Flint water crisis should define Michigan governor's race (2024)

Flint water crisis should define Michigan governor's race (1)

It’s just one more thing that Michigan can blame on President Donald Trump: U.S. Rep. Dan Kildee deciding not to run for governor.

“During the entire year of speculating about this, I always was a bit torn,” Kildee said in an interview. “It was just last week where it all came clear to me. I am in this fight in Washington, and I can’t walk away from that fight. As much as I would love to come home and do the things only a governor can do."

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America is facing a foundational fight, Kildee said, a battle that affects the very ground on which our country was built. He is right.

The reality show we’ve been watching — "Celebrity Apprentice: White House Battle” — requires the attention of all Democrats and Independents in Washington.

“I’ve got to stay and fight,” he said. “After (Trump) was elected, I knew it would change the way I looked at my job. I knew that it would potentially interfere with (a gubernatorial run). But what he represents beyond ideology is the lack of respect he has for democratic institutions like an independent judiciary and a free and independent media. He represents such a threat that it changed my thinking.”

Where does that leave Michigan? Stories about the governor’s race were ready to write themselves: Kildee and Flint versus any and every GOP leader currently in office who watched and did nothing while Flint residents drank and bathed in lead-tainted water for years.

Years.

But here’s the thing: The governor’s race still should be about Flint. Not just Flint. From now on, anyone seeking to represent any town, city, state or nation must know that they will not be allowed to ignore constituents just because they aren't rich or CEOs.

The campaigns will begin as Michigan reaches a major crossroads: Will we be a pro-business state or a pro-people state? Or will we find a governor who understands that Michigan really can be both?

Michigan swung from a Democratic governor who had trouble balancing budgets to a Republican CEO who has believed in balancing budgets by any means necessary.

We must add infrastructure to the list of usual topics requiring attention; jobs, taxes, education, health care and necessary supplemental resident care (which means entitlements, but since entitlements — like feeding children — has become a dirty word, let’s call it what it is).

No past or ongoing crisis defines what the next governor faces more than the Flint water crisis — how it happened, where it happened and to whom it happened.

Kildee’s exit leaves fellow Democrats: former Senate Minority Leader Gretchen Whitmer, D-East Lansing; former head of the Detroit Health Department Abdul El-Sayed of Detroit; retired Xerox executive William Cobbs of Farmington Hills; emergency medical services driver Kentiel White of Southgate; Justin Giroux of Wayland, and Ann Arbor businessman Shri Thandear.

Potential Republican candidates expected to join the race are: Lt. Gov. Brian Calley of Portland and Attorney General Bill Schuette of Midland; insurance agent Joseph Derose of Williamston; Grand Rapids businessman Evan Space; obstetrician Dr. Jim Hines of Saginaw, and private investigator Mark McFarlin of Pinconning.

What those — and any others considering a run — must understand is that the Flint water crisis must never be allowed to happen again — anywhere.

But it doesn’t take Dan Kildee to carry that message. Whether Kildee returns to Washington or not, he — and each candidate for governor — should be forced to deal with what happened to Flint.

“Clearly my presence in the race would have guaranteed that dichotomy,” Kildee said. “But the one thing I’ve committed myself to is that I’ll be on the ballot for Congress, not governor. I’m going to raise Flint, Michigan, in this 2018 race. I’m going to go everywhere I need to go to make sure Flint is remembered. Flint is a warning to the rest of the state and the rest of the country about what happens when you marginalize a whole population and fail to invest not just in their future but in the basic elements of a civil society. There were people who tried to help Flint, and there were people who hurt Flint by their action and by their inaction.

“We’re going to have to make sure that Flint does not fade from view, wasn’t just a moment in time, didn’t just have 15 minutes of fame,” Kildee said.

No words are truer, and no job description clearer: Michigan needs a governor who could never look at residents holding up bottles of yellow and brown water and turn away because his employees said it wasn’t real.

As the gubernatorial jockeying begins, consider this: Michigan doesn’t need to elect someone who can put himself or herself in the shoes of corporate CEOs. It needs someone who can put himself or herself in the shoes of the working and nonworking poor people.

Their lives matter.

Contact Rochelle Riley:rriley99@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @rochelleriley.

Flint water crisis should define Michigan governor's race (2024)

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