WHAT IF REPUBLICANS NOMINATED for governor a fringe figure with a history of making derogatory comments about Catholics and Jews? Klansman David Duke created roughly this scenario seven years ago in Louisiana. The national media charged that hateful extremists were taking over the GOP. And Republicans, both in the state and across the country, disavowed and condemned Duke.
The reaction has been a little different to Geoffrey Fieger, Jack Kevorkian’s lawyer. Fieger won the Democratic nomination for governor in Michigan on August 4. He has compared Orthodox rabbis to Nazis, described the archbishop of Detroit as a “nut,” and characterized his opponent, John Engler, as “the product of miscegenation between barnyard animals and humans.” But prominent Michigan Democrats such as David Bonior and John Dingell have done nothing to distance themselves from Fieger. Indeed, Bonior says the Democratic party “is united top to bottom” for Fieger.
The Democrats’ embrace of Fieger is all the more remarkable considering the belligerence of his primary campaign. Trading on the attention he received for being Dr. Death’s lawyer, Fieger ran against the Democratic establishment. One of his opponents, Larry Owen, was the favorite of the state’s powerful labor unions — the United Auto Workers endorsed him a year before the election — and Owen also had the support of Bonior, Dingell, and other House Democrats. Doug Ross, meanwhile, was the hope of New Democrats. Throughout the campaign, Fieger mostly ignored Owen and Ross, as well as the Jewish voters who figure prominently in Michigan’s Democratic primaries. Instead, he directed vicious personal comments at Engler and went after the black vote. He played up his outsider status by vowing, if elected, to sack the state Democratic chairman, Mark Brewer.
Given Fieger’s campaign, coupled with his embarrassing rhetorical and professional record, Michigan Democrats had a good excuse not to line up behind the candidate immediately after his victory. But on the morning of August 5, the day after the primary, Bonior, Dingell, and fellow House Democrats John Conyers and Debbie Stabenow all flew in from Washington to appear at a Detroit hotel for a “Democratic Unity” breakfast. A supportive letter from the state’s Democratic U.S. senator, Carl Levin, was read aloud. Hosting the event was Jim Blanchard, the former governor who’s maneuvering to run for Senate in 2000. The only noticeable absentees were Dennis Archer, the moderate mayor of Detroit, and Ross, whom Fieger once called a “sniveling weasel.”
The heavyweight turnout may have been responsible for Fieger’s uncharacteristically pleasant mood at the breakfast. He joked that Brewer, the party chairman, could keep his job, while observing that he was “glad to see religion back in the Democratic party. When I walked in, I never saw so many people praying.” But the detente didn’t last long. Once the breakfast was over, Fieger described the Democratic party as full of “wimps and oatmeal.”
The prevailing Democratic attitude toward Fieger was captured by Debbie Stabenow, who remarked at the breakfast that “the most important thing for each of us is to understand that the real fight is with John Engler. The good news is that we’ve got a guy tough enough to take him on.” This is the crux of it for most Michigan Democrats. So intense is their animosity toward Engler — he’s had an extremely successful eight years as governor — they refuse to distance themselves from someone as embarrassing as Fieger. Thus Jim Berryman, a Democratic state senator who’s running against Rep. Nick Smith, says without a hint of irony, “I’m more offended John Engler can have policies that kill kids than I am by people calling him names.” Other Democrats, asked about various Fieger smears, breezily dismiss his comments as having been “taken out of context.” They also praise him for “energizing” voters. But some Democrats in the state legislature are already expressing concerns privately that they could lose their slim House majority with Fieger at the top of the ticket.
Michigan Republicans, then, couldn’t be happier about having Fieger as the face of the Democrats this year. David Bonior’s opponent, Brian Palmer, has already distributed three press releases pressuring Bonior to disavow Fieger and charging that it is “an abuse of the people’s trust and an insult to their faith” for Bonior to “align himself with a religious bigot.” Similarly, Republican Leslie Touma says of her opponent, Rep. Sander Levin, “If he stands with Geoffrey Fieger, does that mean he agrees with his caustic and divisive statements?” Michigan Republicans say they’re likely to use Fieger and his record against every Democratic candidate who endorses him. A spokesman for the Republican National Committee predicts Fieger “will be made the poster child for Democratic candidates in the ’98 elections.”
One leading Democratic strategist, while not agreeing that the GOP can make much hay out of Fieger, doesn’t mince words when saying of him, “He’s a nut, he’s got very high negatives, and he’s going to get beat badly.” Indeed, one poll shows that just 58 percent of Democrats support Fieger (while 90 percent of Republicans support Engler) and that two-thirds of the Democrats who voted for Ross say they’ll be supporting Engler. Fieger didn’t help himself much with Democrats when he recently approached two prominent Republican women about being his lieutenant governor.
The strong possibility of a landslide victory by Engler, coupled with Fieger’s recklessness and propensity to pop religious figures, raises the question whether he’ll get any support from Democrats nationally. An official at the Democratic Governors’ Association says financial and technical resources will be made available to Fieger. More important, though, is whether President Clinton will campaign for him. Fieger met with top Clinton officials on August 7 and told reporters afterward that he expects the full support of the White House. The Democratic strategist isn’t so sure. “The president has a busy schedule these days. I don’t see him making it out to Michigan for a fund-raiser.”
Which is probably a smart move. The last thing Clinton needs now is to explain why he’s supporting a man who once described Jesus as “just some goof-ball that got nailed to the cross.”
Matthew Rees is a staff writer for THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
