Dems Coffia, Sloan face off

Region

Related Photos

Betsy Coffia Record-Eagle/ Keith KingBetsy Coffia
Joseph Sloan Record-Eagle/ Keith KingJoseph Sloan Record-Eagle/Keith King/Keith King

July 15, 2012

Dems Coffia, Sloan face off

Coffia and Sloan vying for spot on Democratic ticket

BY BRIAN McGILLIVARY bmcgillivary@record-eagle.com The Record Eagle Sun Jul 15, 2012, 07:46 AM EDT

TRAVERSE CITY — TRAVERSE CITY — Democrats in Grand Traverse County will enjoy a rare event in election year politics: a primary race for the state House of Representatives.

Betsy Coffia and Joseph Sloan will face off in the Aug. 7 Democratic Primary for the 104th District. Two Democrats haven’t simultaneously sought that seat since before 1996. Both are political activists but first-time candidates who credit Republican lawmakers with motivating them to step into the political front line.

“I just think the people we have right now are killing us,” said Sloan, a retired hearing officer for the state of Michigan and a union steward. “I just didn’t want to sit around.”

The large amounts of money flowing into politics has turned elections into auctions, said Coffia, a social worker and former journalist.

“I object as a citizen to money controlling our political process and influencing how politicians vote,” Coffia said. “I am very distressed by the megaphone held by a few who can write a big check.”

Coffia said she won’t accept political action committee money, large donations, or any out-ofstate funds.

“It’s so wrong,” she said. “The average citizen is feeling so muted and so ignored. We need our representatives to be directly accountable to us.”

The final straw for Coffia was the emergency manager law that allows an emergency manager appointed by Lansing politicians to break contracts and override decisions made by local elected representatives.

“It’s taking away local control, it’s taking away representative government, and it’s frankly un-American,” said Coffia, who helped organize the statewide referendum effort to repeal the law. “It’s someone from way far away putting an overlord in charge of them.”

Sloan called the emergency manager act “terrible” because it takes away the public’s basic right to choose their leaders. But the final straw for Sloan was the taxing of retiree pensions to give big business a tax break with no guarantee or incentive for the tax savings to create jobs.

Now, he contends, Republicans are going after his 88-year-old mother’s teacher retiree health care. He also is frustrated that Traverse City and Kingsley schools remain at the bottom of the state’s public school foundation grant at $6,996 per student, while the state gives schools in his brother’s affluent Oakland County community over $13,000 per-pupil.

“We have all these Republicans and they can’t get us diddly for education,” Sloan said. “We are never going to get equalized funding while the Republicans are in control.”

Coffia said school funding for northern Michigan children isn’t fair. He accused incumbent state Rep. Wayne Schmidt of failing to take a leadership role on the issue.

The taxing of pensions and cuts to unemployment benefits equate to attacks on the middle class, Sloan said.

The two candidates aren’t acquainted and have focused their efforts on opposition to the Republican incumbent.

“I think this election is different because there’s a certain middle class value and it’s being taken away from us,” Sloan said. “This isn’t between me and another Democrat, this is between me and the Republicans and saving middle class values.”