IN 2022, WILL MICHIGAN ECHO CALIFORNIA TWO DECADES AGO?

James Craig – The Front Man (Squid Game)

• Like The Front Man, one of the main antagonists of the acclaimed K-drama ‘Squid Game,’ Republican gubernatorial candidate James Craig seems like he’s calling the shots in a game where several contestants are encouraged to sabotage each other to be the singular winner. Upon closer review, however, it becomes apparent that he himself is just another pawn entangled in a rigged conspiracy orchestrated by and for wealthy insiders with seemingly unlimited funds and horrible outcomes for everyone but themselves. Greenlights are even a plot point.

• Alternatively, Craig can always go as what he is every day – the Detroit Dodger. Previously a reference to how he hates answering questions (still true), the label now also applies to him dodging a carjacking while DPD chief in 2013 that he’s now trying to cover up. We went ahead and made him a jersey.

Garrett Soldano – Maxwell Lord (Wonder Woman 1984)

• This may be a bit of a deep cut, since WW84 was hot garbage and those that never saw it are better for it, but we couldn’t find anything else that fits Garrett Soldano quite like main villain Maxwell Lord. Like Lord, Soldano is a charismatic snake oil salesman that employs a bunch of too-good-to-be-true promises and fear mongering in order to exponentially grow his following from nothing. We’re optimistic that there are more hurdles to Soldano’s extremism that would impact every aspect of our lives if he got his way than there were for Lord in the DC cinematic universe.

Tudor Dixon – Dolores Umbridge (Harry Potter)

• Between her draconian anti-choice stances that would harm Michigan women and families to the way she’s jumped in headfirst into every election 2020 conspiracy theory in order to force a paradigm shift in the way Michiganders view the democratic process, if Tudor Dixon and Dolores Umbridge existed in the same universe, we have no doubt they’d be thick as thieves. No word on how much Dixon loves cats.

Kevin Rinke – Impostor (Among Us)

• Anyone that has tried their hand at or watched a Twitch stream of influencers playing Among Us knows that deception is the name of the game. A common tactic of those assigned the role of Impostor (basically, the hider) is pretending to complete tasks around the field to throw off the scent of their crewmates (the seekers). And that’s exactly what quasi-candidate Kevin Rinke has done for months – big brain pledges to self-fund, periodic comments about how weak the rest of the primary field is, and formally filing as a gubernatorial candidate…but otherwise afk (away from keyboard) not making any sensical plays. Kinda sus!

Ryan Kelley – Insurrectionist (Reality. Not a title, just the truth.)

• It is Halloween, but sometimes the scariest thing you can come up with is events as they actually unfolded. In the case of gubernatorial candidate and real-life January 6th insurrectionist Ryan Kelley, there are “images showing him deep in the fray of rioters” on the U.S. Capitol grounds and footage in which appears to be heard shouting “Come on, let’s go! This is it! This is– this is war, baby!” as he advances with a mob towards the building.

Evan Space – Space Jam’s OG website, 1996

• There’s barely a joke here, at least not one we wrote. We are just fascinated by the so-bad-it’s-inspired production level of Republican Evan Space’s website, countless typos and all. If the goal was to help remind those that want to learn more about his candidacy of the best 1996 had to offer in web design, Space has delivered something as elite as its Jam counterpart.

Everyone Else: Articia Bomer, Mike Brown, Austin Chenge, Ralph Rebandt, Bob Scott, and Donna Brandenburg – The Tokyo Olympics

• Like the latest summer games, these candidates are actually competing in 2021, yet you wouldn’t know it by the insistence on 2020 branding. It matches the way they have remained fixated on a general election that concluded a year ago. But that distinction isn’t reserved to just these six Republicans. Between the 12 running in this crowded and divisive primary, every aspect of the crusade to undermine public trust in elections has been covered – from supporting unnecessary partisan audits and slates of anti-voter legislation to echoing conspiracy theories that Trump had a second term stolen and even manufacturing a few of their own.

Question is, who actually reads Applewhaite’s stuff? She may be having a lot of fun doing it, but self-respecting publishers and editors in the Mainstream Media (MSM) don’t dare simply regurgitate Applewhaite’s press releases as anything approaching objective “truth” about the state of Michigan politics, even if most of those same MSM types secretly agree with her, which they do. Her purple prose simply never reaches print. So, is she simply buttressing and reinforcing the political predilections of journalists who are supposed to be “fair and balanced” in their coverage of Michigan politics and hoping that some of her slants drift into what gets written in the popular press?

And, by the way, what is Applewhaite’s background, anyway? And how successful have been the candidates she has worked for? Answers: She’s a graduate of George Washington University, which she attended between 2011 and 2016; she then toiled for the 2018 campaign of Jim Barksdale, who was the sacrificial lamb Democratic nominee against popular incumbent Republican U.S. Senator Johnny Isaakson in Georgia, who was easily re-elected; she then worked for seven months for state senator John Wisniewski in his campaign for New Jersey governor, which ended when he finished third in the Democratic primary behind the man who went on to be elected the current governor, Phil Murphy; after that, she caught on as the research manager and coordinator for Emily’s List for some 20 months. A lot of Democratic politicos must have been impressed with Applewhaite’s wit and political chops over the previous three years, however, because she was drafted by the “Buttigieg for America” presidential campaign as its “Senior Rapid Response Researcher.” That lasted nearly a year, until Buttigieg withdrew from the race after impressing the Democratic political firmament with his feisty albeit underfunded candidacy. Buttigieg, the gay former mayor of South Bend, Indiana,  is now President Joe Biden’s Secretary of Transportation.

But Applewhaite’s talents are in danger of being wasted. How might Michigan Democrats make better use of her clever and provocative insights going forward? One possibility might be a reprise of former California Gov. Gray Davis’s re-election strategy nearly two decades ago, in 2002. Davis was a flawed and unpopular incumbent — even more so than Michigan’s current governor, Gretchen Whitmer. Realizing they had to protect a turkey who couldn’t win on his record, California Democrats unleashed a torrent of negative ads in the REPUBLICAN primary campaign against the strongest possible gubernatorial GOP candidate, former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, who polls showed was running ahead of Davis if he could win the GOP nomination. The Dems’ strategy worked, at  least in the short run. The California Democrats’ ads bolstered the candidacy of a far more conservative (and unelectable) candidate, financier William E. Simon, Jr., against Riordan. Simon won the Republican nomination and then was dispatched by Davis in November.

Of course, some may remember that the unpopular Davis lasted barely another year before a famous recall campaign ousted him from office and replaced him with Arnold “The Terminator” Schwarzenegger.

This year, Michigan Democrats haven’t spent any cash YET in a still-to-take-shape Republican primary some nine months away. But, based on the deluge of press releases released by the Democrats’ front office in Lansing that demean every conceivable candidate in the GOP field, that would be a logical next step in a Whitmer re-election effort, with Applewhaite penning the advertising copy. Flush with cash, Whitmer’s campaign and the MDP could decide to meddle in the GOP primary to try to eliminate any candidate they perceive as an actual threat to the governor’s re-election.

As for the Michigan Republican Party, its task is more complicated. Whitmer almost certainly will have no Democratic primary opposition, so there is no foil on whom the nearest counterpart to Applewhaite, GOP Communications Manager Elizabeth Giaccalone, might train her sights, either in free media handouts or paid TV ads. And why would she want to, anyway?

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