Jack Lessenberry Essays and Interviews

Essay: Muslims in Politics - 11/20/06

Robert Francis Kennedy, my personal political hero, would have been eighty-one years old today. Except, of course, that he died when he was forty-two, gunned down moments after winning the California presidential primary election.

Had he lived, this world would have been a better place. He was murdered by an unbalanced freelance Palestinian terrorist who was unhappy over Kennedy’s support for Israel.

We were so politically naïve then that the American media mostly did not see the Palestinians as a people who could have any coherent or rational political aims. Looking back at the coverage, the general conclusion was that Sirhan Sirhan must be a lunatic. We saw him as we would John Hinckley, who later tried to kill President Reagan to impress the actress Jodie Foster.

We’ve all learned a lot more since then. About Arabs and Muslims, Sunnis and Shia, and the complex tapestry of ethnic politics. Here’s something else I can tell you. If Robert Kennedy were alive today, he would be one of the biggest boosters of Arab Americans running for office, especially if they were Democrats.

I can see RFK having come to Michigan four years ago to campaign for Ishmael Ahmed, when he ran for University of Michigan trustee. I can see him coming to Dearborn after September 11, to reassure frightened people who feared mob violence.

We have a long way to go. But I am hopeful because of people like Imad Hamad, and my friend Rudy Simons, who is Jewish and Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, who together took considerable risks to take medical aid to Arab children in Iraq.

We aren’t going to get there overnight, and the racist and genocidal and nihilistic statements of Muslim extremists are a big roadblock. But electing Arab-Americans to positions like judges and local mayors and city councils and hopefully, statewide boards and agencies is a start. The more any people have invested in America, the more they feel part of the fabric and tapestry of America, the more they have to lose when bad things happen to America.

Robert F. Kennedy knew that. That’s why he went into ghettos when no other politician would and sat there and took it when angry young black men full of rage screamed at him.

We still have plenty of racial problems in this country. But we have come a long way since 1968. For the last years we have had  two secretaries of state, both of them black, one of them a woman.

Forty years after 1968, one of the most talked about presidential prospects for 2008 is a black U.S. Senator whose mother was white and whose father was not African American, but African.

Someday I want to see an Arab American elected to office and then defeated for reelection by the voters. Not because he or she was Muslim, but because they didn’t like what they did on the job.

When that happens, I know we’ll be all right.

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Interview: Imad Hamad - 11/20/06

The headlines focused on Democratic victories in this month’s elections. But it was also a day on which Muslim Americans scored some of their first electoral successes. Muslims were elected to judicial posts in Dearborn Heights and Wayne County. And in Minnesota, Detroit-born Keith Ellison became the first Muslim elected to Congress. How significant is this? Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with Imad Hamad the regional director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.

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Essay: Party Man - 11/15/06

Here's something Saul Anuzis did last summer that tickled me. Andy Levin, son of the congressman and nephew of the senator, moved back to Michigan to run for a seat in the state senate.

Levin bought a house in the district, and one day while the contractors were getting it ready, Saul showed up with a welcome basket, complete with maps of the senate district, samples of Michigan products, and other choice items.

The Republican state chairman walked in and helpfully left it on his kitchen table. Naturally, he also brought press photographers. The point was to emphasize -- with a little humor -- that the young scion was a political opportunist who had been living in the Washington D.C. area and was moving back here just to run for office.

Democrats howled unfair, huffed and puffed, and talked about trespassing. Frankly, I thought it was great. Incidentally, I know Andy Levin. If I had lived in his district, I might well have voted for him.

But I thought what Saul did was in a long line of cute political practical jokes, the kind people used to pull that made politics fun. This wasn't race-baiting, or spreading rumors about someone's sexuality, or hinting they were traitors or child molesters.   

The Democrats needed to lighten up a bit --and maybe respond in kind by taking his opponent, who is well into his 70s, suggestions for nursing homes near the Capitol dome.

When the votes came in on election night, Andy Levin narrowly lost a race most people expected him to win. I don't know if Saul's little press stunt had anything to do with it. But I do know that it was generally a terrible year for Republicans in Michigan.

And that as a result, Saul Anuzis is now fighting to keep his job, Normally, if the party has a bad year while you are chairman, it is sort of like being manager of a bad baseball team. You tend to get fired.

Now it is none of my business who the Republicans want as their state chair. But I might think twice about dumping Saul Anuzis. He is a tireless worker who is, as far as I know, the only state party chair with a blog -- and a good one, to boot.

He is also the kind of person himself who Republicans need to attract to win. The son of working-class Lithuanian immigrants, he, his wife and four sons are all perfectly bilingual.

Anuzis is a native Detroiter who didn't quite finish college. But he is a successful small telecommunications entrepreneur who loves to ride his big Harley motorcycle.

Other party chairs I have known tended to be either country club types or policy wonks who couldn't get a date to save their lives.

After the votes were in last week, I asked one fervent Democrat if she thought they'd can Anuzis. "I hope so," she said.

They might want to think about that.                                                                                                                                                          

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Interview: Saul Anuzis - 11/15/06

Last week’s elections were not great for Republicans, to put it mildly. In Michigan, the party’s candidates for governor and U.S. Senator went down to landslide defeats.  Who do Michigan Republicans now look to for leadership?  Saul Anuzis is state Republican Party chair. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with him.

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Interview: Carl Levin - 11/13/06

The Democratic takeover of the United States Senate means that Carl Levin will return as chairman of the Senate Arms Services Committee, a post he held just before the war began.  Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with the senator about US policy in Iraq.

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Interview: John Dingell - 11/8/06

Now that the Democrats have gained control of the House for the first time since 1994, John Dingell is in line be one of the most powerful members of the house, if he returns as expected as chairman of the Energy and Commerce committee. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with him.

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Essay: Races to Watch - 11/6/06

Everybody is concentrating on what key races to watch when the votes start coming in tomorrow night. But I’ll bet you a donut that there will be some surprises somewhere in races that aren’t on anybody’s list.

And political careers will begin tonight in Michigan and across the nation in other races barely noticed by the media.

Twelve years ago, the nation was stunned when angry voters turned both houses of Congress over to Republicans for the first time in forty years. Even most Republicans never expected that. But one Republican whose parents counted on getting elected governor came up short that night. His name was Jeb Bush.

Former President George Bush and his wife Barbara thought Jeb would win his race in Florida, but feared his older brother would fail to unseat the popular Ann Richards in Texas. But the opposite happened.

And so George W. Bush became the family’s heir apparent. Jeb did finally get elected in Florida, but he was four years behind.

In 1984, the night Ronald Reagan won every state except one, few noticed that an obscure young guy won re-election as governor of Arkansas. He had been defeated in the first Reagan landslide, but he survived the second one. He was, of course, Bill Clinton. 

That same night, an even younger Democrat named Al Gore bucked the trend and got elected to the senate from Tennessee.

Sixteen years ago, Michigan was stunned by a contest that was on nobody’s list, because it wasn’t supposed to be competitive at all. Running for a third term, Governor Jim Blanchard led a State Senator named John Engler by fourteen points in the final poll.

Nobody expected Engler to win, even Engler. But win he did, by less than one percent. One shocked pollster took another poll to try and figure out how he had gotten it so wrong. The new poll still showed Blanchard winning.  All we know for sure is that statewide turnout was abysmally low.  

My favorite upset actually happened in Ohio, where a popular governor named John Gilligan posed  with a sheep at the state fair in 1974. “Why don’t you shear the sheep, governor?” one reporter asked. “I don’t shear sheep, I shear taxpayers,” he quipped. Bad mistake.

The mother of all upsets happened in 1948, when Harry Truman’s overwhelming defeat was so certain the Detroit Free Press said in an editorial that he should appoint his rival as successor and resign immediately after the election to save time. But Truman won -- fairly easily. What happened?

Extensive studies found that newspapers and pollsters filtered out information indicating Truman was going to win, thinking it had to be flawed. After all, everybody just knew he was going to lose.

So they cooked the books. Pollsters try not to do that today. Of course, they did elect Freman Hendrix mayor of Detroit last year. Which just goes to prove two things.  You never can tell, and you better vote. 

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Interview: Chris Christoff - 11/6/06

Tomorrow’s election is shaping up to be one of the most intensely watched midterm elections since 1994. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with Chris Christoff about the races we might want to be keeping an eye on.  Chris is the Lansing Bureau Chief for the Detroit Free Press. 

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Essay: Last Minute Surprises - 11/3/06

My favorite last-minute campaign maneuver is probably more legend than fact, though there are some people who swear it is true. This was during the last days of a heated 1950 campaign for the U.S. Senate in Florida. George Smathers reportedly announced that while it gave him great pains to do so, he felt obligated to reveal that his opponent’s sister had been a thespian.

Worse, this behavior took place while she was matriculating at a well-known university. As for his opponent himself, the incumbent senator, well, he openly practiced nepotism with his own sister-in-law. And worst of all, there were reliable reports that before marriage, he was a known celibate. Naturally, Smathers won by a landslide.

But to be fair, he did campaign in the conventional way as well, by suggesting his opponent was also a Communist.

There have been a lot of last-minute Hail Mary passes since then. Sometimes, just as in football, they go sailing over the voters’ heads. But you never can tell. Towards the end of the 1968 campaign for president, Lyndon Johnson suddenly announced a halt to the bombing of North Vietnam. The idea was to inspire disgruntled Democrats to come out and cast a vote for Hubert Humphrey.

Indeed, it may almost have worked. The polls tightened, and Humphrey almost won. He was beaten by Richard Nixon, who told us that he had a secret plan to end the Vietnam War.

As it turned out, the secret plan never existed. One of the most successful end game strategies was that used by Debbie Stabenow six years ago, when she was challenging incumbent Senator Spencer Abraham. He had far more campaign money. 

But she carefully managed what she did have for TV, spent almost all of it in the last two weeks, when voters were paying attention, and came from behind to win a narrow victory.

Today, it seems to me it would be harder to pull off a November surprise. We the people have been saturated with this campaign for months. Every voter with a TV has to know by now that Dick DeVos spends every minute plotting to send Michigan‘s last few jobs to China.  And Jennifer Granholm is the architect of a one-state recession that has impoverished Michigan. And if we reelect her, she has fiendishly vowed to “blow us all away.”

After that, it would take a lot to rattle us. These days, nearly all our candidates are guilty of serial matriculation at multiple universities, though nepotism is more or less illegal. Celibacy seems out of style too. But some things never change.

Years ago, another legendary senator said he had his race in the bag unless he were to be caught with a dead woman or a live boy.   Well, we’ve had a version of that this year too.

We’ll see what the voters make of all this four days from now.

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Interview: Craig Ruff - 11/3/06

In a way, politics is like football. They play it in November, and much of the time, it ain’t over till it’s over. And sometimes a contest can be turned around by a desperation pass just before the clock runs out. Craig Ruff, is a longtime political and policy expert with Public Sector consultants and he has seen his share of last-minute maneuvers.   Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry spoke with him.       

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