Michigan dreams
I grew up in Michigan between 1953-75. Most of that time, the state was flush with money from the auto industry, both in terms of wages paid to legions of auto workers and corporate tax dollars flowing into the state treasury. The state gave out college scholarships, usable at any public or private college in the state, worth (in inflation-adjusted terms) more than $4,000 a year per student. But then came the oil shocks of 1973 and 1979, and Detroit's chrome behemoths no longer sold so well. The auto industry seemed unable and unwilling to design and sell quality cars for a changed world. The state began a long decline and today is an economic basket case. Unemployment stood at 7.4 percent in November.
Michigan votes today in its presidential primary, although it's kind of a half-baked affair because the state is being punished by both the Democratic and Republican national committees for moving up its primary to today from its previous date in February. The party committees were trying to stop the competition among the states to be have the first or nearly the first primary or caucus in the nation, on the theory, probably correct, that an early primaryforces candidates to pay more attention to a state's issues and concerns. The Democrats say they won't seat any of Michigan's delegates elected today, and Hillary Clinton is the only major candidate left on the ballot. The Republicans say they'll cut Michigan's delegate allocation by half. The Republican candidates have stayed in, and the only real action today is on the GOP side.
Mitt Romney is hoping for "favorite son" status in the GOP primary. He is a son of former MIchigan Gov. George Romney, who led the state during some of its glory years, 1963-69. The elder Romney, who had been president of American Motors, wasn't quite a liberal Republican but he came close. As his Wikipedia entry puts it, he was somewhat more conservative than New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller but far more liberal than Sen. Barry Goldwater or California Gov. Ronald Reagan. His own presidential ambitions flamed out in 1968, victim of the Detroit riots of the previous summer and his statement that he had been "brainwashed," i.e., lied to by U.S. officials, on a fact-finding trip he made to South Vietnam during the war.
Mitt Romney is far more conservative than his father was, and that will be a hard sell to a majority of Michigan voters, though perhaps not to a majority of Republican voters. His problem is that Michigan allows cross-over voting in the primary, meaning you choose in which primary you want to vote when you arrive at the polling place. There is no party registration. Democrats who don't want to vote for Hillary Clinton or "uncommitted" may choose instead to vote in the Republican primary. Sen. John McCain is said to be encouraging this.
McCain could end up the victor on the GOP side today. His brand of flinty independence plays well in Michigan. It is an odd state electorally. The bulk of Democratic votes are in Detroit, with large parts of the rest of the state, including my hometown of Holland, firmly Republican. But people vote, not square miles, and Michigan is still a Democratic state. A Romney-like candidate, Amway heir Dick DeVos, Jr., lost a bid for Governor in 2006 to the Democratic incumbent, Jennifer Granholm.
My guess is that McCain will get a lot of Democratic votes and walk away with whatever number of Republican delegates Michigan is finally allowed.