ANN ARBOR – Business executive Rick Snyder has taken plenty of risks and had success when others deemed his task undoable. That attitude, one of a venture capitalist that sees an investment where others see failure, instead of the thinking that comes with a long career in politics, is one of the biggest reasons Snyder says he has a good chance at becoming Michigan’s next governor.
“I wanted to run because of the intersection of three facts: Michigan is in an economic disaster, there is a lack of leadership in Lansing and there are only traditional politicians running for governor,” he told Gongwer News Service.
Snyder, whose only political experience includes a stint as a delegate to the Republican Party in college, said his successful background in business is exactly what the state needs right now at a time when others running for the post “are traditional politicians who have more of the same to offer.”
Not only have those with experience shown that they don’t have what it takes to lead the state, considering the prolonged recession in which Michigan finds itself, but many are beholden to lobbying interests that fund their campaign, he said, which is why he has pledged not to take any money from political action committees.
Snyder faces a quadrant of seasoned politicians in the race for the Republican nomination: Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard, Attorney General Mike Cox, state Sen. Tom George and U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra.
While taking on the task of turning Michigan’s perilous economic situation around will not be easy, Snyder said he’s the only candidate that has the skills to do so.
“I have the skill set in leadership and management and budgeting millions of dollars,” he said, speaking of his career experience that includes taking Gateway from a company that netted $600 million a year into a Fortune 500 company that brought in more than $6 billion annually, doing so in six years while he served as the company’s vice president and then VP and chief operating officer.
He is also proud of the growth of employment at Gateway, which was located in South Dakota at the time. It had 735 employees when he began as vice president and 10,000 domestic employees by the time he left to return to Michigan in 1997.
Snyder said the kind of thinking and innovation he used to build success at Gateway, at his venture capital firms and to start Ann Arbor Spark, an economic development corporation, is exactly what Michigan needs in its next governor.
“So far, with the current regime, I’ve seen a lack of leadership where they ignore problems or use Band-aids instead of real solutions,” he said. “I have a track record of action. That’s how I got all three of my degrees by the time I was 23.”
But in terms of which changes he’d make, he said, some of that depends on what Michigan residents consider important.
“We need to organize government as a customer service,” Snyder said. “The citizens of the state are customers who deserve good service and value for their money.”
On that note, he said, he would completely change the content of the annual gubernatorial State of the State, using it as a way to report to residents how the leaders are performing on their promises.
“The address should be a report card about how we’re standing up to other states and countries and how we are delivering on our goals,” Snyder said.
It’s because of his attitude that Michigan residents run the show that he said he supports the voters’ decision last year when they approved ballot proposals to allow stem cell research and the use of medicinal marijuana.
While he said he plans to focus more on the economy than social issues, Snyder is in line with the majority view in his party against abortion – although opponents of abortion view him suspiciously because of his support for embryonic stem cell research – and for the right to bear arms. Snyder received a boost to his conservative bonafides this week when anti-abortion leader Jerry Zandstra endorsed his candidacy, saying jobs must be the campaign’s overriding issue.
‘I DON’T HAVE ANY BAGGAGE’: Snyder, who served as the first chair of the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, considers his relative lack political experience a bonus among voters who have become cynical about politicians.
“It improves my chances because I don’t have any baggage,” he said. “Some might say I don’t understand the system (like those with political experience), but the current system is broken so why should I focus on learning something that doesn’t work?”
Asked how, if he were elected, he would gain the trust and respect of lawmakers he would need to work with to accomplish his goals, Snyder said his first task would be to call every legislator to a meeting and speak frankly about how their past efforts have been fruitless.
“I would ask them about their track record and successes and failures,” he said. “There is very little positive news for them to show their constituents for the last six years. I’ll ask them if they want to continue with that path or do they want to make positive action happen.”
To those that have already attacked Snyder’s view that government should be run like a business, Snyder said that only proves their ignorance of business transactions. Hoekstra, for example, told Gongwer that the Capitol does not run like a business.
“In business you have to bring many people together and the only way you win is to find a compromise between all of those parties,” he said, adding that it isn’t as dissimilar to politics as some would think.
HIS IDEAS: As for his goals, they are summed up well with his campaign slogan that he plans to reinvent Michigan.
For example, he said, he likes the idea of starting at a zero budget for each department, then coming together and deciding spending priorities to decide where the money goes. Currently, legislators use the previous fiscal year as the base from which to make spending decisions.
Speaking of the budget, he’d like to see it planned for two years instead of one, to give leaders time to plan and to get input from residents at town hall meetings and other venues, spending the first year planning and the second enacting a budget plan.
Snyder said he’d focus strongly helping small businesses bloom, saying they are the future of the state’s economy.
One way he’d do that is to connect talent with services and reduce the regulatory burden on business by doing everything from making the licensing process simpler, to lowering taxes.
He said he’d also prioritize fixing the Michigan Business Tax, which he called “the dumbest tax in the country” saying its predecessor, the Single Business Tax, was “a dumb tax, but we put an even stupider tax on top of it.”
That tax and any other that “picks winners and losers” should be rethought, he said, adding that the business tax needs be customer-oriented and straight forward, reducing the burden on business as the economy grows.
Another focus, he said, would be on phasing out the polarizing film credit, which he said shouldn’t have been implemented in the first place because it favors one type of business over others and isn’t economically viable.
“I tell people all the time that this is a great state,” Snyder said. “Let’s be positive and use our vision to make structural changes that will lead to an era of innovation.”
This story was provided by Gongwer News Service. To subscribe, click on Gongwer.Com
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