macomb Daily, Tim Skubick reports that the tea partiers have been unhappy with Snyder’s pension tax, his support for the proposed bridge, and his backing of the auto industry bailouts.
But the “breaking point” came, Skubick writes, when the governor convinced the GOP Senate to create the new health care marketplace – the online exchange – to start the final implementation of President Obama’s health care reform.
Here’s Skubick’s summary of the reaction to the exchange legislation from Scott Hagerstrom, who runs the AFP Michigan chapter: “’Basically what they’ve done is declared war on the tea party and tea party activists.’ And he’s just getting warmed up. ‘These are not conservative philosophies and policies,’ he said. …When hit with the notion that Snyder may not be one of ‘them,’ he said, ‘We are starting to have questions. I’ve been trying to give him the benefit of the doubt.’
“He said that now the tea party leaders ‘have caught on, … it’s very difficult for me to tell them that (Snyder) is doing the right thing.’
“In case the Snyder team misses the point, (Hagerstrom) puts this ribbon on the package: ‘He’s not in tune with the people of the state. We might have been better off with a do-nothing Jennifer Granholm.’”
Ouch. That last one had to hurt, Gov. Snyder.
