Democrats gain five seats in Michigan House of Representatives

Only one incumbent from each party was defeated, but that included right winger Matt Milosch of Lambertville. Matt ran a very sleazy campaign that was extremely well funded and filled the television and radio airwaves with his slanderous attack ads. It was a typical right wing slander campaign, where they reserve the right to tell any lie in order to get their candidate elected. Matt's campaign accused Kathy of all sorts of planned wrong doings. She's going to raise your taxes, she's going to pick your doctor for you, and this, and that... blah blah blah.
If only Matt had stood up like a man and ran an honest campaign where he explained HIS ideals, and what HE stood for, perhaps he wouldn't be looking for a new job today? I would like to extend a special thank you to Michigan Republican Party Chairwoman, Betsy DeVos for her help in steering Matt to the right, and ultimately getting him defeated.


http://www.freep.com/news/politics/stateround4e_20041104.htm

Democrats picked up five seats in the state House of Representatives, narrowing the Republican majority to 58-52.


"It's going to be easier now for the Democrats to build coalitions with the Republicans, so we can govern more from the middle," said Dianne Byrum, Democratic leader in the House. "It was a great night for us."

Gov. Jennifer Granholm campaigned diligently for Democratic House candidates and said Wednesday that she was thrilled with the gains.
Bill Ballenger, editor of the political newsletter Inside Michigan Politics, said the GOP's performance was abysmal.

we need to concentrate on right now, making gains at the local and state levels, that and beginning to build an alternative to the right wing media. Unfortunately we seem to have been mrginalized to the same extent that the religious right was when they began their remarkable turn around. We can do the same thing, but we need persistence and focus.

Remember: All politics is local.

Wins at the state and local level breed good news for Democrats in future elections!

I never really paid attention to state and local politics but I'm going to start.

It's our local and state representatives who draw the lines around the voting districts. That "Gerrymandering" can have an even bigger effect on the outcome of elections that the voters can.
If we don't get active in state/local politics, then the Republicans will draw those districts, and they will continue to stack the courts against us.

They took state legislatures, so that they were in charge of redistricting following the 1990 and 2000 censii. It cost Detroit a congressional district, caused two popular dems to have their districts merged (Dingell and Lynn Rivers), and gave Candace Miller a northern Macomb district that she could easily win. If she'd had the old Bonior district, she would have had to fight off dem voters from the south part of the county.

The state representatives will draw the voting districts.
The really funny part is that the seats we picked up were all Republican seats vacated because of the term limits law.

Here in Lenawee County, a Republican hotbed, our Democratic Black sheriff was re-elected by a huge margin. Also, Spade beat Abraham in a closer race for the house. These Dems won in a Rep area because they were both better candidates than the other side had. Good lesson.

John Espinoza is the best pick up of the election cycle. He won a race in a 45% Dem seat against the brother of the current rep., Muxlow. The reason he won, I think, is that he was just so muck better of a candidate and he raised enough money to show this to people. On an unbiased scale, I think this is the first year we have really had a better slate of candidates across the state than the republicans. Our only reason for not picking up more seats is that so many of our candidates were underfunded.

Good options for 2006 gains:

51st. Especially if Robertson runs for the senate
103rd. If we can run a good conservative Democrat.

Good God, politics is depressing...

but what I also figured, what that you think Kathy Angerer is going to be a fantastic state representative.
We are all very proud of Kathy for running a great campaign, and for facing up to the mega-sleazy campaign run by Matt Milosch. That boy really needs to get to a church and pray for his own salvation, IMHO.

She's a great democrat, quite liberal. She'll kick some Republican butt, no doubt. She's a lawyer. Don't hold that against her. :party: