DETROIT – Both Republican Governor Rick Snyder and his Democratic opponent Mark Schauer slammed each other Sunday during the one debate they will engage in during the 2014 election. Snyder ended the hour-long event urging voters not to go back to the “lost decade” and Schauer closed saying he has worked for regular people, not the wealthy.
Virtually nothing new in terms of policy issues was raised in the debate, with both men hitting the same points they have through the campaign. But with Sunday evening likely the only time the two face each other during the campaign, and the one opportunity for voters to see them unfiltered, both wasted no chances at attacking the other’s record.
At the scrum with reporters afterwards, Snyder would not say if Schauer was being disrespectful, but said he always tried to treat people with respect.
Schuaer said nothing about it in the scrum, because in one of the most surprising incidents in the debate and its aftermath, Schauer did not show up for the scrum. Democratic spokespersons were clearly uncomfortable with his absence, and Republicans quickly set up a Twitter hashtag of #NoShowSchauer.
Schauer spokesperson Cathy Bacile Cunningham said of Schauer’s decision not to show, “Mark is running to be governor, not to be a pundit. He left it all on the stage tonight.”
However, to the question of respect, Democratic spokespersons including U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow and Senate Minority Leader Gretchen Whitmer downplayed Mr. Schauer calling the governor, “Rick,” saying Snyder is a casual individual.
There was nothing casual in either’s intensity on the stage at the Wayne State University Schaver Music Recital Hall.
Education and taxes formed the bulk of the sparring between the two. Because many of the questions were aimed at programs enacted during Snyder’s administration, he seemed often on the defensive, with Schauer going out more on offense, charging that Snyder’s administration had hurt schools, retirees, and had failed to restore jobs.
But Snyder landed as many blows against Schauer, referring several times to the “lost decade,” saying twice Schauer voted for the hated and now largely repealed Michigan Business Tax and that Michigan was so deep in the hole during the recession that it had further to come than most other states.
At one point, in questions about Snyder’s cousin, George Snyder, and his furniture distributorship business, Snyder was visibly determined to make a point that a contract his cousin’s firm has, called a “sweetheart” deal by Democrats, was decades old. Snyder refused to yield the floor to the moderators.
Democrats took a major shot at Snyder not taking a position on same-sex marriage during the debate. Snyder said the issue was before the courts. In the scrum afterwards, he said he would confer with Attorney General Bill Schuette on whether to appeal the issue if the 6th U.S. Circuit Court ruled Michigan’s 2004 ban was unconstitutional.
Schauer said Snyder’s non-position essentially showed how his administration had not shown care for Michigan residents.
And the questioning began with what has proven to be the most intense issue of the campaign thus far: whether Snyder cut education spending by $1 billion.
“It is true Rick cut $1 billion from schools,” Schauer said, referring to Snyder quoted in a newspaper article that the cuts would be tough for schools. He charged that schools today have less in terms of classroom funding than they did in 2011.
But Snyder snapped, “It’s really clear, let me make this as simple as possible,” that when he took office the state’s school aid budget was $10.6 billion and that today it is $11.7 billion.
Schauer’s focus was on the 2011-12 school aid budget, which as signed was more than $900 million less than the 2010-11 budget, but did not touch directly on the years since. Mr. Snyder did not mention his first budget, nor funds he had allocated to the Michigan Public School Employees Retirement System (that would come up in a later answer), but the cumulative totals in school funding since the 2011 budget.
Snyder posed the question that if he was cutting education, why would he have raised spending for pre-school programs?
In terms of education issues, the two also parried a question on charter schools (Schauer said they were largely de-regulated and should not be run by for-profit corporations; Snyder said they offered a choice to parents who did not want to send their children to failing schools and that they were regulated) on higher education (with Schauer saying he was committed to increasing funding for colleges, increasing need-based scholarships and working a student loan revolving fund; and Snyder saying being more innovative can help cut higher education costs, by, for example, encouraging more high school students to earn college credits).
Snyder took the first questions on taxes, using the opportunity to say Schauer voted for the MBT and that it had damaged the state’s economy. Ending that tax was critical, Snyder said, and made the state’s tax system fairer to small business owners. It ended double taxation on their business income, he said.
It was also critical to eliminate a $1.5 billion budget deficit as the MBT ended, Snyder said.
Schauer said that there were “some columns missing” from Snyder’s balance sheet on taxes. Those missing columns, Schauer said, are people. The administration initially made the deficit worse by ending the MBT and then hammered retirees with the income tax on their pensions.
Schauer said he would end the “job-killing pension tax.” In fact, he said it would be “the easiest thing I do as governor” because there are a number of Republican legislators who said they would support ending the tax.
Snyder parried then, saying working senior citizens were facing a disadvantage that pensioners did not have, as working older people had to pay income tax. In the tax changes enacted, he said, the state created a $40,000 exemption for older working families, and as well created an exclusion of the pension tax on persons age 67 or older.
He said the state created a fairer system, and it was a “mischaracterization” to call it anything else. “I think it’s fair to help working seniors,” Snyder said.
It was during the question on taxes that one of the sharpest moments occurred. To pay for ending the pension tax, Schauer said his administration would end wasteful spending and “sweetheart contracts that this governor has created, starting with his cousin’s George’s $41 million furniture contract.”
“Let’s get the fact straight on that one,” Snyder said. The contract is with Haworth furniture, and his cousin is a distributor for Haworth.
“I think it is somewhat disgusting that he’s impinging on a good person’s name,” Snyder said. The contract had been in place for 20 years and was last reviewed and renewed before he took office. “So this is a professional politician making up stuff,” Snyder said.
Schauer also came out swinging on the issue of the improved economy, saying the state had not seen all the jobs it had lost in the Great Recession restored.
But Snyder jumped on the question, saying job growth had been robust. While Michigan had not recaptured all the jobs lost, he said it started much further in the hole than other states, and now had an unemployment rate that matched many states that had taken Michigan jobs.
In fact, Snyder said polling showed most Michigan residents think the state is headed in the right direction and that is the first time residents have believed that way in more than a decade.
In terms of transportation and road funding, Schauer blasted Snyder for not winning a resolution to the issue, referring to his first legislative term in 1997 when the gas tax was last raised. Then-Governor John Engler was able to solve the problem, he said, by not going AWOL, a slam at Snyder for attending fundraising events out of state.
Snyder retorted that if in 1997 the Legislature had come up with a proposal other than a simple gasoline tax increase the state might not have faced the current funding problems.
The issue, however, offered one of the few opportunities for the two men to agree on an issue as they both supported development of mass transit. And Snyder could take credit for a Detroit-area regional agreement on mass transit finally coming together under his administration.
In one of the newer issues to come out of the debate, Schauer said he was “not questioning whether the City of Detroit needed to go bankrupt.” Snyder had challenged him on how he would have allowed for the payment of $9 billion in liabilities if the city had not gone bankrupt.
Schauer also said he would not have allowed for an emergency manager and worked on the issue himself. He insisted he would not have harmed the pensions of city workers.
Snyder praised city workers for joining in the Grand Bargain to help finance the city coming out of bankruptcy.
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