Macomb County Republican Party shortchanges the voters

Mike Wrathell  

Photo/Americajr.com

When Macomb County voters go to the polls in November they will be shortchanged on one key portion of the ballot – the selection of our “Big Five” countywide officials.The Macomb Republican Party made no effort to recruit quality candidates for sheriff, prosecutor, clerk, treasurer and public works commissioner. All five of those offices are held by Democrats who are overwhelmingly favored to win election on Nov. 6.

The Republican nominees consist of some retreads from the whacky GOP lineup of 2008 that was handily defeated at the ballot box, one nominee trying to make a comeback 24 years after he first ran for office, and a candidate who is a political unknown but nonetheless ran unopposed for the nomination in the August primary election.
If we’re such an evenly divided swing county where either party can win an election at any time, why have the Republicans fielded such a weak lineup of 2012 candidates for the county’s top offices?

Mike Wrathell, the nominee pitted against Prosecutor Eric Smith, has previously admitted that he has not practiced law full time in many years, preferring to concentrate on his work as “America’s greatest relatively unknown modern artist.” On his website, Wrathell promotes a short film he recently created that is entitled “James Dean vs. Godzilla.”
Wrathell proved to be an especially eccentric and embarrassing candidate for prosecutor in GOP circles four years ago, yet he ran unopposed for the GOP nomination in August of this year.
In 2008, it was revealed that Wrathell foremost considers himself an artist and musician/songwriter and he was, at that time, spending part of his days drawing bizarre pictures of Plutonians -- his whimsical view of how inhabitants on the planet Pluto might look, if they existed.

Though Public Works Commissioner Tony Marrocco has faced more than his share of controversy over the past year – unsuccessfully pushing for big pay raises for himself and top aides -- the GOP failed to secure anyone to run against him. A 20-year incumbent, Marrocco is running unopposed in November. In other words, no choice for the voters.

Larry Rocca, the contender up against county Treasurer Ted Wahby -- who handles up to $300 million in county funds at a time -- has previous skeletons in his closet that should scare most voters.
In 2008, when he lost convincingly to Wahby, it was reported that Rocca had defaulted on a personal loan and suffered a court judgment to pay $26,000 to a bank. He was delinquent on his property taxes five times in a 10-year period. And he was fined by the state for improperly handling reserve accounts at his real estate office.
That was the story according to a trail of county and state documents over more than a dozen years. But there’s more: For years Rocca, who is not related to Sal or Sue or Tory Rocca, has tried to cash in on the Rocca name, running for office several times, yet he has never come close to winning.
In this case, the loyalist GOP voters who went to the polls in the August primary can be excused for their choice because the only Rocca competitor was a Libertarian.

Clerk Carmella Sabaugh's opponent, Debera Guenther, filed her candidacy 17 months ago, yet she has been nearly invisible on the campaign trail. Though she got off to a big head start and became the only Republican candidate to file for clerk, she entered the final stretch of Election 2012 with just $289 in her campaign warchest.

As for the race for sheriff, the so-called incumbent is Tony Wickersham, who has never faced election because he was appointed to succeed Mark Hackel as sheriff in 2010 when Hackel was elected Macomb’s first county executive.
Flash back to early 2012 and some political observers at the time wondered if Wickersham, despite his strong resume, might not survive the Democratic primary. Yet, the Republicans sided with Steve Thomas, who has already run and lost for sheriff twice, and secured the 2012 nomination in an extraordinarily weak August primary field.
Thomas is labeled as a respectable guy in Republican circles, but he retired from the Sheriff’s Department nearly two decades ago and has since spent time as the chief of security at Eastland Mall in Harper Woods and then moved on to lead another security company.
Thomas’ candidacy also raises another aspect of the Macomb GOP’s weak effort in the Big Five races – a lack of financial support. When Thomas filed for office he claimed a campaign finance reporting waiver indicating that he planned to spend less than $1,000. In contrast, Wickersham proceeded into the fall campaign with a cash balance of $52,000.

The fact that the Macomb Republicans could not assemble a stronger GOP team for the Big Five offices is inexcusable in a county where close elections are the norm.
To be fair, the five Democratic officeholders are all popular politicians, well-entrenched incumbents for the most part, who can mount an expensive, aggressive re-election campaign if necessary.
That fact would certainly scare away many potential Republican challengers.
But, to paraphrase a line that has gotten me in trouble before: Is this the best the Macomb Republicans can do?

This is not some obscure third party we are talking about. Doesn’t the Grand Old Party have an obligation to ensure that qualified, respectable candidates are running under the GOP banner, offering a solid alternative to the Democrats?
After a 2010 election in which the Michigan Republicans scored spectacular victories up and down the ballot, did the Macomb GOP huddle together and plan for more election wins in the future?
No, the knives came out and the party splintered. The party chairman was forced out amid bitter finger-pointing and a tea party-type was inserted as the new GOP leader. Admirably, the traditional Republicans and the tea party Republicans reached a sense of peace. But they never showed signs of building on the 2010 revelry in terms of recruiting new candidates.

What’s the point of having a local political party if they can’t present effective contenders for some of the most important elective offices in the county? Has the Macomb GOP become nothing more than an extension of the campaign for the Republican candidate at the top of the ticket (for president or governor)?
The voters deserve better.
In a county that was known on a national scale as the home of the Reagan Democrats, on the local level it appears that in 2012 we have become – take your pick – maybe the home of the Sabaugh Republicans?