Last year, the Newark Star-Ledger wrote one of the most nonsensical endorsement editorials I have ever read. They called Chris Christie "overrated" and "fraudulent" and said that his policies are and will continue to be destructive to the environment and low-income families. And then they said he should be re-elected because Barbara Buono is too close to the unions and not close enough with the party bosses.
However, the Detroit Free Press may have one-upped the Star-Ledger with its endorsement of Rick Snyder for re-election.
Let's see how it begins:
The distinction between Michigan gubernatorial candidates Rick Snyder and Mark Schauer is clear.
Snyder, the Republican incumbent, promised a pragmatic approach to the state's problems and delivered — except when he was caving to radical elements of the GOP-led Legislature or going back on his word about transparency.
Talk about exceptions!
The Freep then goes on to imply that Snyder is unprincipled:
He is the candidate most likely to build on the state's germinal economic momentum. He's also the candidate instrumental in Detroit's speedy voyage through bankruptcy, toward hopeful rebirth. And yet, our governor still needs to grow into a more sure-footed, principled leader.
They note that Schauer "pulls his weight" and that Snyder has a "troubling record."
Indeed, when we analyzed the challenges Michigan will face in the next four years, as we do here today in six parts, Schauer pulls his weight, often carrying a slight or distinct advantage.
But we're convinced that Snyder, despite a sometimes troubling record, is the better choice.
His reforms are not "an unmitigated disaster."
If Snyder's economic reform isn't an unqualified success, nor is it an unmitigated disaster.
The Freep acknowledges how damaging Snyder has been to schools and the population writ large.
And yet, Snyder's first term has been problematic in other ways. The governor balanced the budget at the expense of cities and school districts. His disdain for politics is inappropriate in the state's chief politician; his deficiencies as a deal-maker have sometimes resulted in terrible consequences for Michiganders.
They are fearful of what his next term could bring:
But we are also fearful of what Snyder's next term could hold. Snyder must find equilibrium, reflect Michiganders' more moderate values, and serve as a bulwark against our gerrymandered, likely GOP-led Legislature. And he has got to see people, not sums, as the bottom line of the state balance sheet.
"Say what you want about the tenets of Snyderism, Dude, at least it's an ethos."
Given our druthers, we might have chosen a third candidate, one who combines Schauer's values and empathy with Snyder's pragmatism, one who recognizes people as a key part of the budget equation. But no such candidate exists in this race.
And so, however uneasily, we choose pragmatism. Decisive action over poorly refined plans. Snyder over Schauer.
The Detroit Free Press acknowledges that Snyder's economic policies have not delivered...and have been harmful for low-income and middle-class families:
The governor argued this would spur formidable job creation, but four years later, it hasn't. And the extra burden on individuals, many of them poor and low-income, has been considerable.
Snyder, however, was on the right track in a few ways. Almost no one, Republican or Democrat, would defend the old Michigan Business Tax, a complicated levy against business "activity." Sndyer's new business tax is simpler: a flat 6% tax for many businesses, especially big businesses, and no tax for many smaller endeavors whose owners pay personal income tax on earnings. The result: about $1.8 billion less in corporate tax revenue.
…
Snyder's move to eliminate or pare back most tax credits hit middle- and low-income earners hard. Overall, individuals pay about $900 million more each year than they did before Snyder was governor.
If Snyder's scheme had jump-started job creation the way he predicted, there'd be little to criticize today.
But each year since the new tax system has been in place, Michigan has added fewer and fewer jobs, as reported in a Free Press analysis.
Notice the praise for the corporate tax reform plan that drained state coffers.
The Freep acknowledges Snyder has been bad for schools:
When it comes to education, Snyder just doesn't seem to get it. He's mixed radical deregulation with efforts to move existing funds around and call it reinvestment — hardly a proud first-term accomplishment.
…
But if Snyder were truly interested in helping schools, why didn't he do both? Why choose between long and short term when education is at stake? And how smart is it to pilfer millions from education while talking aggressively about the connection between high-quality schools and job growth?
The governor also refuses to accept that Michigan's method of school funding won't sustain the largesse of districts we have, and stood idly by as some simply ran out of money.
Snyder signed legislation removing the cap on charter schools, opening up cities like Detroit (which has more charter schools than any city in the country, but little academic progress to show for it) to even more free-market experimentation without accountability. In the face of static test scores and graduation rates, he has yet to respond with any real re-dedication to the health of public schools, instead focusing on ever more "choice" (distance learning, charters) as a solution.
The Freep accuses Snyder of trying to "turn Michigan into Mississippi" with his reactionary attacks on labor, women's health, LGBT rights, and transparency:
Rhetorically, the governor positions himself as someone outside the social and cultural wars over gay marriage, abortion rights, anti-discrimination or labor concerns.
But in practice, that position has too often allowed others' agendas to dictate his own. And so Michigan, during Snyder's tenure, has become a less tolerant state — with more restrictions on reproductive rights and fewer labor protections.
Worse, Snyder's self-fashioned profile as a champion of transparency has become a joke.
When critics decry this state becoming "Michissippi," this is what they're talking about.
Snyder's first mistake was indulging the vindictive GOP legislative move to make Michigan a right-to-work state after unions and Democrats foolishly pushed a constitutional amendment to protect union rights and failed. Snyder could have stuck to the high road and his oft-stated insistence that a labor fight would be divisive. But he backed away, and let his party's bullies run roughshod with their cram-down legislation — and then signed it.
He similarly allowed the GOP to put onerous regulations on abortion providers and on women for their reproductive health.
And on gay marriage and other anti-discrimination measures, Snyder resists principled stances. He says he'll "follow the law" on gay marriage and refuses to answer simple questions about whether he supports it. He says he wants to expand anti-discrimination legislation to include same-sex issues but hasn't pushed and instead waits for the Republican-led Legislature to act.
Snyder has also indulged a great deal of secrecy as governor, principally through his nonprofit NERD fund, ostensibly configured to help bolster the work of government. He killed the fund earlier this year but hasn't revealed the names of donors or what, exactly, their contributions funded.
Snyder also flip-flopped badly on his commitment to more transparency in campaign finance, signing legislation last December to permit continued use of "dark" money in elections.
Snyder has also been bad for the environment:
The governor's record of protecting Michigan's natural assets is pretty sorry, and reflects a misguided attempt to placate free-market forces at any cost.
He supports fracking — the controversial and dangerous method of drilling for natural gas — because he sees the economic benefit. But his insistence that it could be done "safely" ignores mounds of research showing that its risk/reward calculations skew heavily against environmental concerns.
Snyder cut funding to both the Department of Environmental Quality and the Department of Natural Resources, leaving them somewhat emaciated and struggling just to keep up with regulation.
As a policy imperative, Snyder's Michigan Economic Development Corp. backed steelmaker Severstal in its bid to dramatically raise the air pollution limits enforced against the company.
Snyder has also failed to stop a conservative Legislature from opening up public lands for industry or private use, and from limiting the amount of land the state can own and manage for recreational purposes. And he's failed to take a strong stand as legislators clamored to protect an oil company from having to replace an aging pipeline that runs under the Straits of Mackinac.
But still they endorse him. Why, you ask? They can sustain only two critiques of Schauer, reminiscent of the weakness of the Star-Ledger's critique of Buono.
First is that, like almost all editorial boards, the Detroit Free Press hates unions. And Mark Schauer does not.
The decision to guide Detroit into municipal bankruptcy was a rare instance of strong, decisive leadership from our self-described nerd governor, and — because of the strong, historic relationship between the Democratic Party and labor unions — it's the kind of necessary decision-making that we cannot imagine a Democratic governor offering.
Snyder's treatment of Detroit is the part of Snyder's legacy that the Freep loves more than anything else.
And the Freep criticizes Schauer for not saying how he will pay for things (even though they praise what he wants to do and acknowledge that he wants to increase taxes on larger corporations to restore the funding that Snyder drained from the state treasury).
Schauer's vision is more progressive and forward-looking than Snyder's. But he can't say how he would pay for the things he wants to do, nor has he demonstrated the kind of leadership that would suggest he could bring the legislative majority along with him.
So Rick Snyder might be bad for schools, bad for women, bad for the environment, bad for the LGBT community, bad for democracy, and bad for low and middle-income families, but at least he doesn't like unions.