Political Insider: GOP chairman debating new term

Michigan Republican Party Chairman Bobby Schostak says he’s “leaning” toward seeking another two-year term as the head of the party.

In an interview Monday with The Detroit News, Schostak said he would make up his mind before the end of the year.

“I’ve not come to a final conclusion,” Schostak told The News. “(But) I’m leaning toward running again.”

Elected party chairman in 2011, Schostak oversaw GOP operations to help re-elect Gov. Rick Snyder last month and keep Republicans firmly in control of state government, from the Supreme Court to the Legislature and other statewide offices.

In 2013, Schostak survived a scare at the state convention, fending off a surprisingly strong challenge from tea party activist Todd Courser, a Lapeer attorney who was elected last month to the state House.

Michigan Republicans have scheduled a late February state convention in Lansing.

If Schostak were not to run, other names that have been mentioned in GOP circles and media reports as possible candidates include state Rep. Pete Lund of Shelby Township and 14th Congressional District chairman Paul Welday of Oakland County.

Lund, who is term-limited and out of job on Jan. 1, said Wednesday he’s “more than likely” going to run for party chairman if Schostak bows out. Lund told reporters he already has been making phone calls to line up support.

Schostak, a real estate developer, said he wants to continue to serve the Republican Party.

“I am going to get a decision as quickly as I can,” he said.

Schostak has an opportunity to make his intentions known this Saturday in Grand Rapids at a state party central committee meeting.

“I’ll be there,” Lund said.

Dems still seeking answers

Following last month’s devastating losses in statewide and legislative races, there’s a considerable amount of self-evaluation going on within the ranks of the Michigan Democratic Party.

Democrats lost the governor’s office, attorney general, secretary of state, four seats to Republicans in the House and their caucus in the state Senate may get even smaller after losing a race in Kalamazoo County, pending the outcome of a recall in the 20th District.

The only bright spot for Democrats in the Nov. 4 election was U.S. Rep. Gary Peters’ solid victory in the U.S. Senate race over Republican Terri Lynn Land.

Some have privately grumbled that the party should oust first-term party Chairman Lon Johnson, even after the internal strife that divided Democrats two years ago when party bosses backed Johnson and forced longtime chairman Mark Brewer to bow out.

Democratic strategist Howard Edelson said the party needs to form an independent committee to do a top-down review of this year’s electoral failures. He suggested such a review could be chaired by retiring Sen. Carl Levin, former Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer or some other Democratic Party elder statesman with no plans of seeking another political office.

“Talking about replacing the chair is premature and anyone who is talking about that is jumping at the gun,” Edelson said in a recent interview.

Edelson said Democratic gubernatorial candidate MarkSchauer’s messaging may have been off for independents seeking a reason to bolt from Snyder.

“For pundits, it’s easy to armchair strategies and decisions,” Edelson said. “I think Mark Schauer ran a very good campaign given the resources he had (and) given the issues he had. No other Democrat really wanted to take on Gov. Snyder.”

Walberg pushes Gruber

U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg, R-Tipton, sought to score a political point at a Tuesday hearing when he questioned Jonathan Gruber, an MIT economist and health care consultant who was a major adviser in the crafting of the Affordable Care Act.

Gruber was contrite at the House Oversight committee hearing, saying he was glib and “inexcusably arrogant” when he told groups in 2012 and 2013 that the “stupidity of the American voter” led to passage of the Obamacare law. Committee Democrats even criticized Gruber for the remarks, saying they gave the health law’s critics a public-relations gift.

Walberg asked Gruber if he believed people wouldn’t lose their existing health plans under the 2010 law, after President Barack Obama promised 37 times that Americans could keep their health care plan if they liked it — a promise broken to millions of Americans.

“I believed that the law would not affect the vast majority of Americans,” Gruber said.

When pressed whether no one would lose a plan he liked, he admitted “it is true that some people might have to upgrade their plans because their plans were not comprehensive as defined under the law” — meaning they would lose their old plan.

So, Walberg asked, they couldn’t keep their plan if they liked it?

“What the law says is there are minimum standards to be met,” Gruber said.

Gruber said he wasn’t a political expert. But he was politically astute enough to avoid giving Republicans a clean sound bite that said the Obamacare law wouldn’t allow people to keep their health plan if they liked it.

New seats, more use

State Rep. Kate Segal has a rude awakening for new representatives who take office in the new year: They will spend more time in the House chamber discussing legislation than their predecessors.

The term-limited Battle Creek Democrat asserted Wednesday in her farewell speech that the new chairs recently installed in the chamber are certainly ergonomically superior. But she said she has noticed that legislative sessions have become longer — which she attributed to the increased comfort of the chairs.

SUBHED

Rep. John Dingell has received many accolades over the decades, especially after he last year became the longest-serving member of Congress in U.S. history.

But the Dearborn Democrat received what conservatives and Republicans might consider a backward compliment Tuesday as House members paid tribute to the former House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman who is retiring after 59 years in the chamber.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, noted Dingell’s annual introduction of comprehensive health care reform — which he stopped only after passage of the Affordable Care Act he supported in 2010 — and suggested that the health care law deserved a different moniker than naming it after President Barack Obama.

“I am getting ready to call it Dingell-care,” Lee announced triumphantly.

Dingell said Wednesday it doesn’t matter: “I don’t care what they call it, as long as it’s implemented in a way that continues to help American families get the quality affordable care they need, deserve, and should have a right to.”

Sounds like he will defer to the president, who has embraced the nickname of “Obamacare.”

Contributors: Chad Livengood, David Shepardson and Richard Burr