Analysis
This article was a summary of the third debate between DeVos and Granholm. The story cited only the two candidates and a spokesperson from Amway who was responding to another negative claim by the Democrats. The story begins with the two candidate’s response to a question by what the Press called an undecided voter. The question centered around whether or not a small business owner should stay in Michigan. Do you feel like the responses given by the two candidates answered that question? The issues that were mentioned in the article were taxes, outsourcing of jobs and Proposal 5. Both candidates made claims but the reporter did not verify any of the claims made. The other two issues raised were comments targeting each candidate in a negative way. Again, both of these more negative claims were not verified by the reporter. Would readers have learned anything new from this debate about either of the two candidates?
Article Text
SOUTHFIELD — Gov. Jennifer Granholm and Republican challenger Dick DeVos made their final unscripted cases to a Michigan public that has just three weeks to sort out who they want to run the state for the next four years.
In their third and final debate at WXYZ-TV studios here Monday night, the candidates didn’t engage each other as much as they had in the previous debates, choosing instead to make direct appeals to voters.
Both candidates were asked by a Macomb County woman, one of some 30 undecided voters selected to sit in on the debate, why she and her small businessman husband and three children shouldn’t pack up and leave the state.
Granholm, seeking to convey hope that the next four years will be better than the previous four, said the state’s best days are ahead.
“You know how magical this state is,” Granholm told the woman. “We are going through a restructuring right now, but we’re going to be OK …. I want to make sure your kids have jobs when they graduate and that my kids have jobs.”
DeVos said that under four years of Granholm’s stewardship, state government had failed to respond to the real needs facing Michigan business, but that he would.
“As one business person to another, I certainly understand the challenges you’re facing,” DeVos told the woman. “… the governor has never worked in business, has never had to sign the front side of a paycheck… the governor does not have the experience to know what it takes.”
The debate followed much the same terrain mapped out in the candidates’ previous three joint appearances this month. DeVos again called for a restructuring of Michigan’s two main business taxes that generate $3.6 billion annually.
Last week he said he would pursue a net business tax cut of some $950 million. Monday he was less specific on the cut and said he would protect essential state services and boost spending for education.
Granholm said DeVos’ business tax cut plan would threaten state aid for schools, public safety and local governments. And she slammed DeVos for Republican policies that she said have outsourced Michigan jobs to Mexico, China and India.
DeVos countered by referring to the “outsourcing” of 85,000 jobs lost since Granholm took office. Indicating that the governor’s plan to cut the personal property tax 35 percent for manufacturers was insufficient, DeVos said “half measures are going to get us half solutions.”
Once again in this debate, neither candidate offered specific solutions to a system of local and higher education beset by near chronic funding problems. Both candidates, for example, lamented the rising cost of college tuition, but neither offered funding recipes for mitigating tuition increases.
Neither candidate offered suggestions on what the state should do to cover soaring teacher health care and pension costs, or on the fate of older school districts losing a minimum of $7,200 in per-pupil funding as student counts fall.
Both agreed that Proposal 5, which would guarantee annual inflationary funding increases for education, was a well-intentioned but misguided approach to funding schools. If approved by voters on Nov. 7, Proposal 5 would cost the state budget some $560 million in the first year.
Granholm and DeVos agreed that the importation of Canadian trash to Michigan was bad for the state but differed on a remedy that both said must come from Washington.
The governor criticized Republican lawmakers for refusing to cap the number of new landfills in the state. DeVos said he opposed a Democratic idea to raise the per-ton dumping charge in Michigan from 21 cents to $7.50.
Polls conducted since the first two debates earlier in October indicate public support for DeVos has slipped.
Averaging the margins of several polls taken in the past 10 days gives Granholm a lead of about 8 percentage points.
DeVos has said Granholm department directors in charge of Corrections and Human Services should have been fired for what he called administrative mistakes that led the deaths of 11 adults and children during her four years in office.
DeVos didn’t repeat that position Monday. But in her strongest comments of the debate, Granholm used her opening statement to charge that DeVos was exploiting those deaths for political gain.
“If you have a beef with me, bring it on, I can take it,” Granholm said. “Use my name. But let’s leave the names of deceased children out of it.”
After the debate, DeVos said he hadn’t seen Michigan Republican Party posters featuring the photos of dead children and titled, “Another Granholm victim.”
Granholm again used the debate to launch a coordinated Democratic attack against DeVos and Amway Corp., where he was president and co-CEO from 1993-2002. She charged that Amway sought to avoid U.S. taxes in the 1990s when it incorporated its Asian operations in Bermuda.
DeVos responded by saying directly to Granholm: “You know that’s not true.”
Democrats today plan to air a new TV ad repeating the charge. Amway spokesman Rob Zieger told the Associated Press after the debate that Amway Asia Pacific Ltd. was incorporated in Bermuda as a public company but later folded back into U.S.-based Alticor Inc. He said the company didn’t “save a dime” in taxes by locating in Bermuda.
In his closing statement, DeVos went through a litany of instances where he claimed “this governor has let the people of Michigan down.” He cited job losses, increases in crime, skyrocketing tuition costs and said it was time for change. “I’m ready to go to work.”
Granholm again portrayed the wealthy DeVos as someone out to serve special interests, not those of the general public.
“My opponent is an expert yachtsman and I believe his philosophy is each man for himself… but I am the captain of this ship and I will bring us all into port,” Granholm said.
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