This is a wacky time of the year around these parts. Members of the house are itching to get the heck out of here to run for reelection back home which is Job One for them. The onlyproblemisJob Onefor you, if you want any state services, is for them to spend $80 billion of your tax dollars first. That includes everything from state cops to janitors at your local school and everything in between.
However, one of the sub-plots gobbling up loads of time is the fight for which party will run the house next year. The D’s have the power now and the R’s are within a whisker of taking it back and that provides for all sort of intrigue including who will be the next Speaker of the House, whom next to the governor, is the most powerful individual in the building.
Detroit Democrat Rep. Joe Tate has the job now and wants it again for the next two years.
West Michigan GOP House Leader Matt Hall has labored in the minority for two years; he is not fond playing second fiddle and would love to bounce Mr. Tate and take back the majority from the Dems and become the top dog.
Problem for Mr. Hall? Another Republican is mounting his own campaign for the top slot.
Mr. Hall, in other words, is not a shoe-in and GOP Rep. Tom Kunse thinks he should be.
Let the games begin. One of the scared rules of the game is that all good Republicans are pledged to keep focus on the big prize of house control and any individual desires are suppose to be secondary to that.
So when Mr. Kunse showed up on the “Off the Record” broadcast, he wiggled around the pointed question with the best of them.
Question: Is it time for new leadership in the GOP caucus if you guys win?
Answer: “I’m focused on the majority. I think we need to get that first,” he bobbed.
Question: What about the chatter in town about your interest in the leadership post?
Answer: “I’ve heard that,” the weaving commenced, “and again my focus is on the majority.”
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We get that.
Then finally, a sliver of the truth emerges with this, “ Say for me, “I don’t want to be speaker.”
Now confronted with either fibbing or spinning the truth, he revealingly retorts, “I’m willing to serve wherever my caucus wants me.
“So that is a possible yes?” “Anything is possible,” he confesses which to the trained ear is about as close to a yes you are coming to get from him that is to say.
Notice he never admits his intentions but as one source suggested, “it is the worst kept secret in this town” that he is running and another source confirms, he has shared that desire with Mr. Hall, although the Kunse camp won’t touch that with a ten foot pole.
In fact he comes to Mr. Hall’s defense when asked about what kind of leader he has been.
“He is in a roomful of class presidents,” he begins referring to the composition of the 54 member house GOP caucus. “He’s trying to herd cats. It diffi cult being in the minority,” he goes on while suggesting Mr. Hall has not been “perfect” but has not had any grandiose blunders. He is certainly “acceptable,” he ends the analysis of his opponent.
And those two will battle this out below the radar while focusing on winning back the majority while Speaker Tate has his own worries over getting all of his members to vote for the new budget.
Turns out he has a number of progressive colleagues who are refusing to vote for the budget unless they get some benefits under the state’s no fault car insurance law for those who have been catastrophically injured. But the speaker is loathed to do that because it could result in higher insurance rates for voters in the suburbs and Democrats could lose some of those seats and poof, there goes his majority.
Ain’t this fun? Especially if you are watching from the outside looking in on all this palace intrigue.
