Poll shows Cherry vulnerable to primary challenge, but from who?

Lt. Gov. John Cherry at the Michigan International Speedway (Creative Commons photo by People for Cherry via Flickr)

A new survey of 600 Democrats in Southeast Michigan by Denno Noor Polling found that while Lt. Gov. John Cherry has a clear and sizable lead over his declared opponents in the race for the Democratic nomination for governor in 2010, nearly two-thirds of respondents are still undecided in the race. Those results are prompting speculation that Cherry may be vulnerable to a strong primary challenger: The question is, who could mount such a challenge?

According to the Detroit Free Press, Cherry was favored by 19 percent of the poll respondents. His two declared primary challengers, State Rep. Alma Wheeler Smith and former State Rep. John Freeman, were far behind with 3 percent each. But nearly two-thirds said they were still undecided.

Bill Ballenger, editor of Inside Michigan Politics, told Michigan Messenger that while this poll clearly indicates that Cherry is vulnerable to a strong primary challenge, he doesn’t foresee anyone beating him.

The poll found that the second most popular candidate in the Democratic race was Michigan House Speaker Andy Dillon, with 7 percent. But the Redford Township lawmaker is not a gubernatorial candidate at this point, despite some speculation out there linking his recent proposal to combine all state public employee health plans to him quietly dipping his feet into the 2010 gubernatorial waters.

Ballenger said he thinks that a Dillon run is unlikely to happen and even less likely to succeed.

“Dillon has basically alienated his base with his health care pension proposal,” Ballenger said. “It would be one thing if he’d come up with this tremendous proposal that energized the base on his behalf, but he hasn’t. And all he’s done is really reinforced all the support that Cherry has anyway. So I don’t see anything happening unless something develops legislatively that would result in some kind of triumph for Dillon that would have a lot of the interest groups in the Democratic Party saying, ‘you know, maybe this is a good idea and maybe we ought to give this guy credit.’ I just see that as a very unlikely scenario.”

Longtime Capitol reporter Tim Skubick agrees. Appearing on the Declaring Independence radio show two weeks ago, Skubick said: “In the end, I don’t think Dillon can run in the Democratic primary. How does organized labor rally around a guy who they believe is trying to take away their benefits? It defies logic. I don’t think he gets in the Democratic race.”

Ballenger and Skubick both agreed that Dillon’s recent health care proposal was not made for political gain, that he really believes that it’s the right thing to do. Both men called Dillon a “policy wonk” rather than a consummate politician.

In the end, Ballenger said, while Cherry “obviously would not be the ideal Democratic candidate for governor for a variety of reasons,” he does not see anyone credibly challenging him in the primary. It’s not just about having a group of people willing to vote for someone else, Ballenger said. Instead, “the question is how, if you’re Andy Dillon or one of these other candidates, how do you get the special interest support and the money to try and beat Cherry in a primary?”

Skubick agreed, saying: “It’s Cherry’s race to lose. I just don’t see anybody, including House Speaker Andy Dillon, coming out of left field and wrestling this nomination away from him. He has lined up district support, congressional district support, grassroots support. If he loses this nomination, it would be an absolutely unbelievable political story. I just don’t think it’s gonna happen.”

But does the vulnerability that this poll exposed on the part of Cherry make the lieutenant governor a weak candidate in the general election in 2010? It does, Ballenger said, but “you gotta remember who they’re up against — the Republican Party, and they are even more inept in terms of how they’ve handled things in the last five or six years. The Republican Party has just hemorrhaged in this state. The Democratic Party has gained something like 6 percent at base party strength, which is quite a big swing in that time.”

“John Cherry may be a weak, flawed nominee for the Democrats,” Ballenger said, “but the question is, who is the Republican nominee gonna be? And if that nominee has got weaknesses of his own then John Cherry can beat him. You can’t beat something with nothing and John Cherry is something, even if it’s not much.”