Outsider Durant vs. Insider Hoekstra? (The Michigan View.com 09.13.11)

Posted by hpayne on September 13, 2011

Republican strategist Dick Morris frames the GOP presidential primary as a battle between the party establishment and the grassroots Tea Party phenomenon. It’s establishment Romney versus tea partier Michele Bachmann, says Morris, with Rick Perry making a strong bid to unite both factions and carry the nomination.

Is the same dynamic at play in Michigan’s Republican Senate primary?

With his June announcement that he would seek the nomination, party heavyweight and former Congressman Pete Hoekstra seemed to have the nomination locked up – previewing a slugfest with Debbie Stabenow in a key race as the GOP seeks to retake the Senate and take down the monster Obamacare with it. Serious contenders dropped one by one upon Hoekstra’s announcement.

But for one. Clark Durant, founder of Cornerstone charter schools in Detroit, has taken up the Morris narrative, challenging Hoekstra as the only true conservative in the race.

“Clark wants to put an end to the Washington Way of career politicians and restore the American Way,” reads Durant’s website in a not-so-veiled stab at ex-Rep. Hoekstra.

In an interview with Frank Beckmann on August 31, there was nothing veiled in Durant’s contrast between himself and Hoekstra in what he described as a battle between “career politicians and outsiders” who have “been in the private sector.”

“Both Debbie and Pete have stood on the sidelines, they’ve increased debt, they’ve voted for bailouts,” Reagan’s former Legal Services director said. ” Are we better off today than 18 years ago when Pete entered the Congress? No, we’re not.”

This week, Durant’s “outsider” chops were strengthened by an endorsement from straight-talkin’ auto guy Bob Lutz, who echoed the outsider them: “Clark is running against two career politicians (Hoekstra/Stabenow),” wrote Maximum Bob in his endorsement letter, “both of whom have stood on the sidelines during their lengthy tenures in Washington D.C. while our economy has deteriorated. ”

But are Morris’s tea party vs. establishment battle lines really so clear here?

“The problem with the Durant narrative is it fails because Hoekstra is one of the founders of the tea party,” says respected Michigan pollster Steve Mitchell.

Indeed, Hoekstra co-founded the Tea Party Caucus while serving in the U.S. House, gaining national cred as a grassroots conservative. In 2009, Citizens Against Government Waste named Hoekstra a “taxpayer hero,” praising him for putting “the interests of taxpayers ahead of politics by consistently voting to cut wasteful spending.”

Oh.

Hoekstra’s “private sector” credentials are impressive too as his stock stump speech attests. Hoekstra routinely refers to lessons learned as an executive at Herman Miller.

Sure, Hoekstra has a wall-full of party establishment endorsements from current Gov. Snyder to past Gov. Engler to the Chamber of Commerce to Oakland County’s L. Brooks Patterson. But Durant is no slouch in the insider department either with endorsements from former state party boss Betsy DeVos and ex-Sen. Spencer Abraham. In raising money for his successful charter schools, he also has courted Michigan’s establishment.

In short, both Durant and Hoekstra are strikingly similar candidates, but with one major difference: Hoekstra’s massive name recognition.

“Like those candles on a birthday cake, every time we would blow him out (with a series of negative ads) he would come back on,” says Mitchell, who worked for Hoekstra opponent Mike Cox (another Hoekstra Senate endorser) in the 2010 governor’s primary. “It’s his positive name ID from working Fox News all those years.”

Engler has even gone so far as to suggest that Durant pull out of the race in order to consolidate monies behind Hoekstra before the expensive battle against Stabenow. Naturally, this has only fueled Durant’s claims that the establishment is out to get his outsider candidacy.

But in truth, there is no Bachmann or Romney in this race. There are only two “Perrys” who appeal equally to the establishment and the grassroots. And with Hoekstra’s big edge in fund-raising and name appeal, there is little doubt who Stabenow expects on the other side of the ring.

Henry Payne is editor of The Michigan View.com

 

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