Summer in Northern Michigan Highlights Causes of Republican Victory

Summer in Northern Michigan Highlights Causes of Republican Victory: By JOANNE KOWALSKI
“According to exit polls, Bush supporters tend to be culturally and religiously conservative married rural voters, a large majority with an annual salary of over $150,000.”

—Rebecca Paris, “Divided We Stand”, Berkeley Daily Planet, Nov. 5-8.

Last summer, I spent three months with family in rural Northern Michigan (a red zone in a blue state) where almost everybody owns a gun, drives a pick-up and is a member of a faith based community. Except for some tourists, I met only three people who made over $150,000 a year—a real estate broker who sold properties to Wal-Mart, a retired developer from the city who built a mansion in the woods and a drug dealer. Not even the president of the local university makes over $150,000 a year.

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The most pervasive issues were economic. The center of the towns in virtually every part of this country are dying. Good buildings, houses, factories and stores, stand empty. Strip malls are in disrepair. Full time, permanent jobs are hard to find. Since NAFTA, local factories have either closed or been forced to move. Big boxes have destroyed local businesses. The multinationals that have moved in, often over local opposition, are either dangerous or destructive to the environment - chemical plants, strip mining, toxic waste dumps and factory farms. Wages are low, benefits negligible, job security non-existent. Many men take temporary jobs hundreds of miles away. One WWII vet and “loyal American” told me the new corporations were destroying the community with their greed.

Even with the media blackout, because of the war, the escalating debt and his ties to greedy corporations (Enron, Halliburton, the S&Ls) Bush is not well liked. Even die hard Republicans said they would have to hold their nose to vote.

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Unfortunately, Kerry did not present an attractive alternative. From the backwoods, it looks like the Democrats care more about the right of gays to marry or gun control than they do about the rural economy or the war. Even when Kerry said something meaningful, he was not trusted, partly because of his rich-boy demeanor, but also because he had no record of taking principled stands on the economy or the war. Then, too, there were those who felt betrayed when Clinton signed NAFTA. Others consider Reno’s massacre at Waco an attack upon the religious right. Because of this, distrust of Democrats runs deep.


complete article:
http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/article.cfm?issue=11-19-04&storyID=20136

Granted, 50% of the MI population lives in 3 counties...

and you could tell that watching the returns on Nov 2... rurals came in first... making MI look red... then Wayne (metro detroit) and Washtenaw (Ann Arbor/Univ. Mich liberalland) came in, turning it blue. It's kinda neat looking at a MI county-by-county map (probably similar to NV)... you think to yourself... wait a minute... how can ALL those counties be red... those are NATIONAL PARKS... stupid republican forest rangers... I coulda sworn those guys were greenies....

I know there are some nice people but...

A great coworker applied for a job transfer in a county there and was told outright in the interview that she "wouldn't be comfortable". She is black.

I have a friend from Taiwan who is married to a black man. Since her parents, still in Taiwan, were so liberal she was surprised by their concern at the marriage but it had to do with prejudice in our country. When they came to visit she hoped to ease their fears. It was fine in her home town but they made the mistake of going to the Upper Peninsula. While sight seeing they were surrounded by police at gun point, he was thrown down and cuffed and held nost of the day. He "matched the description" of a fugitive. Oh yes, be on the look out for a dangerous black man with an Oriental woman and old couple strolling and carrying cameras.

It did not reassure her parents much. They made her swear they would never go that far north again and never ever too far south.

I know the UP is gorgeous but I don't think there are that many minorities that live up there of any kind. One of my friends from high school used to joke that if you could combine the two biracial people in our school they would make one total African American.

...all right, and a little deer hunting.

One thing I heard repeatedly was the issue of gun control. "How could the Democratic Party ever let themselves get on the wrong side of this issue," one person asked me. "We're supposed to be the party of the common man!"

Lots of potential Democratic votes in the Red States (or places like the UP) are lost because the Democratic Party appears to be run by urban elitists. How much of that is Republican propaganda and how much is fact could be debated, but the consequences are real.

It's true... the UP is a whole different ball gmae than say Nebraska... it's rural, but not farm country... this goes back to the idea that the reds win by getting small populations excited about one issue (and NOT the health of the nation). Pick guns... guns and repugs=good. Pick gays... gays bad=repugs. War? Hmmmm... War OK. Social security... huh? Health insurance... huh? Deficitwhah?

I'm not trying to dis UPers.

one of my fav sites: http://www.dayoopers.com/

But you get a lot of small groups who decide to REALLY unite behind ONE issue (verus a holistic approach to da US) and yer screwed.

his dad was one of the guys in da Yoopers.

I grew up in Battle Creek, but never crossed the Mackinac... still, those guys crack me up. I'm guessing they're pretty liburl:)

on on.

I think there's some resentment for people like yourself, people from the Detroit area, and people from the Chicago area who come up to the UP and use it as some sort of playground. Compared to most up there, people in the suburbs are absolutely loaded. I had my brother tell me that about some guy with a couple of snowmobiles, a trailer, and a nice truck. I tried to explain to him that was middle class everywhere else and the area was just that poor but I don't think he could quite understand.

And there are some people who do go up there who are truly rich. They are the ones who own extravagant vacation homes up there that are nicer than most people's everday home. I think that is bound to cause a disconnect. The ironic thing is that both groups are probably voting Republican, but the rural folks don't realize that the minimum wage increases, unemployment extensions, and other measures that would help them are being pushed by Democrats but obstructed by Republicans.

I can't imagine any of those people want guns that Democrats would outlaw. Maybe I don't understand the Democratic platform on it...but isn't the main difference between the parties mostly related to getting security checks (the gun show issue) and automatic weapons?

Do the Dems really want things that would interfere with what most gun owners want or is that perception?

economic problems of the rural and working poor. Even if the UP voters didn't vote for Bush, they may have just stayed home, feeling that no one represented their interests.

As I mentioned in my main response. I'm from Alger county... I know the total population there is around 10,000 and just around 5,000 people voted, so that HAS to be just about in line with turnout in the rest of the state right? I know that there were lines to vote there and there are NEVER usually lines.

I grew up in the UP before moving to Columbus. I'm still trying to sort out exactly where this was written. If its in the UP its either Marquette, Houghton, or Soo Saint Marie (discounting the community colleges). Its also possible that its in northern lower Michigan since the culture there isn't much different. (I also find it interesting that the person who posted this lives in my current home, Columbus.) Small world, huh?

I'm from Alger county which is in the central Upper Peninsula. It was also one of the three counties of the thirteen total in the UP that went for Kerry. According to my mother's reports, almost everyone she talked to was voting for Kerry, Kerry signs were more prevalent, and there was a Democratic party headquarters in the county for the first time in memory. I think that the people up there are concerned about the same issues as we are. A number of my friends parents work for the park service and I know that they likely voted for Kerry. I also know from my trip home last Christmas that my relatives were hopping mad over the Medicare bill that the Republicans push through. Mind you my family isn't one to talk politics, but they talked about that quite a bit. They were very upset that AARP supported such a flawed bill with so many give-aways to the pharmaceutical companies.

Long story short, don't write off all of rural Michigan yet. Its definitely somewhere that we can connect. Does anyone know how to contact the Joanne Kowalski who wrote this article? I'd love to learn the town she was referring to and pick her brain for more information.

I try to read it daily, a lot pf progresssive things there. I am guessing, perhaps, she lives there while going to school (ie, in CA).

I am in Columbus now myself. Grew up here, lived in CA for awhile, and have lived in several rural areas of Ohio over the years.

from the article:

What got the most enthusiasm was a television interview with Ralph Nader. While no one thought he could win, they saw him as talking about something real and liked what he had to say.