The GOP race for governor takes a turn with Perry Johnson running again.

The lead story on thi correspondents edition of OTR.

So sit in with us as we get the inside out.

Off the Record.

Production of Off the Record is made possible in par by Bellwether Public Relations, a full servic strategic communications agency partnering with clients through public relations, digital marketing and issue advocacy.

Learn more at bellwetherpr.com.

And now this edition of Off the Record, with Tim Skubick.

Thank you very much.

Welcome to studio C. Back to Off the Record.

Perry Johnson's in this race.

What do you make of this, Mr.

Mauger?

I mean it shakes up the race a bit here.

You think so?

Yeah.

He's got a big wallet.

He's showing that he's willing to spend money to try to win elections.

He's run for president before he's run for governor.

Didn't get enough petition signatures when he tried to do that in 2022.

But I mean, this race is still, I would gues if you pulled it right now, John James would still have a substantial lead.

And the question is, how does Perry Johnson go about cutting into that?

Yeah, I think Craig just got to a good point.

He has money.

That's something that a lot of the other candidates, at least on the Republican side, are struggling to to get right now.

And so it's a it's a compelling, you know, it's a compelling entry.

I think that's true that James still, it's his primary to lose at this point.

But, it still remains to be seen.

There's still a lot of time yet before that primary.

So there's there's a lot that could happen still.

He's got a lot of time to connect with people.

And does he connect?

That's the thing.

I mean he's got experience.

Did he connect the last time?

I see I don't know if he ever really got off the ground last time because he couldn't get his signature so.

His poll numbers were going up.

That's one thing like tha I keep thinking about from 2022.

It seemed like he was able wit when you spend that much money, your numbers are going to go up.

And he was increasing his poll numbers.

I mean, originally I think it was Craig James.

Yeah, James, Craig, he was behind him and then he was ahead of him at some poin according to the poll numbers.

But that's just polling.

Yeah.

Right.

So I mean if you got a good enough marketing team, you could probably market a tomato and make it look really good.

So I mean, so maybe, maybe he can maybe he can connect with people and it can be, a pretty competitive race.

But I can tell you, the other candidates in the race are thrilled to see Perry Johnson and his money in there, because finally, somebod is going to be able to take on John James and force the guy to finally campaign, which he did this week.

Well, and we've already kind of seen that start to happen.

You know, Kyle and I found ourselves up in Traverse City, last week at the Northern Michigan Policy Conference where we saw John James in the flesh for the first time in a hot second.

And we had seen, you know Mike Cox come out and start to go on the offensive a little bit, spending some money getting on the attack, saying John James doesn't support the president enough.

And you know, Mike Cox, he has some of the money that Perry Johnson has.

But, you know, saying I'm going to spend $9 million.

That's that's a big promise to make.

And, and we haven't seen anything else like that in this primary.

And how did Mr.

James do?.

Yes, for sure.

Okay.

Look Perry Johnson can spend money.

Okay.

But that's not, you know, Dick DeVos spent $35 million and Jennifer Granholm still beat him.

He got the nomination, though.

Yeah (laughing) he was not contested though.

Yeah, well, point well taken.

Point well taken.

So what does he do?

I mean, is he just campaign along with everybody else?

It's a great question.

I mean, one of the things that I think is interesting about this race on the Republican side so far is so many of the candidates are talking about doing away with the income tax.

Yeah.

Which is just a huge amoun of money to the states budget.

I've heard from some Republican in the legislature who have said that voters aren't really calling for that because they don't see that as something that could actually happen.

So that's what I that's the plan.

He kind of rolled out at the beginning.

I'm going to do awa with the income tax altogether.

Gradual.

Gradual.

But eventually get rid of it.

Correct?

Yeah.

Yes.I mean.

So we don't know is that over 100 years?

Is that over five minutes?

You know.

And we've heard the, you know, let's, let's do away with the income tax, but we haven't necessarily heard what we're going to do to replace that revenue for the state.

Oh, Lily.

Lily.

Lily.

Now you, now you want some of you explain ho they're going to do something?

Oh, God Tim.

You know what I'm saying?

I mean, that's why this is a easy one to put out there, okay?

Because your hands are free, okay?

They don't tell the people.

You know.

I can't do this by myself.

I'm not a dictator.

I need votes in the legislature.

Yeah, but is it an issue that's going to connect with voters and say, hey, I'm going to jump on this guy's campaign when the other Republica candidates are also saying it.

I mean, it seems like he's got to find that niche of what his policy is.

When he was running for president, he was talking about cutting a certain percentage out of the budget and federal spending.

You know, is he going to be able to find some issue that peopl are going to associate with him in order to let voters know he's more than just the quality guru?

Yeah, I think there's a lot of room for any of these candidates to really make a splash on a policy issue.

For a long tim in the Republican primary, it's the question of how closely did your views align with Trump?

And, you know, I think especially in this executiv race, they have to have a vision as well as allegiance to the party.

So I think there's a lot of room.

There's a lot of people in this race.

Yet still we're starting to see some policy, some policy proposals advance.

especially in the education, the income tax.

But I don't know that any has really caught the attention of voters yet.

I want to see if it gets the signatures.

I mean, I mean, really I mean, we're talking off the field yet, but, you know, you know, how many people have actually gotten their signatures in to be on the ballot for governor?

Zero.

Zero.

So, I mean, last year at the start, four years ago at this time, we had a field of like 8 or 10 people, kind of like what we have now We have a field of eight people.

How many are able to turn in the 15,000 valid signatures needed?

And I feel like it's getting harder and harder to get signatures out there.

And he is starting now.

And, you know, I had a week where it's been the coldest week of the year.

You know, nobody's out ther in ten degrees or zero degrees collecting signatures.

How does he get his signatures and can he get them in?

When people like Tom Leonard and Eric Nesbitt have been collecting them for half a year?

if you have a big enough checkbook.

Right.

That helps you get the signatures.

Possibly.

Then I help him in 2022.

But signature collectors, they might just commit some fraud.

Yeah, that's that's a risk that he takes.

But I mean, I think it's a good question.

And also for the other candidates for governor who maybe haven't starte collecting their signatures yet, the price just skyrocketed for them.

and we'll see when the campaign finance disclosures come out.

Who has started, you know, getting signatures and who hasn't?

This is, this this Johnson entrants into the race will raise costs for everybody else.

What does Mr.

Trump do?

he sits it out until he sees how the polling looks like he did last time with Tudor Dixon.

I mean, that's what he did last time.

He just sat around, waited to see who was leading when he got right down to crunch time.

Tudor was doing great through the through his support behind Tudor and looked like a swami.

Yeah, well, there was some confusion this week and I was part of the blame for the confusion of a stor that we ran that said basically that there was a promise that Mr.

Trump would endorse Mr.

Johnson.

Absolutely not true.

Okay.

Inadvertently let that out of a story.

And of course, it got on the internet and the damage was done.

We went back and corrected.

But here's the deal.

Mr.

Johnson was very clear in saying that with regard to that endorsement, he's got to get to at least 20% or so in the polls.

And Kyle you're right, the president will look at that and then make a decision.

And the John James people, I'm sure the story caused some consternation in both camps.

John James still thinks he's got a shot at the endorsement for Mr.

Trump and, you know, wants to be a player there as well.

Take a look at this, though.

I mean if Perry Johnson does get 20%, well, what are the other people sitting there?

I mean, how many I mean, what is the percentage?

John James could be at 60.

No, not in a primary.

Not no, not in the field this big.

I mean, John Jame would be lucky.

It's possible.

Sure.

It's possible he could be at 100% too.

But I'm telling you tha in a field this big, John James, I think he's going to be thrilled if he can get in the high 30s.

I think so, but in the early polling I'm talking about, if you start at polling in the next couple of months, when this I mean, who knows when Trump will make this decision.

I mean, the kind of baffling thing about all of this with Trump and the US House seat that James is leaving, is there this there's an idea that without James, Republicans aren't going to win this 10th district seat.

I think James is making the argumen pretty smartly of saying, hey, if I'm on the top of the ticket, I'm going to give Republicans the best chance throughout the ballot.

And, you know I think that's a valid argument.

The polling does show that voters know him.

And of course they do, because he's run statewide multiple time before and been on the ballot.

So he's got a strong argument there.

I think he doe have a relationship with Trump.

You hear all types of things about whether it's positive or negative right now.

But I mean, you know how Trump is.

He's going to loo at the polling, you would think, and he's going to look at who've has had my, back in the past.

And James has done a lot for Trump previously.

You said the other candidates were applauding that Perry Johnson is in, but are they also going, oh my gosh?

No.

They are not?

No, because Perry's opening his checkbook and taking swings at John James because, look, John James is way up in the last poll that we've seen.

He's got to sho that he can cut into that lead.

Exactly.

Well they've got to knock him down.

The best way to knock somebod down is with the negative ads.

And we've already seen what kind of negative ads they're going to run on John James.

The one that says that Donald Trump didn't want him to run.

And that's pretty compelling.

You air that, you pu a bunch of points behind that.

You watch James's numbers go down and people like Eric Nesbitt and Mike Cox and Tom Leonard, can see their numbers actually go up with Perry.

I mean, the more, the more muddled this gets, the better the chance of somebody can wi this thing with 28% of the vote, which is really what they're shooting for.

Remembe Rick Schneider did it with 35.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, five person race.

So, you know, the the bar is maybe a little lower than it would normally be.

It is.

And it depends on how much those other candidates are they going to be able to raise anything.

That's my point.

Okay.

Perry Johnson has raised a dollar game in here okay.

How is Nesbitt going to compete with $9 million?

This is what I'm wondering.

Or anybody else for that matter.

I'm I'm I'm thinking probably not right.

You can't, you know, magic $9 million out of nowhere.

But what I've been wondering the last few weeks is do you start to see like this behind the scenes, like suicide pact?

Do you do you start to see these candidates talking to each other, thinking, you know, which one of us has the best chance to come out and beat him?

And, you know is there ever someone who says, all right you know, I'm I'm not the guy.

I'm going to fall on the swor and and drop out and, you know, we're going to consolidate the field.

Who's going to go first?

Then there's a lot of there's a lot of big personalities in this race.

And and that's the tough part.

That's where we start to you know, that feels unlikely.

But there is a possibility.

If you convince yourself that you one, want to be governor and two, you can actually do it, why would you bail?

Why would you?

And do you have the signatures already?

I mean a couple of the candidates claim that they already have the signatures, and they'll wait to turn them in as the deadline gets closer.

You know the name might.

This is all name idea right now.

It's all about who do the voters know?

How much do they know about them?

A lot of voters know who John James is, and we've seen that in the polling.

He has much higher name ID than Eric Nesbitt or Tom Leonard and and higher than Mike Cox as well.

If you're Tom Leonard, if you're Eric Nesbitt, Perry Johnson gets in, he starts bashing John James, maybe brings dow his unfavorable in the polling.

Opens the door.

But who knows who that how are they going to get the message about themselve out to the voters?

That's what.

To take advantage of that opportunity.

Tom Leonard's running a pretty aggressive campaign.

I mean, he's doing events.

He's got a message he's talkin about, but voters still don't.

They don't know him yet.

And there's only so many people you can reach by showing up at GOP events and then going around the state yourself.

Yeah, I think the the lane might open if if Johnson goes after James.

But will they be able to pull on to the freeway?

Well, Cox and Nesbitt both have a couple million dollars and they're probably going to report on Monday a little bit more than that.

So I mean, that's not nothing.

I mean, if they can still get their name out ther and how much TV time is there?

You know, there's that question too.

I mean, it's not like it's an unlimited time.

There's only so much, clip that you can get on the internet where you can see the ads.

So, I mean, Perry could come in with $18 million, but how much more different is that than the nine?

I mean, what what is the amount that you can actually buy.

Its a question of whether he can go on TV right now and stay on TV until the primary.

Yeah.

And if he can do that, which there's some indication that that's the plan he's going to have, if he can be running tons of TV ads from here in the primary, it's unlikely the other candidates will be able to match that to any extent.

On to the name ID point what I wonder about James, and maybe it's an opportunity for Johnson at this point to overcome, or an opportunity for any of them to overcome.

James's name ID, is how much of that name ID is positive?

Because I think what Curtis Hertel might say is the name ID for for John James is that he's a two time statewide loser.

Yeah, but people still know his name, though.

Yeah.

I mean, people know him.

And he would argue that he outperforms, other Republicans here on the ballot statewide those years, even though he lost.

I mean other statewide losers in Curtis Hertels words.

Yeah.

Yeah.I mean, so I mean, I think John has an argument there.

And I think the questio with John that was references, how hard is he going to work out on the campaign trai to try to win this nomination?

He didn't do a lot of events last year, and all of a sudden this week he has really kicked it into gear.

He's putting out policy plans, he's touring the state.

Hes got a news conference.

He's yeah.

Is he going to keep that pace u or is it just a one week thing and that that could have a lot to sa about what his chances are here.

All right.

Well there was a very interesting hearing on what to do about ICE in the Senate committee.

And you were there.

How did you score that?

I mean, it wa it was a very unusual committee hearing for the Senate.

Someone who was there with me was like, I thought it would be more dramatic.

And I was like, oh, that's pretty testy.

What do they want?

They want they want the masks taken off, and they want them to stay out of the churches, in the schools, to round up these people?

Yeah, those are the two main provisions of it.

Ban masks for ICE employees and then also or anyone enforcing federal, immigration policies and then also ban enforcement actions at places like churches, hospitals, schools, sensitive locations.

These are both a Democratic senator trying to advance the House, controlled by Republicans, unlikely to take them up, but there were a probably, close to 200 people at that committee hearing yesterday.

And there's a lot of interest in this right now.

It's a national moment.

It shows that people are harshly divided on this topic.

And and I don't think it's going away.

Well, the chairman of th Republican Party who sits in the was in the room, called it a kangaroo court.

He called it a kangaroo court, said he was being censored, not being able to ask the questions.

And his main argumen seem to be that the state does not have the ability to overrule the federal standards of what guides the action of these immigration officials.

Democrats are contendin that they have a responsibility to try to protect people.

They're concerned that there are students who are scared to show up for K-12 schools across the state because they're worried about immigration enforcement happening.

They did not vote this out, though.

That was one of the mos interesting things they did not.

Yeah.

She said we on it at a later date, which is we just got our pound of fles which we wanted on this issue.

Okay.

And we're going forward.

Yeah, we're going to do anothe pound of flesh in another week.

We can bring in more people and bring in more folks to testify in this.

Meanwhile, we had four state representatives from Michigan go to Minnesota and, take part in a four hour committee meeting in Minnesota on, issues of ICE and border enforcement and, those types of issues.

27 different states sent legislators to Minnesota for this enormous gathering.

There was a press conference involved.

And, basically a big, big coalescing of, Democratic, interest to sound the alarm that, the federal authorit here has gone way over the line.

So is this an issue use in swing districts in the House races?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

I think I think that this issue is clearly reaching a breaking point.

We've all seen the news coming out of Minnesota and, there's there' so much happening on this front right now.

The news in DC, there's there's question about whether there will be another partial government shutdown over DHS funding.

this is this is coming to a head.

And we saw that in the legislature.

I will just say, though, there's, you know, even though this is something that's going to get talked about and talked about, there's there is a limit on what states can do here.

This is a federal issue.

This is a federal government body.

and this is playing out in the courts right now, too.

But, you know, to what extent, even if it were abl to get a vote out of the Senate or even taken up in a Republican led House, you know what?

What is the state edic going to do for federal issues?

How would that resonate back home in swing districts?

So I think what what we're seeing is that increasingly the the position of, you know, abolishing ICE or wanting to see wholesale overhaul of immigration enforcement, it's no longer this like fringe out there position that it used to be in, you know, 2018, 2020, even even 2024.

And, that certainly varied across the country.

Right?

You know, in some places that's not the case.

But I think, you know, it it says something that we're seeing, you know, U.S.

Senate, moderate Republicans even saying, I can't vote on this DHS budget right now or I can't, I can't come in and just, you know, allow Kristi Noem to operate as she's been operating as head of this agency.

But I think that people in, in these districts are going to maybe expect thing from their members of Congress that their members of Congress aren't going to be able to deliver on, because, you know, your member of Congress, at the end of the day, doesn't have all that much to do with this.

But here's a look at what the Democrats in the House races in Michigan may try to use this issue, but the Republicans have an issue as well.

Dana Nessel Yeah, I mean, that was another huge story.

They found something in the House Oversight Committee that they've been putting in the full spotlight on.

I mean they've been talking about this, how the AG handle an investigation into the former treasurer of the Michiga Democratic Party, Traci Kornak.

They have been questioning why Nessel didn't go harder at this case.

And Nessel has kind of said, hey, the the witnesses, the people we needed didn' cooperate, so we couldn't do it.

And then it turns out this wee that the Kent County prosecutor is going to charge Traci Kornak with three, pretty significant felonies for mistreating a vulnerable adult in Kent County.

And and it just throws a even brighter spotlight on this.

Why did this happen?

Why did the attorney general's offic not fully go after Traci Kornak?

Was there some political reason?

They say no.

They say it was just a matter of we didn't have the right witnesses to pursue the case.

This is this is not over.

I mean, the House Oversight Committee has spent so much time on this already.

Well, this story is not going away.

No, it's not.

And and you know, the timing worked out great for the House Republicans.

They have a hearing one day in which they tie Dana Nessel inaction to either incompetence or corruption.

It's one or the other.

That's what Jay DeBoyer, the chair, said.

And then the next day, the Kent County prosecutor comes out and charges her.

I mean, the timing couldn't hav been any better for, you know.

And from Dana Nessels standpoint, you know, she was initially going to testify.

Then she said, well, I' going to send my underlings in.

And, the chair, Jay DeBoyer said, no, I don't want underlings, I want you.

She said no.

And so she doesn't reall get her full side of the story.

I don't think in there, what she is able to share is kind of like, Okay.

so the Republicans go something on, Nessel right now and they're going to keep riding that horse.

They've got other things they want to bring out, and it just gives the other things that they could bring out, a little bit more validity.

So let me ask the same question.

how would that resonate in House districts that are close to do they care about how Dana Nessel is doing or not doing?

I think it kind of depends.

she's term limited.

She' not going to be on the ballot.

But it is something that has clearly resonated.

And it is an interesting, posture that the Oversight Committee has taken.

This is an active criminal investigation, but they are getting ahead of it in a sense.

They're getting ahead of of the courts and really trying to make this into something.

And it is possible that this does end up resonating with voters, especially in West Michigan, where this might be something that they're seeing on a regular basis and on their local media as well.

So, so I think it's definitely a possibility.

but in terms of, you know, how it affects, the upper level races I guess it remains to be seen.

So.

Well, all of this is going on, Mr.

Melinn you've been talkin to the gubernatorial candidates.

Yeah, we were fortunate enough in, Traverse City to be part of the Northern Michigan policy conference, chaired by, the Traverse Connect organization.

All different chambers fro northern Michigan came together.

600 people signed up for this event.

It was the largest event they've had.

And the big selling point is that we had at the time, the six major gubernatorial candidates all came up at different points in time and gave ten minutes, ten minute interviews in which I asked them about, how housing and talent and other issues that the people in the crowd wanted to hear answers to.

And, to their credit, we got we touched all all of the subjects that wanted to be talked about in ten minutes.

I can tell yo that was very difficult to do.

I had to do a little interrupting, but we got to all ten.

Since most of the answers were five minutes long, right.

So what did, what what, when you walked away, what did you have?

So what we had is that the actually, there was a straw poll that was done afterwards.

I didn't call it a straw poll.

It's basically what it was.

But on a scale of 1 to 5, how well do you think that these individual candidates addressed our issues?

And, the takeaway was that, Mike Duggan was the one that got the highest score.

He was at a three point something, six or 8 or 7, something like that.

3.7.

Was that it?

And then Benson was at 3.2, and then all the Republican candidates were all kind of grouped together and kind of like the 2.5, 2.4 kind of thing.

But, the answers, the question this was kind of my takeaway is that, I think why Duggan did so well is that he talked about his own experience and what he did in Detroit, and he talked about the kind of the individual, issues, whether it was housing or talent and what he did in his little microcosm.

Wherea when you got to the Republicans, they did talk about cutting the income tax quite a bit.

And Benson talked about programs, but they all talked about what they would do.

Duggan talked about what he has done.

This is a question I had about this and the people who were there, the people in the crowd, were they insiders, political insiders?

They were who?

They were business people.

A lot of folks, who actually worked in government, government employees, there were some teachers, but these were chambers of commerce.

So by and large, the audience here were people who owned businesses or high officials, within businesses.

And again, this is northern Michigan.

So we're not talking about super huge corporations.

We're talking about, you know, fairly small size small business.

But thats the type of crowd you would expect Duggan to do well with.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So let me put my Northern Michigan hat on her because I'm from Traverse City.

I worked for some of the people in those room for high school jobs.

Some of my high school teachers were in that room.

Hi, guys.

so tha that was a room that I expected Duggan to do well in because those are people who, by and large, are politically pretty middle of the road.

They're not people who want to see, you know, necessarily a scorched earth approach.

We had Eric Nesbitt use the phras take a blow torch to regulation, which was never really going to play with that crowd.

I think that that was not that's not what they want to hear.

These are people who who wor well with their local agencies.

They're they're very attuned to a process of, you know, getting things done with local government that, that, they're very well integrated with, they're generally speaking pretty socially progressive and I think he, he did speak to, like Kyle said, he spoke to, I've, I've been able to handle things like this in Detroit.

And Duggan he came in with, you know, a specific housing policy and I think he he did a really great job talking about that in specifics.

And that's a that's an important issue for people out there.

I got to jump in We just got a few minutes left.

I just want to take a couple of seconds to, to reflec on the passing of Dick Whitmer.

The governor not only lost her dad, she lost a major political advisor.

And for those of us that had covered him, And for those of us that had covered him, he was he was quite a gentleman.

he was he was quite a gentleman.

He had a great sense of humor.

In fact, I wrote a piece Kyle for you that said the thing that I missed the most and remember the most was his laugh.

He was very engaging.

And so our, ou our condolences to the governor and to the family and he sai the most important thing in life and he sai the most important thing in life was to have a good relationship with your offspring.

was to have a good relationship with your offspring.

And with his kids, mission accomplished.

And with his kids, mission accomplished.

Thank you, pane for another wonderful program.

Off the Record, next week.

We want to see you here.

Bye bye.

Production of Off th Record is made possible in part by Bellwether Public Relations, a full servic strategic communications agency partnering with clients through public relations, digital marketing and issue advocacy.

Learn more at bellwetherpr.com.

For more Off the Record, visit wkar.org.

Michigan Public Television Stations have contributed to the production costs of Off the Record.