BY BRIAN McGILLIVARY
bmcgillivary@record-eagle.com
TRAVERSE CITY — State Sen. Michelle McManus' quest to become the state's top election official is drawing objections from some of the men and women who run Michigan's elections: county clerks.
McManus, of Lake Leelanau, is among five Republicans seeking their party's nomination for Secretary of State at the state Republican convention in East Lansing on Saturday. Current Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land is term-limited.
In 2007, McManus positioned herself as a leader in potential state campaign and election reform as chairwoman of a new Senate Campaign and Elections Oversight Committee. But that move gained her no favor with some county clerks, who said McManus accomplished little in the way of election reform.
"If she's nominated, I'm voting Democrat," said Grand Traverse County Clerk Linda Coburn, a Republican.
Most of Michigan's county clerks, including nine of 11 in McManus' own Senate district, support Anne Norlander, a longtime clerk from Calhoun County. Others back Oakland County Clerk Ruth Johnson. McManus lists no county clerk endorsements on her campaign's Web page.
Several clerks cited McManus' failure to move election legislation out of her committee, as well as her lack of experience in running elections.
"It's unfortunate they feel that way, but there were bigger challenges," McManus said. "The budget has been huge."
Clerk pressured to OK flawed documents?
Coburn's anti-McManus stance is fueled, in part, by a recent election flap with McManus and her father, Mike McManus, a retired school teacher and former state House candidate.
Coburn said the two in May tried to pressure her to approve flawed affidavits from candidates who sought election as precinct delegates on the Aug. 3 primary ballot.
Precinct delegates decide who goes to the state convention to cast votes for Secretary of State, as well as other party nominees for the Nov. 2 general election.
Mike McManus recruited precinct delegate candidates in Leelanau and Grand Traverse counties who would support his daughter's nomination. He then hand-delivered some of those affidavits to Coburn, who said several of those documents needed to be amended because they contained errors or lacked necessary information.
"He wanted me to just fill in the information myself. He wanted me to just change their affidavits," Coburn said. "You can't alter somebody's affidavit. I know what the law is, and you have to follow it."
Mike McManus did not respond to repeated requests for comment, including a visit to his home by a Record-Eagle reporter.
Coburn said she called state election officials in Mike McManus' presence, and state officials confirmed the precinct delegate candidates needed to file amended affidavits.
A day or two later, Coburn said she received another call from state election officials who said Michelle McManus or her office complained about "shenanigans" regarding precinct delegates in Grand Traverse County. Coburn had to repeat her explanation of McManus' affidavits, she said.
Michelle McManus said she made no such complaint.
"I don't know what she's talking about," McManus said of Coburn. "Linda helped us to make sure they were all correctly done. I thought she did a good job."
All the McManus candidates filed amended affidavits and made it on the ballot as precinct delegates.
Secretary of State spokeswoman Kelly Chesney said there is no record of a formal complaint against Coburn.
"There could have been someone making inquiries, but we wouldn't have a written record of that," Chesney said.
Leelanau County Clerk Michelle Crocker said she did not have difficulty with McManus' precinct delegates because she encourages them to file directly with her office.
"Whatever Mike brought in we just dealt with, and I don't know of any problems," said Crocker, a precinct delegate who hasn't endorsed a Secretary of State candidate. Crocker declined comment on McManus' candidacy.
Bill Ballenger, editor of the political newsletter Inside Michigan Politics, said lack of county clerk support may hurt McManus, but she's considered among the front-runners for the GOP nomination.
"She's in the mix because she's campaigned longer and harder than anybody," Ballenger said. "In terms of image, it doesn't look very good not to have support in her own district ... and her opponents will certainly try to use it against her."
"But I still expect she'll clean up (delegate votes) in her own district," he said.
Dave Barr, chairman of the Grand Traverse County Republican Party, is among McManus' supporters.
"Michelle is a northern Michigan person and ... it's always a good idea to have someone in a leadership role in Lansing when you are trying to get things to happen up north," Barr said. "Michelle's definitely a good candidate. She wants the job and can do the job."
Reform pledge falls short
But McManus' pledges for campaign changes and her committee's subsequent record may pose some liability.
"I'm certainly going to be aggressive with this committee," McManus said in 2007. "The time is right and the environment is such that we need to examine legislative reform and campaign-finance reform to protect the integrity of elected office."
McManus' committee ultimately produced little, said Rich Robinson who's executive director of the non-partisan Michigan Campaign Finance Network.
"It's just been a stagnant committee," Robinson said. "They ... haven't been able to do much for the course of campaign disclosure."
Ottawa County Clerk Dan Krueger, who chaired the state county clerk association's legislative committee, said most election reform ideas proposed by county clerks stalled in McManus' committee.
"We never got a hearing," said Krueger, also a Republican. "She never moved out of committee anything that was of interest from our perspective and would clean up things we were doing with elections."
McManus said her committee spent significant time looking at larger policy issues and passed some legislation. But she said no one in 2007 could anticipate how much time state budget talks would consume over the next three years.
"If you look at what the challenges are here in this state, they are all budgetary, and I do oversee the Secretary of State's budget on appropriations," McManus said. "About 60 percent of that budget is providing service to the people of the State of Michigan. As secretary of state, I'll have opportunities to improve on what I believe in, which is customer service."
Laurie Braid, Republican clerk of Shiawassee County, said she wouldn't support McManus "if she was the last person on earth.
"She has held up bills very important to the clerks, and she is not willing to work with us," Braid said. "The only substantive election bill she ever passed was to spend $15 million on presidential primaries."
Ballenger said what matters most to convention delegates is who they think stands the best chance of winning in November. But he also calls this the "funny season" when anything can happen.
"This thing isn't going to shake out until about noon, 1 o'clock on the 28th," Ballenger said. "There's a lot that can happen and we've got a long way to go."
