Interesting Election

Oct. 14, 2016

Isn’t this an interesting election cycle?

We have a county commissioner race in which a Green Party candidate is likely to garner more votes than any Green Party candidate in memory. We have odd legislative races in which candidates from one district are ubiquitous, and candidates from the other are nearly invisible. We have a congressional race intruded upon by national party advertising, nearly all of which is relentlessly negative.

We even have a contentious local ballot proposition and two county millage proposals about which I’ll write more next week.

And, of course, we have the presidential election.

Traverse City is witnessing an unusual pair of legislative races. We’re getting political television advertising aplenty for Dan Scripps and some for Curt Vanderwaal, both running for the state house in the 101st District which does not include Traverse City. But we’re seeing none for Larry Inman or Betsey Coffia, who are running for the state house in the 104th District, which does include Traverse City.

The Traverse City media market overlays several legislative districts, so we’re subjected to coverage overlaps. Both Scripps and Vanderwaal, to their credit, are running mostly benign self-promotions rather than attack ads. Still, we’re especially appreciative that Inman and Coffia are not part of the television pack.

That’s more than can be said for the congressional race to replace the retiring Dan Benishek in Congressional District 1.

Lon Johnson and Jack Bergman, both of whom have raised and are spending small fortunes, have dipped into the negativity pool only to soil themselves. Their proxies have been even worse.

The congressional campaign committees of both parties consider our CD 1, which has bounced back and forth between Democrat and Republican congressmen, a swing district. Both parties are pouring money and advertising into the race. And doing so foolishly.

They’ve decided the key issue is where the candidates live. The Democrats tell us Bergman loves New Orleans and would like to retire there. In fact, he has said it himself. The Republicans tell us Johnson has an apartment in Detroit. And he does. Oh my god, the horror of it all.

We all know whoever wins will mostly live in or around the Washington D.C. area. He’ll cruise back into the district occasionally for an invitation-only town hall or some other photo op event and then he’ll be off to some fundraisers. Where he calls home won’t be where he spends most of his time.

He’ll come back to curry votes and money. The Republican and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committees have helped neither their respective candidates nor the voters and have once again besmirched themselves.

Which brings us to a presidential race dipping into new levels of coarseness and crudity. But that’s not the most troubling part of the Clinton-Trump mudfest. Intrusions into our election process from a pair of outside-the-country parties should be concerning us more than they seem to be.

The first is an Australian-born man now ensconced in the Ecuadoran embassy in London rather than face sexual assault accusations in Sweden. He dribbles out information, including secret American documents, someone else stole and gave to him.

The second is a murderous dictator whose country’s cyber-war efforts have managed to penetrate the Democratic National Committee’s computer system. (At least our Department of Justice says that’s the most likely scenario for the hacking of the DNC.)

The recent efforts of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who has been granted asylum by Ecuador and denies the sexual assault accusations, are clearly aimed at damaging Hillary Clinton. She would like to damage him too. It was Wikileaks that released reams of hacked and embarrassing messages from Clinton’s State Department. Now he’s releasing Clinton campaign emails. Clinton, on the other hand, would like to see Assange prosecuted for possessing stolen documents. They aren’t exactly fans of one another.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s cyber warriors are presumed to be the source of Wikileaks’ documents. Perhaps he’s just returning a favor to Trump, his most ardent American cheerleader.

It shouldn’t matter whom these two are attempting to assist or harm, it’s an appalling intrusion by both into our election system. Heightened security for our computerized voting systems should be an issue that isn’t.

Assange has issues with Clinton that likely don’t contemplate the potential consequences of his ongoing revelations beyond his enmity for her. It isn’t clear he even has a geopolitical agenda.

Putin’s motives are surely darker. Anything that damages American credibility, including a cyber invasion of our national election, enhances his expansionist dreams. Or at least he seems to believe that. He may view Trump, rightly or wrongly, as a willing pawn in his game.

Either way, neither Assange nor Putin are welcome participants in our elections. That they are is a problem mostly being ignored.