Recall, Recall, Everywhere a Recall....

Rick Snyder won’t be recalled.

Recall Snyder organizers raised just $25,000 of the estimated $1 million a recall election costs and collected fewer than half of the 807,000 signatures they needed by their August 5 deadline. Now they’re hoping to keep collecting and place the issue on the ballot next February.

This is a good thing. If Snyder were recalled, his lieutenant, Brian Calley, would ascend to the governorship. (The claims of recall proponents notwithstanding, there is no special election to select Snyder’s successor. The state constitution clearly specifies that the lieutenant governor shall be governor for the remainder of the term if the governor dies, resigns, is impeached or removed from office.) Lieutenant Governor Calley is further to the right than Snyder; it’s safe to assume things would be even uglier than they already are.

Governor Rick Snyder

I don’t agree with the professional pundits and establishment types who insist the recall option shouldn’t be used when voters disagree with a politician’s policies because they can always remove 'em during regularly scheduled elections. Rick Snyder – who refused to disclose any positions or intentions on the campaign trail – deserves to be removed from office now, not three-and-a-half years from now after he’s turned Michigan into the Mississippi of the Midwest. (Sorry, Mississippians.) But the writing’s on the wall and it isn’t going to happen.

I wrote back in June that it makes more sense to go after state legislators “where Republicans currently control everything, including the scheduling of bathroom breaks, because less money and fewer petition signatures are required in a district.” As of today, 26 state lawmakers face the threat of recall.

This is good and bad – good because changing the composition of the state legislature still makes the most sense; bad because my own state representative, Democrat Barb Byrum, is among those at risk.

Is it because she’s failed to represent her constituents or work hard or has done something wrong? Nope. It’s because she represents a district that could go either way politically and Republicans want to maintain control of the legislature by any means necessary, even if they have to misuse the recall mechanism.

State Representative Barb Byrum

I hope the Byrum recall effort is unsuccessful because she’s a talented, charming, dedicated legislator who doesn’t deserve it. And being a Democrat in a Republican House of Representatives in a state with a Republican Senate and a Republican governor and a Republican Supreme Court and Republican Secretary of State and Republican Attorney General is punishment enough for whatever mistake she’s capable of making.

I hope the other legislative recall attempts succeed. Some voters weren’t paying as much attention as they should have been last November. They are now.