Reality, Not Rhetoric: Tom George’s Quest for the Michigan Governorship

Described by the Detroit Free Press as “the most entertaining presence on the GOP stage,” State Senator Tom George of Kalamazoo, a long-shot candidate for Michigan’s highest office, has become something of a one-man truth squad in his bid to win his party’s nomination in next Tuesday’s congested primary.

Touting potentially unpopular positions on fiscal matters, he’s also emerging as a refreshingly candid voice in a race largely void of such attributes.

A ten-year veteran of the state legislature — spending the last eight years in the state Senate representing a predominantly Democratic district — the 53-year-old George is a practicing physician and former medical director of Hospice of Greater Kalamazoo.

Describing himself as the “only citizen-legislator in the race,” George is pitted against Pete Hoekstra, a nine-term congressman who unexpectedly entered the race last December, Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox, Oakland County Sheriff Mike Bouchard and Ann Arbor venture capitalist Rick Snyder — the only non-politician among the five candidates — in the hotly-contested August 3 primary.

All of George’s primary opponents have called for large tax cuts without proposing specific spending reductions, prompting the Kalamazoo anesthesiologist to suggest that their reckless proposals would drive Michigan into bankruptcy. Their proposals are nothing short of voodoo economics, insists the dark horse candidate.

“Driving the state into insolvency will not solve our problems,” he says.

Saddled with a jobless rate of 13.2 percent — the second worst unemployment rate in the country — Michigan is facing a more than $1.7 billion budget shortfall in the next fiscal year, beginning on October 1.

“Michigan is in a fiscal crisis,” says George, speaking a truth rarely heard on the campaign trail. “It makes no sense to increase spending and cut taxes as all my opponents propose.”

Their pie-in-the-sky promises — tax cuts coupled with increased spending — defies logic in a state struggling with a continuing fiscal crisis, he says.

The Republican Party must begin dealing in reality, he said during a recent interview on a public radio station. “If you have a problem, this applies to medicine as well as politics, the first thing you need to do is have a sober assessment of it.”

The irony in all of this is that George is probably the most fiscally conservative candidate in the hunt. George, who chairs the Senate Health Policy Committee and is a member of the Appropriations Committee, believes that reining in health care costs is critical to stabilizing the state budget and turning around Michigan’s depressed economy.

“This campaign is about bringing jobs back to Michigan,” he proclaims on his campaign web site. State government is not going to create those jobs, he explains, but it has a critical role in shaping an environment that can produce job growth. “That means readjusting the priorities of state government which under the current administration have been shifted from maintaining the state’s infrastructure to social spending.”

The little-known state lawmaker says that fixing Michigan’s economic woes requires honesty about the state’s fiscal crisis, and a willingness to shift resources from failed social services to investments in the state’s future.

Among other things, he supports eliminating the 22% surcharge in the state’s business tax and cutting spending by an equal amount to make up for the lost revenue. Moreover, he advocates privatizing more states services and wants to bring public employee benefits more in line with the private sector.

He also wants to make the legislature a part-time occupation.

Modernizing Michigan and making it attractive to new business, says George, will require significant structural changes to state government itself. As such, he is the only candidate in either major party who supports a state constitutional convention, a measure that will appear on the ballot this fall.

The primary appears to be shaping up as a triangular photo-finish between Hoekstra, Cox and Snyder, with Bouchard as an outside possibility. George, the only one who’s been willing to speak the hard truth to Michigan Republicans, has barely registered in the polls, garnering only one percent of the vote in a recent poll conducted by Mitchell Research & Communications, Inc., a Lansing-based firm headed by longtime political consultant and public relations specialist Steve Mitchell.

Making matters worse, George has raised considerably less money than his four Republican rivals. According to campaign finance reports filed this past Friday, Rick Snyder, who’s already sunk $5.9 million of his personal fortune into the race, leads the pack with $7.3 million. Attorney General Mike Cox raised $2.9 million while U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra, a co-founder of the recently-formed congressional Tea Party Caucus, reported contributions totaling $1.7 million, including $137,178 from Michigan’s public campaign fund.  Sheriff Mike Bouchard reported raising nearly $1.8 million, a figure that includes $80,991 in public funds.

By contrast, the Kalamazoo legislator has raised only $344,346. George loaned his campaign $48,000 of that amount and had only $33,089 left in the bank as of July 18.

Undaunted by his considerable fundraising disadvantage and his dismal showing in recent polls, the good-natured and pragmatic lawmaker, though barely known outside the Kalamazoo area, believes he still has time to pull out a miraculous come-from-behind victory in a race where approximately one-third of likely Republican voters are still undecided with only a week remaining in the campaign.

 “Voters are still looking for a candidate,” he said.   “My plan to cut spending rather than promising additional programs and billion dollar tax cuts is resonating with voters who are tired of that faulty, dishonest math.”

 “There’s still time left for me,” says the plainspoken and brutally honest physician, who recently began airing a limited number of radio and television spots to promote his long-shot candidacy.