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The contretemps between state House Republicans and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson shows no signs of abating. The House GOP adopted a resolution this week to hold Benson in contempt for failing (or refusing) to provide election-related materials on their timetable. The Democratic Secretary of State (and gubernatorial aspirant) says she won’t be moved.
The contempt resolution is not the end of anything since it has no enforcement authority on its own – the House would have to get a court to enforce the subpoena that led to the contempt resolution. It’s not clear when or even if that will happen. Benson has offered the option of mediation with a retired judge or someone with a similar background acting as an arbitrator to determine what materials will be shared with lawmakers and what won’t.
Mediation is a hard no, House Oversight Committee Chair Jay DeBoyer (R-Clay Twp.) told Rick on Friday.
“I’d like you to find me that in the Constitution or in statute that an arbitrator is the go-between between the legislative branch and the secretary of state branch,” he said. “It doesn’t exist. It is a talking point to try to misdirect.”
DeBoyer says Benson does not get to pick and choose what to share or not share with legislators overseeing how elections are run. He says Republicans would agree to a private meeting for the Secretary of State to make her case and try to come to a bargain on what can be made public and what would be reviewed behind closed doors. He says Benson has ignored that option.
For her part, Benson says her office has already released more than 3,300 pages of material to the committee and to the public. But she said her office will not release unvetted and unredacted material that would imperil election security if made public. The reality is Benson does not trust Republicans – at least some Republicans – not to abuse some of what’s in her files.
“You cannot bully me or abuse your authority to get access to information that if it ends up in the wrong hands could be used to interfere with the chain of custody of ballots, tamper with election equipment or impersonate a clerk on election day,” she said in a Zoom press conference. “I have a sworn duty to protect that information.”
A couple of other things to keep in mind. Benson is running for governor in a crowded Democratic primary. Wrangling with Republicans on election security is endearing to bedrock Democratic voters, and GOP lawmakers don’t lose anything either by trying to take a top Dem contender down a peg or two. It’s kind of a win-win, really.
And, the House right now is the singular Republican power base in Lansing. Along with the Secretary of State, Democrats control the governor’s office, attorney general, the Michigan Senate and the Michigan Supreme Court. (The state’s top court is technically non-partisan, but justice candidates are by and large nominated by delegates to party conventions. Dem-affiliated justices are a 6-1 majority on the court.)
In short, the House is the GOP firewall at the Michigan Capitol.
Right now, it looks like Republicans will have to make the next move. Benson can’t really be forced to do anything without a court getting involved, which would almost certainly make its way to the Supreme Court.
We spent a bit of time dissecting Benson’s not-so-great week in Wednesday’s pod. Take a listen for even more details.
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Have questions about Michigan politics? Or, just want to let us know what you want more of (less of?) in the newsletter? We always want to hear from you! Shoot us an email at politics@michiganpublic.org!
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Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson was in the news quite a bit this week - for all the wrong reasons. Plus, the political volleying over economic incentives for big business continues in Michigan.
What we’re talking about at the dinner table
Earmark lawsuit: The libertarian-leaning Mackinac Center has filed a lawsuit against the state over how the Legislature has handled earmark spending. Over decades, it’s become a normalized practice for the Legislature, regardless of which party is in control, to sidestep a constitutional requirement that requires two-thirds supermajority approval in both the House and Senate of funding intended for specific projects or organizations. The workaround is, well, let’s call it non-specific specificity. The organization is not named, but the description of where and how the money is to be spent is so narrow there will be only one qualified applicant. If the lawsuit succeeds, it will be a cultural change in deal-making and how budgets are crafted. The lawsuit says the workaround offers a particular advantage to legislative majorities that don’t have to reach across the aisle to get super-majorities to approve pork-barrel spending.
How close Whitmer was : Zoe’s birthday present to herself this week was Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s new book Original Sin (we talked last week about the Democratic dodging that had already begun even before the book came out). But aside from the new reporting about former President Biden’s mental acuity, there’s also more clarity over just how close Governor Gretchen Whitmer was to being chosen as Biden’s vice presidential candidate in 2020. The fact that Whitmer was on the VP list isn’t new but this is: “What started out as a list of eleven ‘equal finalists’ behind the scenes came down to two: Harris and Gretchen Whitmer,” Tapper and Thompson write. “Biden thought Whitmer had a ‘Scranton Joe’ vibe and cared about making sure that the Democrats remained the party of working people. She prided herself on bringing people together and not holding grudges… Biden’s heart was with Whitmer – she represented the next generation of Biden Democrats.” We know from previous reporting that there often wasn’t any love lost between former President Biden’s staff and that of former Vice President Kamala Harris but Tapper and Thompson go on to note that some on Biden’s team, “quietly expressed buyer’s remorse: they should have picked Whitmer.”
MPC 2025: You’ll likely be hearing a lot about - and from - the Mackinac Policy Conference next week. That’s when more than 1500 business leaders, lawmakers, philanthropists and lobbyists (watched over by a cadre of journalists, including yours truly) head up to Mackinac Island for the Detroit Regional Chamber’s annual policy gettogether. We’ve both stopped counting how many Mackinac Conferences we’ve attended but we were going back through the archives this week and found this blog (remember blogging!?) from the 2011 conference when Zoe asked Rick to explain why the conference actually matters. His answer is as relevant today as it was a decade and a half ago: "Because once a year – the political center of gravity of Michigan moves to this island [Mackinac] … decisions may or may not be made here… but certainly there is an effort underfoot to make things happen. You have to understand: Mackinac Island has become the state Capitol for the rest of this week. Do you care about the economy? All the business movers-and-shakers are up here. You care about what happens at the state Capitol? All the political movers-and-shakers are here. And, all of these movers-and-shakers are talking to each other. And, they’ll affect things like job creation, education, taxes… this is everyone’s best chance, all year long to make their best pitch for what they care about. That’s why you have CEO’s, top politicians, university presidents, non-profit organizations… all here trying to make the case for whatever matters to them.”
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Yours in political nerdiness,
Rick Pluta & Zoe Clark
Co-hosts, It’s Just Politics
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IJP on the Road
