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Fri Aug 26, 2005 at 01:00:00 AM EDT
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Alan Fox (interview
with Matt Ferguson, June, 2005):
MF: Back up to the Upper Peninsula again. This district is the western
third of the U.P. and it's an open seat.
AF: This is one where, it's so Democratic that even with Kerry's
weakness, weakness among Upper Peninsula, and northern Lower Peninsula
voters, Kerry got 47% there. Rich Brown, the Democratic incumbent, got
73% there. But it is an open seat. The seat went Republican once before
for a single term and so it's conceivable that the Republicans will
decide they have a shot at it.
MF: What's the key issue up there? That's seems incredible that Brown
got 73% while Kerry got 47%.
AF: He was running for his third term and I don't know that the
Republicans targeted that seat. It sort of looks like they didn't. And
Brown has a history as a fairly popular local official...he was a
County Clerk in Gogoebic County. Plus the Democratic strength there -
Kerry aside - is very, very solid. The western U.P., outside of Detroit
and other central cities, is probably the most Democratic part of
Michigan. It will be a question of whether the Republicans can find a
candidate who can portray whoever the Democrats pick as one of "those
liberal environmentalists" or not. Whoever is elected there, whether
they're a Republican or Democrat, is not going to be voting with the
Ann Arbor reps much. We should probably pause to mention that this (the
110th) are the home stomping grounds of the late Joe Mack, who passed
away a little while ago. He was actually elected to two terms in the
state House from Gogebic County in the 1960's before he became a
senator - and he was probably pretty close to the prevailing political
thought up there...pretty close right up until his dying day. |
| matt :: Analysis |
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