COUNTY PLOT THICKENS
We were as surprised as everyone else when the Oakland Republican Party sent out an email on September 22 urging its followers to attend the September 29 county board of commissioner’s meeting to protest what was billed as an attempt by Democrats, who hold a one-vote majority on the board, to make the position of commissioners a full-time spot, with benefits to boot. Come the meeting, nothing on the agenda remotely like what the email suggested, and no mention of the issue du


PARTING OF THE WAYS
For a while it seemed like Birminghamites Clinton Baller, who was elected to the Birmingham City Commission in 2019, and perennial city gadfly David Bloom, were friends for life. They had a shared antipathy for former mayor Patty Bordman, working to unseat her and even filing a federal lawsuit in 2019 on First Amendment grounds when she erroneously prevented them from speaking during public comment. They jointly worked to defeat the reconstruction of the N. Old Woodward parki


TARGET ON HIS BACK
Former Detroit Police Chief James Craig, who is running for the GOP gubernatorial title in next August’s primary, is learning his first major lesson in politics – the front runner gets tarred and feathered. After all, politics is a dirty business. First Craig announced he really did back a “thorough audit of election results,” in an opinion piece in The Detroit News on the same day as Trump followers gathered on the lawn of the state Capitol to call for an audit. Of course, M
COURTING OVERSEAS DONORS
Democrat Gary Peters, one of Michigan’s two U.S. Senators, took to the international skies in mid-October to raise party funds in Europe as chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. While he worked the expatriate donor circuit, Peters headlined an October 13 invitation-only dinner in London at which the contributing levels went as high as $36,599, the maximum allowed from American citizens living abroad. GOP critics may want to hold off – late Arizona Senator


2022 CONGRESSIONAL OUTLOOK
Miles Taylor, a member of the Department of Homeland Security from 2017-2019, and former Republican New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman (1994-1921) caused quite a stir with an October 11 op-ed piece in The New York Times urging members of their party to vote for Democrats in coming elections to counter the extremist drift of the GOP of late and to defend democracy that is now threatened. They specifically singled out Michigan Rep Elissa Slotkin (D-Holly) as a candidate


EXCHANGE RATE
With Trump’s “Big Lie” continuing to prevail among some GOP factions – that he really won the 2020 presidential election, but election officials stole the election from him – a fabrication that recounts and federal lawsuits have disproven time and again, some Michigan Republicans have been making moves to ensure they’ll get their way next time around, by hook or by crook. First, in early October, metro Detroit Republican Party officials moved to replace Monica Palmer as a GO
THE Q AMONG US
Life’s getting weird when you can’t identify your state legislative official with a plain old R or D. That’s the case for folks living Lake City, Michigan, northeast of Cadillac. Don’t know Lake City? It has a population of 836 people, and is known as the “Christmas Tree Capitol” because it produces millions of Christmas trees annually. Seems it might also have bred someone with an affinity for tin foil hats. Daire Rendon, state rep for the area, was voted in as a Republican,

