Michigan Attorney General will be back

DETROIT — A year ago, there were lots of reasons to think that Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox would be the state’s next governor.

The son of working-class Irish immigrants, Mr. Cox joined the Marines, put himself through the University of Michigan and its law school, and then was elected attorney general. He was the only Republican to win that office in Michigan in half a century.

He owned several compelling and popular issues, including efforts to make deadbeat parents pay child support. Most recently, he led Michigan’s efforts to fight Asian carp.

Mike Cox had big endorsements, name recognition, and campaign cash. Yet in last month’s GOP primary for governor, he finished a weak third, behind Rick Snyder, the Ann Arbor venture capitalist who came out of nowhere, and U.S. Rep. Pete Hoek stra, from the western side of the state.

What happened? The attorney general has no doubt: “I had to deal with the Kwame bleed,” meaning efforts to tie him to Detroit’s famously corrupt ex-mayor, Kwame Kilpatrick.

His opponents hinted that he was too close to the former mayor, that he didn’t adequately investigate a long-rumored “party” at the mayor’s residence, and that both men were part of a corrupt network of Wayne County politicians.

Mr. Cox thought that wouldn’t stick, in part because his office brought about the mayor’s final downfall. After Kilpatrick assaulted two sheriff’s deputies, Mr. Cox filed the charges that would lead to the mayor resigning and taking a plea.

“I could have made this all go away by insisting on being in court and arguing the case myself,” he said. “But I didn’t do that — I thought Kym Worthy, [the Wayne County prosecutor], had the right to do it, and I ended up paying for it.”

As for the legendary party, which allegedly featured strippers, sex acts, and an assault on an exotic dancer by the mayor’s wife, Mr. Cox doubts it ever occurred.

No credible witnesses have ever been found who say they were there. “There’s no evidence. As a prosecutor, how can I ethically charge anybody? What could I charge them with?”

It does seem hard to imagine — in our blabbermouth, Oprah world — that someone wouldn’t have talked. But the party is now an accepted urban legend.

Others have a different take on the primary election, especially Mr. Hoek-stra, who said on public TV’s Off the Record that his one consolation was that he finished ahead of Mr. Cox, whom he plainly despises. He accused the attorney general of running a vicious and nasty campaign right from the start.

“Positive campaigning is nice and wins good-government awards, but never works,” said Mr. Cox.

“Look, I would have loved to have been positive, but I had to deal with the Kwame [attacks] started by Rick Snyder.

“He put Kwame next to me in his first ad on the Super Bowl; he ended his campaign in Detroit with a group picture of me, Ella Bully Cummings [Kilpatrick’s pliant police chief], and Kwame. And you know what? It worked for him.”

That may be true. But the attorney general and his supporters ran nasty ads attacking first Mr. Hoekstra, who for awhile seemed to be his main opposition, and then Mr. Snyder.

Mr. Snyder, who had never run for office before, then shrewdly said he would refuse to participate in further debates. This seemed to give the impression that he was not a “politician.”

Voters who are weary of negativity and squabbling seem to have turned to him. Many Democrats and independents apparently crossed party lines to vote for him as well, as the lesser of two evils. In the end, the newcomer won easily.

Mr. Cox is still shell-shocked from his loss, and unhappy with the media’s treatment of his campaign. He notes that he did, early on, put out a detailed plan for revitalizing Michigan.

“Yet the press would never read or report on it, never analyze it or ask questions,” he said. That, unfortunately, is largely true.

But Mr. Cox didn’t spend enough time telling his own story, either. He does have an appreciation for and a knowledge of Detroit that are far deeper than those of most suburban politicians.

He was a shrewd litigator who, as a young lawyer, managed to rise quickly to head Wayne County’s homicide section. He earned a reputation for taking on the hard cases.

Nor has he forgotten his middle-class roots. He noted that while other Republicans party with the swells, he prefers to “hang out in Livonia at Murphy’s on Seven Mile, with just regular guys and gals.”

But little or none of that came out in his campaign. Today, he is a bit dazed.

He never expected to lose, and made no fallback plan.

He thinks he’ll go to work practicing law. But at age 48, Mr. Cox is young enough to run for office again.

Odds are that there will be a next time. If there is, one wonders which Mike Cox we will see.

Jack Lessenberry, a member of the journalism faculty at Wayne State University in Detroit and The Blade’s ombudsman, writes on issues and people in Michigan.

Contact him at: omblade@aol.com