On November 4, voters in the State Senate district that covers Kalamazoo County face something very unusual: there are more than two names on the ballot. For the first time a Libertarian Party candidate has joined the Democrat and the Republican in the race for the 20th Senate District seat.
The boundaries of the district have changed slightly since the last election four years ago. And it’s an open seat because current Senator Tonya Schuitmaker, a Republican, chose to run in the new 26th District that includes her home in Van Buren County. The race in the 20th turned into a three-way contest when former state representative Lorence Wenke of Gull Lake, who’d entered the race as a Republican, suddenly left the GOP and announced that he’d run as a Libertarian instead. Wenke says one reason for his decision was Republican opposition to gay rights in Michigan, including gay marriage. He was one of only two House Republicans to vote against putting a gay marriage ban on the ballot in 2004. If he’s elected this time, Wenke says he’d push to overturn that ban if the courts don’t do it first.
Another big issue for the former Kalamazoo County commissioner is the size and cost of government, including the cost of supporting poor families that Wenke says have more children than they can support. To help deal with that, he says Michigan should offer free birth control.
Lorence Wenke: "And we should do that for a certain period of time. And after that time when birth control is available free to anybody who wants it, we should say we're not going to pay for or support any more people who have children. If you have a child after a certain day, you're on your own; you'll take care of that child, and don't call the taxpayer for support in taking care of that child."
Gordon Evans: "Earlier, you said we know, though, in some cases that that parent has no possibility of taking care of that child. If the State knows that's the case, should the State come in and remove custody and take that child somewhere else?"
Lorence Wenke: "Yes, the same rules should apply as apply right now, and when the State finds that someone is not taking good care of their children they take them away. They put them in foster homes; they adopt them out. We will have to have a policy like that in place if we are ever going to stop this tremendous surge of children being born to parents who really have no hope of being able to support them."
Wenke says he isn’t opposed to taxing the pensions of senior citizens but says the law to do that should have been phased in over a longer period of time. The pension tax has emerged as one of the more prominent campaign issues statewide with Democrats attacking Republican lawmakers and Governor Rick Snyder, who approved it.
State Representative Margaret O’Brien is part of that GOP majority. The former Portage City Council member now running for State Senate makes no apologies for supporting the pension tax. She says it did away with an unfair system that let those with government pensions escape taxes while those with private plans and 401-K’s did have to pay up.
"I don't think the system was fair, in that your job dictated what your tax rate is. So, we tried to allow for those who were substantially into their retirement, made sure there was no change for them. But we instituted an exemption for everybody. So, previously, there were groups of people who had no exemption that now have one. So, a $20,000 individual, $40,000 married; and you now have an exemption: that first $20,000 or $40,000 of income is tax-free. And I appreciate you asking because I've had a number of people ask me about it. And they go, 'Margaret, I'm paying tax now,' and then when we talked through it they realize they didn't have a pension, and it was just all the rhetoric that's being spread. They thought they were paying something that they weren't, and some of the people realized that they now don't have to pay a tax that they were paying previously."
But the Democrat in the 20th Senate District race doesn’t buy it. Sean McCann, like O’Brien finishing his second term in the State House, has previously served on the Kalamazoo City Commission. McCann voted against the pension tax, saying arguments for it were unconvincing.
"Well, those sound to me like excuses for the ability to raise a tax on somebody coming from people who usually say they don't favor tax increases on people. So, that's a surprise to me. And, again, it was not something - people operated and retired under a certain set of assumptions and planned their lives under a certain set of assumptions. And I had some people come to me, some seniors who've said, you know, 'This senior pension tax does make some sense to me; I'm willing to entertain the idea.' But my question back to them is: did you see your tax dollars that got increased go back to schools, investing in schools? Did you see those tax dollars go into investing in our roads and infrastructure? To expand services to the mentally ill and people in Michigan who really need and rely on state government to be there for them? To urban core cities that are supposed to get revenue sharing back to them to improve their services? None of that is what happened."
Voters in Kalamazoo County will decide which of the three contenders will go to Lansing from the 20th Senate District for the next four years. Republicans have held the seat for decades but Democrats believe they have a chance to end their winning streak this time. For his part, Libertarian Lorence Wenke says he doesn’t worry about playing the role of “spoiler,” saying that he’s focused on the issues.
