Analysis
This article appears the day of the last debate between Granholm and DeVos. What does the headline imply and why use a boxing term to describe the debate? The article presents nothing new about the candidates, but does cite both of them. Each candidate makes claims, but none of the claims are verified by the reporter. Most of the article is a reprint of statements from a previous public appearance at the Detroit Economic Club. The story ends with more poll data, but no methodology or details of how the poll was conducted are provided.
Article Text
LANSING, Mich. (AP) — With only three weeks to go before the election, Monday’s third and final gubernatorial debate could be the candidates’ best chance to nail down votes in the waning days of the campaign.
Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm and her Republican rival, Dick DeVos, have used the two previous debates to jab at each other and explain why they would be the best choice to lead Michigan.
Now, they have to seal the deal.
DeVos sharpened his attacks on the governor during the second debate Tuesday in Grand Rapids and during a presentation Thursday to the Detroit Economic Club, criticizing her for not firing department heads after two men went on separate killing sprees after being released from state custody and for the deaths of children in foster care.
“The fundamental issue of a person’s ability to run, manage and lead large, complex organizations comes into question when the public is forced to witness this pattern of incompetence,” DeVos said Thursday. “The people of Michigan don’t expect their governor to be perfect. But they do expect them to take responsibility and fix problems.”
On Tuesday, he told voters it was time to fire the governor, a point reinforced in a new DeVos campaign ad that says the governor should lose her job.
For her part, Granholm has continued to question how DeVos’ plans to cut business taxes will affect services such as education, police protection and health care. She said the plans were reckless and were being made purely for political purposes, not good government, and will not lead to Michigan’s economic resurgence.
“We will never be the lowest cost place on the planet,” she said Thursday. “The way we compete is by offering job providers with the best workers, the most innovative workers, the skills you can’t get elsewhere and a quality of life that will attract those businesses and workers to this state.
“A new Michigan is just over the horizon. I want to lead you there,” she told the Detroit Economic Club audience.
Granholm campaign spokesman Chris De Witt said he expects DeVos’ attacks to become even sharper in the third debate now that a new poll shows him trailing Granholm 51 percent to 42 percent. The poll, conducted Tuesday through Thursday by Lansing-based EPIC-MRA, had a sampling error margin of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
The poll shows Granholm with the biggest lead of the campaign.
Another poll published Sunday shows Granholm slightly ahead of DeVos. In the poll of 643 likely voters by Des Moines, Iowa-based Selzer & Co., 49 percent said they’d choose Granholm if the election were held today, 41 percent chose DeVos and 10 percent were listed as “other/not sure.”
The poll published by the Detroit Free Press was conducted Oct. 8 through Wednesday for the newspaper and Detroit television station WDIV. It had a sampling error margin of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
