Jack Lessenberry Essays and Interviews

Essay: A Natural at the Game - 2.28.11

Both Governor Rick Snyder’s friends and enemies often refer to him as a “non-politician.” Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry has been thinking about that.

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Governor Rick Snyder is not a “politician.” He would tell you that himself. I first heard he wasn’t a politician from a bunch of political reporters more than a year ago, who felt he was wasting his money on what they felt was a catchy, but ultimately silly commercial.

This was, of course, the famous “tough nerd” commercial that first aired during last year’s Superbowl. Tim Skubick, the dean of, Lansing political reporters, thought it was likely to backfire.

This is a tough, blue-collar state, he said. Not a place where people voted for guys who called themselves “nerds.“

I didn’t know what to make of all this myself, till I saw Snyder skillfully and with scalpel-like precision, separate himself from the rest of the pack during the primary campaign. Like a veteran racehorse he ran third much of the way, then shot ahead in the final stretch, winning by nine lengths and a hundred thousand votes.

The general election wasn’t even a contest. But there was a lot of skepticism as to how the new governor would actually do with the hurly-burly of governing.

Jennifer Granholm had been a crashing failure, something she herself attributed to having never served in the legislature. But she had at least been attorney general, and one of many cogs in Wayne County boss Ed McNamara’s political machine.

Snyder was a venture capitalist and former computer executive without a day‘s worth of practical politics in his past. When he revealed during the campaign that he had no idea who was the chief justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, some sneered.

But I felt otherwise. Being a political analyst is one of the few jobs for which age is an advantage. I remembered the scorn and disdain the experts felt when a washed-up movie actor ran for governor of California. Turned out he did a pretty fair job.

Republicans in places like Michigan, however, felt that their party would be committing suicide if they ever nominated him for president. “He’d be another Goldwater,” one told me in the late 1970s. Too right-wing, too extreme, too generally ignorant of the world. When the man did run, I myself asked him a question that revealed he had no idea on which side of Pakistan Afghanistan was located.

Yet he won forty-four states the first time he ran, and all but one the next. The man people feared might start World War III wound up ending the Cold War. I’ve been talking about Ronald Reagan, of course, and today, some people talk about adding him to Mount Rushmore.

Now I am well aware Governor Snyder has yet to even get his first budget through the legislature, or prove he can compromise if need be. But this non-politician got a President of another party to agree to count Canadian dollars as our matching highway funds.

And this governor has wisely avoided plunging this state into turmoil by starting an ideological war, as his counterpart in Wisconsin has in trying to abolish collective bargaining.

We’ve got a way to go before we know how successful a governor Rick Snyder will be. But up to now, he’s defied the experts -- and for a non-politician, has had one heck of a non-political year.

Essay: The Statesman and the State - 1.20.11

The governors’ annual State of the State speeches, are often forgotten soon after they are delivered. But Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry thinks the one last night may be a little different.

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When it comes to speeches, Rick Snyder cannot begin to touch Jennifer Granholm in terms of style.

At no time during his State of the State speech last night did he come close to matching her perfectly modulated tones. He’s getting better, but the governor still sounds much of the time like a college student making a speech in a class he’s required to take.

But when it comes to substance and leadership, he blew her out of the park. He took one of the most divisive issues in the state, made it his own, worked out an astonishing deal with the federal government, and happily co-opted both his friends and enemies.

Nobody had a clue before last night what the new governor would do about the proposed new bridge over the Detroit River.

For years, Matty Moroun, the billionaire trucking magnate who owns the Ambassador Bridge, has managed to block construction of a new internationally owned bridge.

Last December, Moroun’s allies in the state senate blocked a vote on the bridge, which virtually every other interest group in the state has wanted for years.

During last year’s election cycle the Ambassador Bridge’s owner donated more than half a million dollars to candidates and their committees, with the clear expectation they‘d continue to protect his interests. Nobody knew how Snyder stood on the issue, but supporters of the new bridge had little reason to be optimistic.

But then Snyder stunned the state.

“It’s time to build the new Detroit River International Crossing Bridge,” he said flatly. And then he added a bigger surprise. He’d gone to Washington and negotiated a deal.

The federal government would allow the $550 million dollar loan Canada had offered Michigan to get the bridge deal done to count as matching funds for federal highway dollars.

That’s not only a good deal for Michigan, it offers Republicans who had opposed the bridge a face-saving way to change their minds.

“Forget everything you heard in last year’s debate,” the new governor told them. After all, this wasn’t the bill they rejected last year, but a new and better deal for Michigan.

There are some who are saying the new governor was backing the bridge to please the Democrats, to win bipartisan support. Well, it may have that effect, but some of the strongest backers of the DRIC bridge have been Republicans outside the legislature, like former Governor John Engler and Oakland County’s Brooks Patterson.

The Michigan Chamber of Commerce wants the bridge, as do all the auto companies. Snyder decided to try to end the logjam saying he was tired of “rhetoric and paralysis. It’s time to solve problems.” Now, the bridge isn’t a done deal yet.

Nor did the governor explain how he proposes to close the massive budget deficit. That’ll come with his budget, next month.

But everything he said indicated he is a man of rational, commonsense solutions. He wants full funding of the successful Pure Michigan ad campaign. Most of all, he wants anything and everything that will create jobs. Ironically, by the end of the night, his somewhat wooden delivery had accomplished something his predecessor never did. He really did blow people away.

And I have a sneaking suspicion we ain’t seen nothing yet.

Essay: And as for the Democrats … - 1.19.11

The state’s attention will be focused tonight on Governor Snyder’s first State of the State address. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry thinks the Democratic response may also be worth attention.

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There’s a lot of speculation today as to what Governor Snyder will say when he makes his first State of the State speech tonight.

Well, we’ll find out soon enough. However, I’m also interested in what the Democrats are going to say in response. Now, there are a lot of people who think whatever they say won’t matter much.

After all, the Dems were pounded into the ground in the last election. They lost a record twenty seats in the House, where the Republicans have a sixty-three to forty-seven seat edge.

And they are in a lot worse shape in the state senate, where they now hold only a dozen seats out of thirty-eight. That‘s the weakest position they’ve been in since 1954.

Nevertheless, what goes around does tend to come around. Nobody thinks Governor Snyder‘s honeymoon with the voters will last forever. Nor is it likely that all of his fellow Republicans in the legislature are always going to support what he wants to do.

These are also not normal times. Michigan has lost nearly a million jobs in the last decade, and has the highest unemployment rate of any major state in the nation. Additionally, it’s clear that our method of funding state government is broken.

Every year, the system automatically produces huge budget deficits that have to be closed, in large part because the state has more funding commitments than it is generating revenue to cover.

So Michigan face major economic challenges at many levels, troubles so serious that wiser heads in both parties recognize that they can no longer play the same old partisan games.

The voters clearly don’t want that. They want everybody working together to try to fix things and revive the Michigan economy.

That’s what any number of surveys have shown, as well as a series of Community Conversations conducted over the past few years by the non-profit, non-partisan Center for Michigan.

Unfortunately, there are any number of career politicians on both sides who don’t get it. Within minutes after Governor Snyder delivered a fairly nonpartisan, inspiring inaugural address, longtime state party chair Mark Brewer was issuing a boilerplate press release denouncing the governor’s address; he did much the same when the governor filled a Supreme Court vacancy days later, in language that made the Democratic leader sound like just one more, out-of-touch political hack.

That’s not what the voters have indicated they want. This time, the Democratic response will come from Senate Minority Leader Gretchen Whitmer, who may well be the new face of the party.

Though still in her thirties, Whitmer is a seasoned politician who has been in the legislature for more than a decade. She is also a highly regarded attorney and a stunningly attractive person who once told me she sees her charisma as a two-edged sword.

One of her big fears, she once told me, was that people would see her as either another Sarah Palin or Jennifer Granholm.

She’s more than smart enough to know the times are changing, and her challenge will be to see if her tiny band of Democrats can manage to make a difference and be relevant in a positive way.

We may see if she starts them off in the right direction tonight.

Essay: State of the State History - 1.18.11

Governor Rick Snyder delivers his first state of the state speech tomorrow night… but who was the first governor to give one? Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry goes in search of a mystery.

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Tomorrow Gov. Rick Snyder will deliver his first state of the state speech to a joint session of the legislature and a statewide television audience. I’ve seen a lot of these speeches, and believe this may be the most eagerly anticipated one ever.

Michigan is stuck in twin enormous economic crises, one affecting state government, which has a perennial massive deficit, and the other affecting hundreds of thousands without jobs.

Governor Snyder is brand new, and we are still getting to know him. We want to have a better sense of who he is, and, especially, how he plans to get us out of the mess we’re in.

But all this got me wondering: Who was the first governor ever to give a state-of-the state speech? The first I remember was Governor Milliken, but how far back did the tradition go before him?

I knew that in the old days, governors just sent an annual written message to the legislature. U.S. Presidents used to do the same, until Woodrow Wilson started the tradition of showing up at the capitol and delivering a speech in person.

Since then, almost every president has done so. But who was the first governor to do so? I asked Bill Ballenger, the publisher of Inside Michigan Politics. “Wow,” he said. “I don’t know.”

Neither did State Senator Steve Bieda, maybe the legislature’s biggest state history buff. So I left a message for former Governor Jim Blanchard, who delivered eight State of the State speeches. He texted back that he hadn’t a clue.

I called Governor Milliken, who delivered more State of the State speeches than anyone in Michigan history.

“I just don’t know when they started,” he told me. “You’d think I should know, but I don’t,” he said, laughing.

So who did start the custom? I was pretty sure it wasn’t my favorite governor, Epaphroditus Ransom. He served only two years, from 1848 to 1850, and once sent this crusty message to the legislature: “It seems best to dispense with all unnecessary and useless communications.” He then took off to run an Indian land office in Kansas, where he died. Actually, he isn’t my favorite governor at all. I just always wanted to say Epaphroditus on the radio. Next I called George Weeks, author of the only definitive book on all of Michigan’s governors, Stewards of the State, which actually has the only picture I’ve ever seen of Epaphroditus Ransom.

George sheepishly told me he didn’t know either, though he was sure that Milliken’s were the first to be delivered in the evening and televised. Next, I picked on Dennis Cawthorne.

Now a top Lansing lobbyist, Cawthorne is a former Republican leader of the House, and a well-known expert on Michigan political history. “I can’t believe it, but I just don’t know when the first state of the state speech was,” Cawthorne told me.

He said he remembers at least one Soapy Williams state of the state, and he is pretty sure the custom started in the 20th century.

So there you have it; an authentic Michigan historical mystery . If anyone knows definitively when the first state of the state speech was, please let me know. On behalf of old Epaphroditus …

I’ll be grateful.

Essay: The Governor and the Auto Show - 1.12.11

Governor Rick Snyder visited the auto show yesterday. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry thinks his visit may provide some clues as to how he might govern.

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Governor Rick Snyder visited the Detroit auto show yesterday, something governors traditionally do. They greet the CEOs, make nice comments about the new models, and disappear.

I can’t recall a single thing any politician has said at the auto show that was worth remembering. But this year is a little different. Two years ago, it was highly uncertain whether there would be either an domestic auto industry or an auto show in 2011.

What’s more, almost nobody in the industry or the state had ever heard of Rick Snyder, and nobody imagined he’d be governor.

Well, the auto industry is a good bit healthier today, and the state is getting used to a governor who doesn’t like to wear a tie, and doesn’t mind being called a nerd. Like other governors before him, Snyder didn’t say anything especially stirring at the auto show. But he did a few things worth noting. He didn’t just visit what we might now call the not-so-big three, Ford, General Motors and Chrysler. He stopped by Kia and Hyundai and Toyota too.

The governor seems to have spent a fair amount of time with Sergio Marchionne, who is head of Chrysler, but also runs what is now its parent company, the Italian automaker Fiat.

And perhaps most remarkably, Snyder met with a number of alternative and renewable energy companies at a private reception yesterday before giving his formal remarks at the auto show.

His message seemed to be this: His administration is all about bringing the jobs of the future to Michigan, wherever they are to be found and whatever it takes to create them here. To quote our new governor, “It is companies, it is innovators, it is entrepreneurs who are going to create a better future for Michigan.”

As he sees it, his job is to make sure they find a fertile seed bed. Or as he put it, “We are committed to creating the very best environment in the world to create that formula for success.”

Next week, when he makes his state of the state speech, and next month, when he unveils his first budget, we’ll get a better idea how he intends to make that come about. My guess is that his approach will completely please neither Republicans nor Democrats. Governor Snyder wants to lessen the tax burden on business, and do so without raising taxes. That’s going to mean massive sacrifices across the board, unless someone repeals the laws of mathematics. Yet Rick Snyder also has signaled a commitment to common sense over ideology.

And that may force some revenue increases out of sheer necessity. The governor knows that nobody is about to bring new high-tech industry to a state where the infrastructure is falling apart and where the public schools have failed. He owes his success in part to the three degrees he’s earned from the University of Michigan, and I assume he values public higher education as well.

Yesterday, the governor praised the spirit that brought the auto industry back from its near-death experience.

He’s clearly hoping to do the same as well, with the business he’s running these days, an outfit called the state of Michigan.

Stay tuned for further developments.

Essay: The Importance of Being Kelly - 1.7.11

Michigan now has two state Supreme Court Justices with the name Kelly, and there is a chance there may soon be a third. Michigan Radio’s Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry takes a look at the Kelly escalation.

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On election day last year, I talked to a senior citizen who is a proud, dyed-in-the-wool Democrat. I wondered how she had voted for state supreme court. “For the Democrats, of course,” she said.

“I voted for Kelly and Davis,” she said, meaning newly appointed justice Alton Davis. You voted for a Republican, I said.

Alton Davis is indeed a Democrat, but Mary Beth Kelly is a Republican. “No, I didn’t,” the lady said. “I voted for Marilyn Kelly, the chief justice. You wrote about her in a magazine article I read.

“She is a Democrat. You said so.“

Yes, she is, I said. But you voted for MARY BETH Kelly. She is a Republican. Her party nominated her partly because she is named Kelly, and they were hoping a lot of people might do what you did.

Well, guess what. I don’t know how many other people were confused, but Mary Beth Kelly won by a landslide, beating poor Alton Davis, who gave up a secure judgeship for less than six months on the state’s highest court.

Mary Beth Kelly then voted with her fellow Republicans to oust Marilyn Kelly as chief justice and replace her with a Republican named Robert Young. So much for any notion of pan-Kelly solidarity.

But things may be about to get even more complicated. Another Republican Supreme Court justice, Maura Corrigan, is voluntarily leaving the court to become head of Michigan’s Department of Human Services. That means Governor Rick Snyder gets to choose someone to fill her seat.

Late yesterday, I was told that one of the people he was strongly considering was an appeals court judge named, you guessed it, Kelly. Kirsten Frank Kelly.

If he does appoint her, three of Michigan’s seven supreme court justices will be blonde women named Kelly. My guess is that this would be certain to escalate the Kelly war. Kirsten Frank Kelly would have to run for reelection next year, and the Democrats would have little choice but to find another Kelly to run against her.

Incidentally, you might wonder why Judge Kirsten Kelly’s middle name is Frank. I would tell you the answer, but I don’t know. For years, people have told me it was some kind of homage to one of Michigan’s greatest political figures, former Attorney General Frank Kelley. But that’s unlikely. Kirsten Kelly was born in Illinois, five years before the attorney general took office.

So, what about bringing Frank Kelley back to run against Kirsten Frank Kelley next year? Alas, that would be against the law. You can’t run for any Michigan judicial position after you turn seventy and Frank is eighty-six. He told me he wasn’t upset by this, by the way. “I’m thinking of running for attorney general again when I’m 90,” he said. He was kidding, but legally, he could do just that.

But I do think we need to amend the state constitution. If we have term limits, we need to have Kelly limits.

I believe, in the interest of surname diversity, that no group of elected officials should be permitted to be more than 25 percent Kelly. Otherwise, there may come a day when a child named Murphy or Cavanagh will no longer feel they have any chance.

Essay: The Cost of the Governor's Spouse - 12.13.10

On New Year's Day, Michigan will no longer have a First Gentleman, but a First Lady. Michigan Radio's Political Analyst Jack Lessenberry wants to know if it makes sense to have gubernatorial spouses cost the state money.

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I don’t know very much about Governor-elect Rick Snyder’s wife, other than that her name is Sue. And that’s just fine with me.

That’s not because I have anything against Mrs. Snyder.

From what I’ve read, she is a pleasant woman who has had three children with Michigan’s soon-to-be chief executive, and who was the first to suggest that her husband ought to run for governor.

I wish her the best. But her husband is the politician, not her. She didn’t run for office. The voters did not elect Sue Snyder to anything. She has a right to privacy.

But by the same token, I don‘t think the deficit-ridden citizens of Michigan ought to pay for her to have a staff of assistants. Now, I can see having someone to help Sue Snyder answer her mail. And I can see her having an assistant, maybe a driver, if she represents her husband at some state function.

However, our governors aren’t royalty.

We treat the spouse of the President of the United States as something more than a normal civilian, because in our system the President is both head of government, like the prime minister in Great Britain, and head of state, like a Queen or King.

But our nation has no hereditary aristocracy, and the wife or husband of a state governor isn’t nobility.

This was brought to my attention, by the way, three years ago by Leon Drolet. He‘s the man who drives around pulling a pink fiberglass pig, to symbolize the high cost of government. Three years ago, he reported on his blog that the governor’s spouse, who we call the First Gentleman, had a state-paid staff of three assistants, one of whom he said got a six-figure salary.

However, Drolet was unable to find out exactly what the total cost to the taxpayers was. That’s because, he was told, the Governor’s office is exempt from having to tell us.

Under our Freedom of Information Act, citizens have the right to request any government documents and report on them, and on what any level of government is doing, which only a few small exceptions. But in Michigan, the governor’s office, the legislature and the Supreme Court are exempt from FOIA.

Mr. Drolet wrote to the governor, asking that she disclose the cost of the First Gentleman’s staff. He seems never to have gotten an answer. Now, Drolet is a Republican. I am sure he didn‘t mind trying to embarrass a governor who is a Democrat. But that doesn’t mean his broader point is wrong. Two or three years ago, the First Gentleman came to have lunch with me in Ann Arbor.

Dan Mulhern had a driver who was being paid by the state. Now -- isn’t this a bit silly? The governor perhaps needs a driver, so she can transact state business while she drives.

But the governor’s husband? There’s an absurdity factor here. Frankly, I hope Sue Snyder forgoes the trappings of mock nobility, and does not keep a taxpayer-funded office in the capital.

If she does that, we might not think of her as Michigan’s designated “first lady.“ But she will have set an example as a classy grownup with a sense of proportion. Which we may need, even more.

Essay: Michigan Power - 12.9.10

The Republican takeover of the U.S. House of Representatives means two Michigan Congressmen will be newly powerful for the first time. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry is thinking about that.

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Who are Michigan’s most powerful people in Washington? For decades, the same names have come to mind. First, Dearborn’s John Dingell, the longest-serving congressman in history.

For many years, Dingell was either the chair, or ranking Democrat, on the powerful House Energy and Commerce Committee. Then come the Levins. Younger brother Carl is chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Older brother Sandy this year became the chair of the House Ways and Means Committee.

Then there is John Conyers, who has chaired the House Judiciary Committee for the last four years. These men are icons.

But they are aging icons, and when the Republicans take over the House next month, Conyers, Dingell and Sandy Levin will lose power and status, because they will be in the minority.

But Michigan will have two newly powerful representatives in key positions, men who are far less well known statewide -- but whom we ought to get to know better.

They are Congressman Dave Camp of Midland, who is about to replace Sandy Levin as chair of Ways and Means, and his fellow Republican Fred Upton, who will chair the Energy and Technology Committee. They are different from the leaders we’re used to in a number of ways. They are Republicans, of course.

And they’re from outstate Michigan, rather than the Detroit area. Upton’s from St. Joseph in the southwest corner; Camp from Midland, whose district sprawls across the middle of the lower peninsula. Both men are far more conservative than the Levins and Dingells, though Upton has had problems with fellow Republicans who have worried that he isn’t conservative enough.

And they are much younger. Both Camp and Upton are fifty-seven. If that doesn’t exactly sound like a youth movement, consider that they are easily young enough to be Dingell, Conyers or Dale Kildee’s sons.

Put another way, Camp and Upton might easily still be in Congress fifteen years from now. The Democratic leaders we’ve grown up with aren’t going to be.

Dave Camp, the new head of Energy, has been more of a workhorse than a show horse since arriving in Washington twenty years ago. He’s a social conservative, but has also worked hard to make it easier to adopt children from other nations, and has a reputation for helping put together compromises behind the scenes.

He also pushed though a bill to protect Michigan’s lighthouses. Fred Upton, like his district, isn’t quite as conservative as Camp; he has been a supporter of embryonic stem cell research, for example. He also has been a moderate on issues like climate change and has favored limiting automatic weapons.

But he may owe his energy chairmanship to this year’s oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. The man who would have been chair, Joe Barton, shot himself in the foot by bizarrely apologizing to British Petroleum because they were being criticized over the oil spill.

The Rush Limbaughs and Glenn Becks don’t like Upton, but he doesn’t seem troubled by that. It may be a while before we know much about what either man may be able to do for Michigan or the nation. But we do know this: They are going to be worth watching in the months and years ahead.

Essay: Buying Congress - 12.6.10

The campaigns are now over, and official reports indicate that our races for Congress were the most expensive in state history. Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry has been thinking about this.

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Tim Walberg, who lost his seat in Congress two years ago, is going back to Washington next month. Once he gets there, he will be paid an annual salary of $174,000 dollars a year.

That sounds pretty good, though it is a little less sweet once you realize that he has to live in two places, including one of the highest-priced real estate markets in the country.

That’s probably not a big problem for some of his fellow congressmen like Dave Camp of Midland, a multi-millionaire.

But it hasn’t been easy for some others. Bart Stupak, who is voluntarily retiring from Congress, lived for awhile in a boarding house. A few members have tried living in their congressional offices, but that hasn’t usually worked out very well.

What will boggle your mind, however, is how much it costs these days to actually win a seat in Congress. The official numbers are now in, and it cost six point three million dollars to put Walberg back in Congress. Six point three million.

Now he didn’t spend that out of his own pocket. That would be illegal even if he had the dough. His campaign apparatus raised and spent a lot of it. But outside special interests spent even more.

The Walberg campaign raised and spent one point six million. But groups from outside the district, like the Manhattan-based Club for Growth, spent four point seven million dollars.

By the way, don’t think I am implying that the incumbent who lost was overwhelmed by a GOP spending blitz. In fact, the loser in this case, a liberal Democrat, spent more than the Republican.

Eight point eight million dollars were spent in a futile effort to return Mark Schauer to office. That would be enough to pay his congressional salary for fifty years. There was one difference: Far more of Schauer’s money was actually raised by his campaign. Far less came from outside groups.

But it is very clear that campaign spending has gotten to out-of-control levels. This is a fairly recent development.

David Bonior told me he was embarrassed by how much his campaign spent when he first won a hotly contested Michigan congressional seat in 1976. It was a lot more than he planned on spending -- thirty-six thousand dollars.

Today, congressmen have to spend vast amounts of time begging people for money. Usually, they want something for it, which is an open invitation to corruption.

Something needs to be done. Most people think that’s impossible, since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in January that corporations can spend as much as they want on campaigns. But there is a way, other than a constitutional amendment.

The vast majority of all this spending is for broadcast commercials. Congress, or even, the Federal Communications Commission, could require stations to supply all candidates with the same amount of time, as a public service.

Even before that, Michigan could require campaigns to provide full disclosure about who is giving what to whom, something the Supreme Court says is fully legal, but our state doesn’t require.

There may be other solutions, but we need to find one. The only alternative is to be content forever with the most expensive Congress that special interest money can buy.

Essay: Fighting the Good Fight - 12.1.10

Most experts think there’s no chance of getting Senate approval of a new Detroit River bridge project his year. But Michigan Radio’s Jack Lessenberry says one state senator isn’t giving up.

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Ray Basham’s term as state senator runs out a month from today, and unless we change Michigan’s constitution, he can never come back to the legislature, thanks to term limits.

That doesn’t mean he’s done with public service, or that he has anything left to prove. He‘s sixty-five now, and spent four years in the Air Force and thirty on the line at Ford.

And though his voice still has a touch of his native Virginia, he has lived most of his life in the blue-collar downriver suburb of Taylor. In fact, so many of its citizens are fellow southern transplants that the town is sometimes referred to as “Taylortucky.”

Even while he was working and helping his wife Iva raise two kids, Basham always found time to serve his communities.

He was active in the United Auto Workers union at work, serving on the local’s bargaining committee, and did what he could for Taylor, serving on the water commission, planning commission, and as constable before finally getting elected to the city council.

From there, it was on to the House and Senate. Throughout his career, he seems to have been driven by a desire to make life better for his fellow citizens. For years, he fought for a smoking ban in bars and restaurants, something finally achieved this year.

That wasn’t universally popular with his mostly blue-collar, working-class constituents. But Basham felt it was the right thing to do.

Now, in the waning days of his career he is still fighting, in a cause most see as hopeless, at least this year. He’s fighting to get the state senate to vote on whether to build the new Detroit River International Crossing Bridge.

Last May, Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop promised an up-or-down vote on the bridge before the session was over. Then, last month, he changed his mind. Bishop’s office says flatly that the issue is dead. Republicans are in firmer control of the state senate than ever, since one Democrat recently quit.

But Basham is not giving up attempting to use procedural maneuvers to force the bill out of committee and onto the senate floor. He knows it’s a long shot, what he calls a “Hail Mary pass into the end zone.“ But he says he won’t give up trying.

Why? Well, Basham believes the new bridge is the right thing to do, and is convinced that it eventually will be built, despite the fierce opposition and deep pockets of Ambassador Bridge owner Matty Moroun. And Basham thinks it is vital for Michigan that it get started now. “People’s long-term unemployment is running out,” he told me.

“This is the biggest job driver, biggest job-creating project anywhere out there. It’ll mean more than ten thousand jobs. It’s a two billion dollar project for the State of Michigan,” he said.

Having to start over next year puts off putting people back to work. Ray Basham himself won’t be out of work. Since the voters couldn’t re-elect him to the Senate last month, they made him a Wayne County Commissioner instead. But he says he intends to keep fighting for the bridge as long as he is in Lansing, because the times are too tough and this opportunity too big to let it get away.