The Empty Mayor (The Michigan View 10.25.10)

Posted by hpayne on October 25, 2010

The Angry Mayor became The Empty Mayor Sunday.

Bill Clinton’s visit to Detroit was supposed to be a high point of Bernero’s “Comeback Kid” campaign. Instead, the embarrassment of a half-empty Renaissance High auditorium led The Drudge Report and symbolizes a campaign of incompetence and elitism.

Clinton’s red meat speech was meant to light a fire under Democratic turnout – but he couldn’t even motivate Democrats to attend his motivational speech. “He began his speech just before 3 p.m. in a high school gym that was less than half full,” reported The Detroit News’ Paul Egan. “Shortly before Clinton took the stage, the Rev. Wendell Anthony, president of the Detroit branch of the NAACP, urged attendees to leave bleacher seats along one side of the gym and try to fill the area in front of the podium before Clinton began his address.”

This is a campaign not ready for prime time. Short of The One, Clinton is the party’s biggest fundraiser. And Bernero’s ground campaign couldn’t bus in enough folks to fill the seats? Heading into the election’s stretch run?

Bernero’s dais was a Who’s Who of Michigan politics including the mayor’s running mate Brenda Lawrence, John Conyers, Debbie Stabenow, SOS candidate Jocelyn Benson, AG candidate David Leyton.

“Clinton is still a rock star in Detroit,” said Wayne County Commissioner Kevin McNamara. Trouble is, the dais nearly outnumbered the rock star’s audience.

“This is two problems,” says Michigan pollster Steve Mitchell of Mitchell Research. “It’s a problem of campaign organization. You don’t book a facility for Bill Clinton unless you can fill it. But it also has to be disconcerting to Democrats as a precursor of low base voter turnout.”

Worse, the appearance at public Renaissance High only highlighted last week’s news that Bernero – the pro- teacher union, Big Government cheerleader – hypocritically attended private schools himself and sent one of his kids to private Catholic School, even as he questions the value of school choice for suffering Detroit families stuck in Michigan’s worst public school system.

His podium partner is no less elitist when is comes to public schools. Clinton sent his own daughter to Sidwell Friends, one of Washington’s most elite private schools when he was president and an opponent of school choice in the District of Columbia.

The private school pals were no doubt uncomfortable in their unfamiliar public school surrounds – a discomfort made more so by the empty seats.

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