Some Folks in MI Are Actually Sad That Former Mayor of Detroit Has Dropped From Governor's Race. Why?

Occasionally, on the rare moment that I get a 3-day weekend, which we like to call the beginning of the summer, I like to try to take it easy. The purpose of this holiday (Memorial Day), though, is to honor those who died in the service of this country, which I fully respect.

I will remember this during the extended weekend.

So if I read something not related to that, and get wound up a bit, that is good. At least, I think it is.

The other day, I wrote an article here at RedState, talking about the governor's race in Michigan for this November, and one of the main candidates dropping out of that race, who happened to be the former mayor of the city of Detroit, Mike Duggan.

Mike is a Democrat, but for this race, he decided to run as an independent, and it raised some questions. But overall, he was running, or so we all thought.

As I wrote about Duggan right here (Former Mayor of Detroit Is Now Former Candidate for Governor of Michigan - Why Did Mike Duggan Bail?), I pontificated about his race and him dropping out...

I never believed for a moment that Duggan would actually win the governorship. There were pie-in-the-sky scenarios that I had read about from supporters of his that they believed were the path forward to him winning. Quite frankly, even though he was polling higher than any third candidate of recent note on a statewide scale, I had no belief that he could actually win.

Yet some of the people that I chat with about what is happening here in the Great Lake State believed, as I did, that the former Democrat and former Mayor of the largest blue city in Michigan could pull enough votes away from the Democratic candidate for Governor (Benson) and allow the Republican to win. 

My only concern was that the former mayor of Detroit could pull enough votes away from the Democrat (Jocelyn Benson), who had won two statewide elections as Secretary of State and was now running for Governor, and that the Republican might win.

I emphasized might.

However, there could be some people who lean to the GOP side who might be genuinely sad that Duggan is gone. 

Enter Detroit News columnist Nolan Finley. 

Finley wrote this a couple of days ago: "Duggan's out, along with hope of uniting Michigan"

A small part of Nolan's piece:

There's a weariness in the state, and the nation, with the rancor that has taken over our political discourse. Duggan represented the hope we could move beyond bickering and into finding solutions.

Whether an independent governor could have built a consensus in a state Capitol where everyone else is either a Republican or a Democrat was never certain. But if anyone could have done it, Duggan could.

I'm not as happy-go-lucky as Nolan is here, but I was looking at this from an overall standpoint of a Republican beating a Democrat, and hoping that the third part of that equation would pull enough votes from Democrats to make that a possibility.

Now that Duggan is done, it makes it much harder for the Republicans to win this race.

I know that there are a lot of well-meaning people who believe that Duggan did a decent job as mayor of Detroit. I have also listened to Nolan's former colleague, Charlie LeDuff. When I watched how, at first, Mike Duggan would take him on, but then decided to ignore Charlie for the majority of the time that he was in his elected job - that did not make me think as highly of the Detroit Mayor.

LeDuff made stuff stick, and if you are not guilty, you take it head-on and tell the reporter why. The former mayor and now former candidate for governor decided to leave it be. Which is fine, but for people who had questions, it might have been good to get some answers.

Also, I would have liked an independent candidate to actually be able to run and have a shot at winning. The last time I recall anybody running  for a third party that might have had a shot at winning (president) was Ross Perot in 1992. That was before he dropped out the first time and then, later on in the process, re-engaged again.

Not that I think Duggan would have won, but I do think the GOP needed him, if they were going to win a much easier race than the one they are facing now.

I have been wrong before, and maybe I will be this time, but...

We will see in November.

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