Speed Dating with Mike Duggan
Nikki is continually annoyed that I don’t use this blog space every few weeks to talk about work.
“This is a work blog,” she says. “Write about what we do. Give expert advice. It’s about SEO.”
It’s about boring, IMO, but here you go, Nikki. A blog about “work.”
I’ve worked in and around politics now for almost thirty years, and let me take a few minutes to share with you what I’ve learned during that time.
Nothing!
I’ve learned nothing. And with that big nothing, here is my “take” on Mike Duggan, his quixotic run for governor as an Independent, and his surprise announcement last week that his run was kaput.
Photo: Lansing Regional Chamber of Commerce
Exactly two weeks ago, I took my annual seat at the Lansing Regional Chamber of Commerce Policy Dinner for a “Conversation with Mike Duggan.” The LRCC was one of the first major business groups in Michigan to endorse the former Mayor of Detroit in his bid for the state’s top job. I have often sponsored tables at this event out of obligation. It’s what board members of an organization do. But this year, for this event, I was genuinely curious and interested. I’d not heard Duggan speak and wanted to see if this campaign – a campaign most seasoned political observers said was a huge longshot at best – might actually have enough magic beans in the pouch to make Michigan history.
A routine chore that comes with sponsoring a table at events like this is identifying, inviting and securing seven other people to join you for dinner. In a life lesson I’ve learned from my wife, I put some thought into this. You need a good mix. Nice people. Some key clients. Old friends. New relationships. And this isn’t always easy. IDing a list is one thing. Finding a group all open on a random Tuesday night in May is another.
Not for this dinner, and not for this speaker.
Before I’d even made a prospect list, a good friend and previous guest at our Resch Strategies table reached out and asked if I had a table and if she could get a seat. That was a first! And that was just the start.
Another invite brought this quick response, “Absolutely, and if you have an extra seat, I have someone else who would like to come, too.”
Seven asks. Seven seats filled. No regrets and no offense to previous LRCC speakers, but people actually wanted to hear Mike Duggan.
And if you need more than my anecdotal table tale as proof, check the tire tracks up and down the 9th and 18th fairways of the Country Club of Lansing from the cars that overflowed the parking lots that night and the sold-out ballroom to back me up.
The evening got started, the Club’s famous Chicken Ziegenfuss on the menu, and a packed room of mid-Michigan’s community leaders waited to hear from Duggan.
What followed the tiramisu was 45 minutes of Q & A with a politician who actually had answers to tough questions about our state and its future.
Duggan was direct. He spoke with authority. Experience. He was biting and assertive, but not personal or partisan or simple. He mixed in stories of real-life people and carried the confidence of someone who had fixed big problems before and who had no reason to believe he couldn’t fix big problems again.
Supporting small businesses. Attracting young people to Michigan. Growing the state’s population. Reforming government regulations. Working in a broken Lansing. Data centers.
Data centers! Can I say a word about data centers? Well, less about data centers and more about Duggan’s answer to the question on data centers and where they should fit in the state’s future.
What hit me about his answer on data centers was that he had one at all. A good one. Data centers are the current political bugaboo, not only in Michigan, but nationally. Local grassroots fervor against them has divided communities, ended elected careers, frustrated business leaders and completely flummoxed politicians.
Wanna be quickly discouraged by the dimming brainpower of Michigan’s current elected class? Ask them about data centers.
Now, I’m a dork, but when Duggan finished on data centers, out loud at the table I said, “Wow!” Not only an answer, a coherent one. A compelling one! And you could tell from the tone of confused surprise in the applause from those gathered, the room agreed.
What is this sound we hear? Substance?
It was less a moment about data centers and more a moment of competence. Michigan desperately needs competence.
More Michigan voters should crave competence. What a depressingly low bar. But Duggan cleared it, and it made him different. It made him a candidate who could sell out a “policy dinner” on a Tuesday night in early May and walk out to a standing ovation from a bipartisan crowd. It made him a candidate I left that night thinking, “he’s going to be fun to watch this fall.”
Nine days later he was done. I know absolutely nothing.
The day after Duggan ended his campaign, citing insurmountable shifts in the national political mood and an evaporating pool of fundraising resources, a neighbor of mine who had also taken in the evening of chicken and competence came up to me at the gym.
“Matt, I’m so upset! He just quit. I was about to write him a check. What happened?”
(I bet Duggan wishes he had a check for every time someone told him in the last nine days that they were about to write him a check!)
Reality trumps vibes. Polling bursts bubbles. Independents can’t win, I guess.
November is a long way away and had Duggan remained in the race, I don’t have a good idea at this moment of where my personal mood or political gut would have led me on Election Day. I do think, though, that a campaign for governor with Mike Duggan on the ballot would have been a better campaign for Michigan.
Whatever the reason, we won’t get that now.