Schmidt Faces Bellfy For Senate Seat
Rep. Wayne Schmidt (R-Traverse City) will be the GOP nominee for the 37th state Senaterace this fall. He beat Rep. Greg MacMaster (R-Kewadin) with about 55 percent of the votes cast in the GOP primary.
Unofficial results have Schmidt beating MacMaster in every county in the senate district but Cheboygan.
Both candidates are currently representatives in the Michigan House.
Schmidt will face Phil Bellfy in November, who won a tight Democratic primary.
Rep. Frank Foster Loses Primary
Incumbent state House Rep. Frank Foster (R-Pellston) has been defeated in the primary. He was seeking a third term as the representative of the state’s 107th house district.
Instead Republicans from Petoskey to the Sault nominated Lee Chatfield, a teacher at Northern Michigan Christian Academy.
Chatfield ran on issues like smaller government, support for gun rights and opposition to abortion. He criticized Foster for voting for Common Core standards and the Medicaid expansion.
Chatfield will face Jim Page in November, the only Democrat in the primary.
Inman v. Coffia To Represent Grand Traverse County
Larry Inman (R-Williamsburg) led a crowded field of republicans who want to represent Grand Traverse County in the state legislature.
Rob Hentschel and Isaiah Wunsch were the next best finishers in the GOP primary.
Inman, a longtime county commissioner, will face the Democratic nominee Betsy Coffia in the fall. It’s Coffia’s second run for the seat, which has been held by republicans for decades.
Voters Support Senior Programs
Property taxes to pay for services for senior citizenspassed easily across northwest Lower Michigan yesterday.
Emmet and Leelanau County voters renewed millages by three-to-one margins.
Kalkaska County will now have the highest property tax rate allowed in Michigan for a senior agency, one mill. Voters there approved the proposal by more than two to one.
Missaukee County voters also increased taxes to help seniors.
Voters Overwhelmingly Approve Business Tax Cut
Michigan will phase out an unpopulartax on business equipment. Voters overwhelmingly approved Proposal 1 on the primary ballot Tuesday.
Gov. Rick Snyder says the proposal was a win-win for businesses and local governments, which collect the tax.
“One, it’ll make us more competitive in terms of our businesses, which will lead to job creation.” Snyder told reporters Tuesday. “Secondly, it’s going to help our local governments to have a more stable, better source of revenue. And third, it doesn’t cost our taxpayers a dime.”
Communities depend on revenue from the tax to pay for things like police, fire, and roads. Snyder says the proposal ensures they will be fully compensated for any lost revenue.
Local government groups say they agree.
“I think, from the local government level, it really provides certainty for us in a way that the failure of Proposal 1 certainly would not have created that certainty,” said Samantha Harkins with the Michigan Municipal League. “And we’ve had a lot of uncertainty in the last decade.”
The complicated ballot question overcame confusion about what it would do, as well as distrust in Lansing, to win a landslide victory. Harkins says the fact that it was a primary election with low voter turnout may have helped Proposal 1’s chances.
“People who take the time to vote in primary elections are generally more educated and probably did their homework on Prop 1, perhaps more than would have been the case in a general election,” she said.
Some local officials say they do not trust the state to keep its promise to compensate them for lost revenue without raising taxes.
Voter Turnout
Updated 3:20pm
More than 82 percent of all registered voters sat out Michigan’s primary election this week.
That’s not the all-time low some observers predicted before the election, but they say the number is still dismal. And many of them expect low voter turnout again for Michigan’s general election in November.
“That’s going to favor Republicans and favor tea party/libertarian/conservative type candidates and voters in terms of their preferences because they will show up out of proportion to most of the rest of the electorate,” said Bill Ballenger with the newsletter Inside Michigan Politics.
That’s why Democrats are focusing on turning out more voters for November’s general election.
“Voter turnout in an off year is a big challenge for the Democratic party,” said Michigan Democratic Party Chair Lon Johnson. “And we’ve identified nearly a million Democrats that did not vote in 2010. And we’re working hard to turn them out.”
“It starts with, most importantly, good candidates,” Johnson said. “And we’ve got good candidates. We’re united to go deliver a good message to those voters.”
The low water mark for voter turnout in a Michigan August primary came in 1990, when just 15.1% of people old enough to vote cast a ballot. The highest rate of participation on record was in 1982, when 24.4% of the voting age population showed up at the polls.