MUD FIGHT BEGINS

The dust had barely settled from the primary election in the 8th Congressional District and the general election battle started. Beleaguered GOP Congressman Mike Bishop took to the radio airways to slam Democrat Elissa Slotkin, accusing her of being a carpetbagger who moved here from Washington to run this race, even though she is the third generation of her family in the Holly area. Bishop’s radio bit also promotes his work on opioid legislation while in Congress and his sponsorship of a bill regulating underground pipelines on the Great Lakes. You can write this off either as strictly a smokescreen or we are witnessing a ‘Come to Jesus’ moment. Bishop’s history is marked by heavy donations from the drug companies. His voting record while in the Michigan Senate was pro-drug industry. Then there’s the Slotkin-supplied list many weeks ago of anti-environmental votes by Bishop dating back to when he was top dog in the Senate (opposing efforts to ban drilling in the Great Lakes, for example) to his similar votes in Congress. Missing from her list – Bishop’s vote last year to roll back an Obama administration rule that prohibited coal mining operations from dumping waste into streams.