Postal Politics

Guess how many political brochures, fliers and postcards Anita and I have received in the mail this campaign season?

Ten? Twenty? Thirty-five?

The answer is 88. And that’s not counting today’s or tomorrow’s mail.

I spent hours last Saturday going through the pile that had accumulated on my desk. I went through stuff from the state Democratic Party – we received fliers on Supreme Court candidates and the ballot proposals about which I wrote last October 18 – as well as brochures on local races. There were mailings touting C.J. Davis for township supervisor, Roy Sweet for treasurer and Curtis Hertel Jr. for register of deeds. There was a brochure from Jim Jamo – an attorney who wants to be a Circuit Court Judge – along with oversized postcards from Evan and Kara Hope, the married politicians whom we support for township clerk and county commissioner, that were positive and therefore in the minority.

The state Republican Party sent eleven – yes, eleven – negative pieces attacking local Democratic state representative candidate Tom Cochran. (Cochran, a former Lansing fire chief whom the state GOP apparently believes would be the most corrupt, incompetent politician ever to pollute the halls of the State Capitol Building, recently donated $50 of his own money to help fund a field trip at my nine-year-old’s school. He’s got our votes.)

The county Republicans sent mailings encouraging us to support Vince Dragonetti for county commissioner. Apparently they thought photos of him with GOP Congressman Mike Rogers, GOP Lieutenant Governor Brian Calley and GOP Secretary of State Ruth Johnson would sway rather than dissuade me. They were wrong. (Johnson was in the news earlier this year for claiming that thousands of ineligible folks vote in elections which is why we were being required to check a box on ballot applications confirming that we’re eligible. Too bad for her that a state analysis found just 54 voters out of 58,000 sampled were actually ineligible and GOP Governor Rick Snyder vetoed a bill that would have mandated her unconstitutional checkbox.)

We heard from the Delhi Democratic Club, the Michigan Nonprofit Association, the Foundation for Future Prosperity, Protect Working Families, the Blue Green Alliance, the Sierra Club, Service Employees International Union, Americans for Prosperity, the America Votes Action Fund, Planned Parenthood, Citizens Protecting Michigan’s Constitution, and Protecting Michigan Taxpayers. Seems like the only organizations that didn’t try to tell us what to do and how to do it were AA, PBS, OPEC and the CIA. As far as we know.

Unscrupulous billionaire Matty Moroun’s “The People Should Decide Ballot Committee” sent a whopping 14 brochures urging us to aid him in his audacious effort to preserve his monopoly. (Moroun owns the 83-year-old Ambassador Bridge linking Detroit to Windsor; see my previous posts on this greedy one-percenter.) His truth-stretching literature claims that Canada would control the construction jobs associated with a new bridge and Governor Snyder would insist on using – get this – foreign steel.

I guess true patriots hate foreign alloys too.

We were warned of evil extremists hijacking the constitution and greedy liberals threatening conservative values. (Anita and I agreed that if we see, hear or read about one more pandering politician paying lip service to “conservative values,” we’re gonna go nuts. Conservatives have raped women, molested kids, consorted with hookers, belittled brown folks, abandoned the needy, placed religion before science and put the rich before the poor. Are these the values they swear to preserve?) Candidates were accused of cutting police, closing senior centers, throwing children to the wolves, spending public money like drunken sailors and lining their pockets at the expense of the electorate. One morally-challenged fellow wants to give food stamps to lottery winners. Another was slightly delinquent on his own taxes which means, according to the literature, that there’s no way in hell he should be trusted with ours. Still another opposes laughing babies, butterflies, birthdays and rainbows.

If Anita’s and my experience is any indication, there’s just too much dirt flying around for any of these mailings to have the impact on voters that the senders seek.

I don’t remember receiving this much political mail before and I don’t remember it being so damn negative and nasty. Maybe it’s because of Citizens United v. FEC, the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 2010 that paved the way for super PACS and special interests to spend vast sums of money on specific candidates and campaigns. Maybe it’s because it’s harder than ever to capture voter attention and get people to the polls. Maybe it’s always been this way and I just don’t remember.

For whatever reason, I used to think there was nobility in public service - but judging by the contents of my mailbox these days, politics is a lot of crass and little class. I look forward to Wednesday.