Well, it was quite a night in Livingston County politics. We had blowouts we weren’t expecting (Jay Gross over Brenda Plank) and nail-biters we weren’t expecting (Frank Sample over Meghan Reckling by 29 votes).
And here are Five Things We Learned in the 2022 Livingston County primary election:
1. There are two powerful and opposing forces in Livingston County GOP politics now.
For decades, the “Livingston County Republican Establishment” was pretty easy to see and understand, and it was pretty much united.
In the 1980s and 1990s, it was led by Dick Chrysler and Joyce Rogers. Then it was led – VERY forcefully – by Mike Rogers. When he retired from Congress, things started to fall apart a little.
What we saw yesterday is that they’ve fallen apart a lot now.
There are now two very powerful and opposing forces in Livingston County Republican politics. Both of them scored huge wins yesterday and both of them suffered huge losses.
One side is led by Sen. Lana Theis, R-Brighton. The other is led by Rep. Bob Bezotte, R-Marion Township. These two sides don’t like each other and they worked very hard against each other in several races this year.
In the Senate race, Bezotte endorsed Theis’ opponent, Crazy Mike Detmer. That was pretty extraordinary. It was the first time I can ever recall that a member of Livingston County’s legislative delegation endorsed the opponent of a fellow member of the delegation.
Theis, of course, crushed Crazy Mike, winning by about 20 points. Score one for the Theis side.
Bezotte’s big win came in the 3rd District County Commissioner race, where Frank Sample (who Bezotte endorsed) defeated Meghan Reckling (Theis’ chief of staff) by just 29 votes.
Everybody will smile now and say they’re working together to elect Republicans across the board in November, but if anyone tries to tell you there’s a “Republican establishment” in Livingston County, don’t believe it. There’s a huge fracture in the county party right now.
2. Mike Detmer will never win an election in Livingston County.
This guy is a phenomenon, I’ll give him that. He ran for state representative in Oakland County in the 1990s and got beat. He ran for Congress in 2020 and got beat. Now he ran for State Senate in 2022 and got beat.
(He still hasn’t conceded the 2020 and 2022 elections, by the way. And I’m not exactly sure he’s conceded that election from the 1990s, either.)
And while he certainly has his passionate band of merry followers, what we saw yesterday is that if Crazy Mike Detmer is good at anything, it’s losing elections.
I strongly believe that he’s not fit to hold public office, but I’ll never say that he needs to stop running for public office. He can keep running and running and running for all I care, and I’m sure he’ll find something on the ballot in 2024 that he can run for (my guess: U.S. President). But whatever he runs for, he will lose.
3. Dave Domas is still a huge brand name in Livingston County.
Domas, who retired from the Livingston County Board of Commissioners four years ago, wanted back on the board, so he decided to run against incumbent Carol Sue Reader. I was expecting a close race.
It was anything but. Domas trounced Reader, collecting 58 percent of the vote. So now, at age 85, he’s going to rejoin the board as a freshman once again.
Since losing to Joe Hune in the famed 2002 State House recount race by just two votes (yours truly was 150 votes behind in third place in that election), Dave Domas has done nothing but win elections. Never, ever bet against this guy.
4. We’re going to have an all-male Livingston County Board of Commissioners for the next two years.
Unless one of the Democrats wins in November (which is not going to happen), the county board will be all male starting in 2023.
Two of the female incumbents lost yesterday (Carol Sue Reader and Brenda Plank) and another woman I thought would win (Meghan Reckling) did not. All the other women on the ballot lost. So the board is now going to be all men for at least the next two years.
And nothing against my gender, but, yes, I think this is a very bad thing.
5. The 48th District State House race is going to be a barnburner in the fall.
Livingston County, as you know, is now carved up into parts of four different State House districts, and while three of them will be Republican-landslide yawners, the fourth will be a barnburner. The candidates will be a very lefty Democrat and a very righty Republican.
The 48th State House district includes Hamburg and Genoa townships in Livingston County and then stretches down into northern Washtenaw County and even includes a few precincts in the City of Ann Arbor.
Howell pastor Jason Woolford, a former Marine, won the Republican primary, defeating Hamburg Township Treasurer Jason Negri. Woolford was the more conservative of the two candidates, and his Democratic opponent will now be the very un-conservative Jennifer Conlin of Ann Arbor.
This is a 50-50 district on paper, so it’s all going to come down to turnout. Conlin will get trounced in Livingston County and Woolford will get trounced in Ann Arbor, so what happens in between will determine everything. This one will be fascinating.
