Congressmen-elect Mark Schauer and Gary Peters

Gary Peters took to the sunny streets of downtown Royal Oak on Wednesday to thank his new constituents for their support and ask for their input as he prepared to head to Washington as the new congressman for Michigan’s 9th District.

“What’s the major issue you want me to focus on when I go to Washington?” Peters asked passersby on Main Street as small army of media and campaign staff, weary but happy, followed behind him.

Peters’ first public foray after the election came just 12 hours after news that he’d defeated eight-term incumbent Republican Joe Knollenberg by at least 8 points in Tuesday’s election (thousands of Pontiac absentee ballots, which will likely favor Peters, remain uncounted).

“It feels great,” Peters, 49, said of his victory. “It was the end of a lot of work. It’s nice to see it all come together on Election Day. And Day One we’re on the ground talking to voters, ready to roll up our sleeves.”

Peters’ defeat of Knollenberg, 74, represents a sea change for Oakland County, which has been represented in Congress by a Republican since the Depression.

Knollenberg had won re-election handily each term until 2006, when his margin of victory was just 6 points over Democrat Nancy Skinner. Peters, a former state senator and lottery commissioner, brought experience and the support of the national Democratic Party, which kicked in $2 million of support, to the race.

Oakland County supported Democrat Barack Obama over Republican John McCain for president, 56 to 42 percent, a near mirror of the split between Peters and Knollenberg. In his concession speech Tuesday, Knollenberg blamed a “perfect storm” of support for Obama and Democratic fund raising for his defeat.

But Peters disputed that view while walking in Royal Oak, pointing to victories by incumbent county Republicans like L. Brooks Patterson for executive and Mike Bouchard for sheriff as evidence that Democrats weren’t just riding Obama’s coattails.

“It was our message that resonated with voters,” Peters said. “It’s clear that voters were splitting their tickets. You have to ‘win’ your race. You cannot win a race against a 16-year entrenched incumbent by just expecting a wave to come through. A 16-year entrenched incumbent should be able to ride out any wave.”

The wave Peters rode, he said, was that his volunteers, who numbered 3,000, knocked on 250,000 doors and made 200,000 phone calls in the campaign’s final four days.

Peters will be joined in Washington by Democratic State Sen. Mark Schauer of Battle Creek, who defeated incumbent Republican Rep. Tim Walberg in the 7th District. Schauer, 47, outraised Walberg, $2 million to $1.7 million, and defeated him Tuesday, 48.8 percent to 46.5 percent, according to the Detroit Free Press.

Conservative Republicans ran Walberg against moderate Republican incumbent Joe Schwarz in 2006. Schwarz, a physician, went on to run the successful efforts to pass Proposal 2 in favor of stem-cell research. And Schauer made the argument that Walberg was too conservative for the changing district.

Both the Peters and Schauer victories were predicted as likely by political observers, due to the combined influx of Democratic resources into both campaigns with the pullout from Michigan by the McCain campaign. The day after McCain announced his withdrawal, state GOP Chairman Saul Anuzis sent out a fund-raising e-mail calling the pullout “a tough blow” that “leaves a tremendous hole in our ground campaign that we must now fill.”

Various polls leading up to the race gave both Democrats either a slight lead or placed them in a dead heat with their Republican opponents. State Democrats had also hoped that Bob Alexander would defeat Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers in Michigan’s 8th District. But a lack of financial support from national Democrats combined with Republican Party support for Rogers — a major fund-raiser for the party — and a negative advertising blitz against Alexander won Rogers another term.

But even with Alexander’s defeat, Michigan’s U.S. House delegation now shifts to to majority of Democrats, from nine Republicans and six Democrats to eight Democrats and seven Republicans. The state’s governor and both U.S. senators are also Democrats.

With Michigan facing an expected record turnout of voters, voters rights advocates are concerned that poll workers’ confusion over a new law requiring identification when voting — but allowing voters without ID to sign an affidavit instead — and partisan attempts to block people from voting will lead to vote suppression.

“Our sense of things is really that [suppression] is going to happen in areas where it’s always happened — low-income and African-American precincts,” said Mary Bejian, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan. “I would expect that to be especially true this time not only because of expected high voter turnout but high expected African-American voter turnout.”

Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land has predicted more than 5 million people will vote in this election, which is 70 percent of those registered. In 2004, 4.8 million eligible voters cast ballots.

Along with the uptick in expected turnout, Michigan’s new voter identification law could create problems at the polls. The secretary of state estimates that 370,000 Michigan residents do not have photo identification. Those people — or anyone else who fails to bring ID with them Tuesday — can still vote so long as they sign an affidavit swearing they are who they say they are.

However, the cities of Allen Park and Grand Blanc during this year’s primary season informed their residents in town newsletters that they must bring ID with them to vote and made no mention of the option to sign an affidavit instead.

“If they don’t know about [the affidavit option], poll workers probably don’t either,” Bejian said. “That’s the kind of problem that’s going to hold up lines.” The ACLU immediately wrote a letter to Allen Park officials informing them of their error, and the city responded effectively, she said.

“Allen Park has a fairly new election administration and simply didn’t understand the law and were very appreciative that we spoke with them,” she said. The city took out a newspaper ad days before the primary, and the city clerk did several radio and cable spots explaining the affidavit option to the public.

The other area of major concern for voters’ rights advocates is what Bejian called “unnecessary challengers, who throw up challenges willy-nilly and poll workers not trained to deal with fraudulent challenges.”

Organizations like the Michigan Election Coalition and the Washington, D.C.-based non-profit Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law are working together to closely monitor the election — especially any challenges to voters. The Lawyers’ Committee is training mobile legal teams of law students, paralegals and lawyers around the country to deal with challengers and has created a hotline (866-OUR-VOTE) for voters to report problems. The NAACP and the Barack Obama campaign also have hotlines.

The Michigan Election Coalition, a collection of groups like the ACLU, the AFL-CIO, the Michigan State Conference NAACP and others, plans to have hundreds of trained non-partisan challengers in place in precincts around the state to monitor and challenge the partisan challengers. If a coalition challenger encounters possible voter suppression, he or she will call the Lawyers’ Committee hotline and the committee will dispatch one of its mobile teams to the precinct.

Tierney Eaton, the Michigan Election Coalition’s coordinator, said she’s especially concerned about first-time voters on college campuses and in socioeconomically diverse communities like Warren, Southfield and Sterling Heights.

“It’ll be great to have those people [the monitors] on the ground,” Eaton said. “But I don’t think you can take anything for granted in this election. It’s really about being prepared.”

The ACLU also plans to have extra monitors in Macomb County to ensure election officials there don’t illegally use foreclosed-homes lists to prevent voters from casting a ballot, a possible scenario first reported by Michigan Messenger.

Voter suppression can take other insidious forms: In 2004, the ACLU heard anecdotes that in Flint, a city with a large African-American and lower-income population, voters were approached by people posing as poll workers as they waited in line and asked if they had any outstanding arrest warrants, owed child support and could pass a literacy test, questions that are “likely to make vulnerable voters go home,” Bejian said.

There is encouraging news: City clerks have been planning for the large voter turnout by assigning more voting stations to their precincts, which should ease lines. The state of Michigan recommends that a precinct have one voting station per 100 voters.

In Flint, a city with 93,000 registered voters and 61 precincts, City Clerk Inez Brown said she has been preparing “all year” for the election and plans to “put as many stations in each precinct as it will accommodate.” Benton Harbor’s 10,541 registered voters will have 100 machines. Pontiac, with 47,000 registered voters, will have at least 16 stations in each of its 28 precincts. Port Huron’s 11 precincts will have different numbers of stations depending on precinct size, but the city is committed to a 1-100 ratio.

Some of Michigan’s smaller, whiter communities are lagging the larger, more diverse ones: Marquette’s 15,166 registered voters will occupy seven precincts, each with 16 voting stations (that’s 135 voters per station); Grosse Pointe’s 4,677 voters will share 26 stations in two precincts (180 voters per station); and the 2,121 voters in one of Bloomfield Hills’ two precincts will have 15 stations (141 voters per station).

In Detroit, City Clerk Janice Winfrey has implemented a line marshal program where trained marshals will answer voters’ questions, help with crowd control and verify precinct locations by communicating with poll workers inside the precinct who will be able to look voters up on laptops.

“You can never say what’s going to happen but I think people have really mobilized since 2000,” Eaton said. “Even from 2004 I think we’ve made great gains. But there’s still a lot of work to do.”

Congressional candidates for districts MI-07 and MI-09 (graphic: RealClearPolitics.com)

John McCain’s decision to suspend his campaign in Michigan might be the decisive factor that forces at least two incumbent Republican congressmen out of office.

U.S. Reps. Joe Knollenberg and Tim Walberg were already facing fierce fights against well-funded Democratic opponents when the financial crisis hit, seemingly resulting in a jump in Obama’s lead in state polls — a wide enough lead that McCain packed up his “Victory Centers” and moved his staff and funds to other states.

“Any time your standard bearer in a election year basically throws up the white flag and says, ‘I quit,’ and leaves the field of battle, it has to be a body blow to the whole party, on down to the candidates,” said Bill Ballenger, editor of Inside Michigan Politics. “It’s injurious.”

A Quinnipiac/Wall Street Journal/Washington Post.com poll released Oct. 14 put Obama ahead by 16 points in Michigan, 54 percent to McCain’s 38 percent. That was up from a six-point lead in late September. In the same poll, 60 percent of voters said the economy was the “single most important issue” in determining whom they supported.

With his opponent holding such a commanding lead, McCain’s decision to pull his resources from the state and put them in battlegrounds he can still win would appear to make sense. But it leaves state Republicans to go it alone, with no help from McCain with fundraising, ads, literature or volunteers. The day after McCain announced his withdrawal, state GOP Chairman Saul Anuzis sent out a fundraising e-mail calling the pullout “a tough blow” that “leaves a tremendous hole in our ground campaign that we must now fill.”

Knollenberg, of Bloomfield Township in the 9th Congressional District, faces Gary Peters, the former state lottery commissioner, while Walberg, of Tipton in the 7th Congressional District, is battling state Sen. Mark Schauer. Both challengers have strong support from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which has poured resources into the races.

Last week the Rothenberg Political Report, a respected handicapper of congressional races, upgraded the Democrats’ chances in both races, giving Peters a slight advantage and listing the Walberg seat as a tossup. Various polls give both Democrats either a slight lead or place them in a dead heat with their Republican opponents.

Peters’ campaign raised $650,000 in the most recent quarter; last week it had $472,000 on hand. That leaves the campaign still heavily lagging Knollenberg, who has $1.9 million on hand. But campaign spokesman Clark Pettig said Peters would outwork Knollenberg.

Earlier polling results for MI-07, MI-09 (graphic: RealClearPolitics.com)

“Without the John McCain campaign doing the heavy lifting for him, in particular with its volunteer base and voter contact, there’s no way Joe Knollenberg can compete on the ground,” Pettig said. “We’ve knocked 115,000 doors and reached out to 200,000 voters. Mr. Knollenberg does not have the grassroots support to match that effort.”

Schauer is in a stronger financial position: He has $856,158 in cash available, while Walberg has $691,635. Walberg is a first-term congressman, a conservative who defeated moderate incumbent Joe Schwarz in the 2006 Republican primary with the support of the Club for Growth, a PAC that funds anti-tax, free market candidates. Schwarz has endorsed Schauer in the current race.

Walberg was quoted in a Sept. 7 story in The Ann Arbor News saying of McCain, “We’ll help him and he’ll help us, there’s no doubt about it.” The story went on: “Walberg said he hopes McCain’s success in Michigan and Washtenaw County in the 2000 election, particularly among moderate Democrats and independents, can help offset the anticipated support countywide for his Democratic challenger, Mark Schauer.”

Neither Walberg nor Knollenberg’s campaign returned calls for comment.

Though some observers have speculated that the seats of Republican Reps. Mike Rogers and Thaddeus McCotter could also be at risk, political observers said that was unlikely. Pollster Mark Grebner recently conducted a mini-poll that showed Democratic challenger Bob Alexander closing in on Rogers. But Bernie Porn, of polling firm EPIC-MRA, said only a Democratic “tsunami” would boot anyone other than Knollenberg and Walberg. Michael Traugott, professor of communication studies at the University of Michigan, said the election would have to be of “landslide proportions” in order to sweep other Michigan Democrats into Congress.

“What’s happened in the last 10 to 20 years is seats have been made safer and safer, more partisan,” Traugott said.

“Knollenberg and Walberg are the only two [races] that are seriously competitive. And these seats were the most competitive by their boundaries to begin with.”

Both challengers should get a boost from Obama, who is expected to pull many first-time voters, along with large numbers of African-Americans. That could especially help Peters, whose district includes Pontiac.

“There’s a real intensity in terms of the intent to turn out voters, especially African-Americans and younger voters,” Porn said of the Obama campaign. “There were claims in the past by Kerry and Gore that they’d do well among younger voters, but this is different. There’s a genuine intensity among younger voters, and you can see that in the numbers of new registrants. They’re voting for Obama. We can’t assume they’ll vote Democratic down the ticket but I would be surprised if they didn’t.”

That high Democratic turnout could combine with a reduced Republican turnout to mean the death knell for Knollenberg and Walberg’s congressional careers.

“When McCain withdraws and reduces substantially the amount of money he spends in the state, it’s going to significantly impact mailings, ads, appearances at events that get on the news,” Traugott said. “All of these things will diminish turnout among Republicans and likely diminish support for Republican candidates.”

Though Republican turnout in the state is unlikely to suffer heavily as a result of McCain’s withdrawal, a small reduction could mean the difference between victory and defeat in tight races, Ballenger said.

“People just aren’t that motivated to get out and vote if they think there’s really no contest,” he said. “Both sides in a political campaign want to motivate their base voters, want to impress upon them that every vote counts. Well, if all of a sudden your flagbearer says ‘Forget about it, I’m pulling out, I’m going to get wiped out,’ what kind of message does that send? It’s not going to motivate people who were on the fence about voting.”

Former president Bill Clinton speaks Friday on behalf of CureMichigan. (photo: Alexa Stanard)

Former President Bill Clinton rallied a star-studded Michigan political crowd Friday to support a ballot proposal that would permit embryonic stem-cell research in the state.

Clinton appeared at the upscale fund-raiser hosted by CureMichigan, the organization backing Proposal 2, which will appear on the Nov. 4 ballot.  He called support for stem-cell research “the pro-life position” and cited the research’s potential benefits both to those facing health problems like Alzheimer’s and Lou Gehrig’s disease and to Michigan’s struggling economy.

“There isn’t a person here who doesn’t know someone who could be benefited by this work,” Clinton told the crowd of several hundred in Waterford Township, northwest of Detroit. “This is not about cloning. This is about letting Michigan do what can be done in almost any other state.”

Michigan is one of five states with the most severe restrictions on embryonic stem cell research, along with Arkansas, North Dakota, South Dakota and Louisiana.

The proposed constitutional amendment would allow human embryos to be used for research permitted under federal law, so long as the embryos were created for fertility treatment purposes, would be discarded unless used for research, and were donated by the individual seeking fertility treatment.

The fight over the proposal has heated up in recent weeks, with the opposition, MiCause, running television ads claiming the proposal would lead to human cloning and to higher taxes. But Michigan bans cloning and the proposal says nothing about new taxes.  MiCause is funded by Michigan Right to Life and the Michigan Catholic Conference.

Dr. Joe Schwarz, a former Republican congressman who chairs CureMichigan, preceded Clinton to the podium Friday and called the arguments against stem-cell research “stunningly disingenuous.”

Gov. Jennifer Granholm speaking at Friday

Clinton’s talk followed remarks by Laura Jackson, a 19-year-old Livonia resident who was paralyzed from the neck down after a fall during cheerleader tryouts when she was 14. Told she had only four or five years to live, Jackson traveled to Beijing with her father for a stem-cell-based treatment. She immediately regained some feeling in her neck and shoulders and the ability to breathe without a ventilator for 15 minutes at a time.

“Stem-cell research will tell us how to get Laura to walk again,” Clinton said. “You’re not going to lose this unless people go into the voting booth not knowing the facts.”

Gov. Jennifer Granholm told the crowd she was there “on behalf of our state that needs both the jobs that would come from this but also the cures,” and Clinton also addressed the research’s promise for Michigan’s struggling economy.

“There is not a state in this country that has been hit harder by the economic adversity of this decade,” Clinton said. “This is actually a harbinger of a new economy if we don’t mess it up.  The future of our economy will rest more with our brains than with our backs.”

The event was held at the Taubman Air Terminal at the Oakland County International Airport, owned by billionaire A. Alfred Taubman, who last week announced he would give $22 million to the Taubman Institute for Medical Research at the University of Michigan.

An Oct. 9 Detroit News profile of Taubman highlighted his devotion to promoting stem-cell research and quoted Sean Morrison, the scientist in charge of the U-M stem-cell biology center:  “‘He’s the guy in Michigan. A lot of people have done a lot, there are other names, but I don’t think anyone has done as much as Alfred Taubman to make a difference on this issue here.’”

Clinton told the crowd that he agreed to attend the event after Taubman invited him during a visit to his office in Harlem a couple of weeks ago. Stem-cell research, Clinton said, “was all he wanted to talk about.”

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama with wife Michelle and vice presidential candidate Sen. Joe Biden in Detroit, Mich. (photo: Barack Obama via Flickr.com)

Barack Obama’s message for Detroit on Sunday was clear: The economy is a hot mess, but he’s ready to fix it.

With the meltdown on Wall Street dominating the headlines, tens of thousands of people packed Woodward Avenue in Detroit’s cultural district today to hear Obama and running mate Joe Biden deliver thunderous indictments of the Republicans (especially in Biden’s case) and the delineation by Obama of an impassioned vision for an alternative to four more years of executive rule by the GOP.

“I know these are difficult times and nowhere have they been more difficult than in Michigan. Nowhere have they been more difficult than in Detroit,” Obama said. “But I know that we can steer our way out of this crisis.”

Obama focused nearly all of his speech on the economy, with the Wall Street debacle receiving particular focus.

“Now that we’re fixing the mess on Wall Street we need to bring the same sense of urgency to helping those on Main Street,” he said. “What we’re seeing in the last few weeks is nothing less than the final verdict on this [trickle-down] financial philosophy.”

Polls indicate that the economic crisis is benefiting Obama, especially in Michigan: A Detroit Free Press poll of 602 likely Michigan voters last week put the Illinois senator’s lead over John McCain at 13 points, 51 percent to 38 percent.

Banner over crowd waiting for Sen. Barack Obama (Photo: Alexa Stanard)

The Detroit rally came one week before the national voter-registration deadline, and it seemed like everyone, Obama campaign volunteers working the throngs on the street on up to Obama himself, was pushing the crowd hard to register their friends and family.

In the crowd was a Who’s Who of Michigan Democratic politics, including Gov. Jennifer Granholm and Sens. Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow.

The foursome (both candidates were joined onstage by their wives, Michelle Obama and Jill Biden) strode out the doors of the majestic Detroit Public Library to take the stage about 20 minutes late, after speeches by Detroit Mayor Ken Cockrel and Denise Illitch, daughter of the scion of the Illitch empire and a candidate this fall for the University of Michigan Board of Regents. Illitch’s less than rousing introduction had the long-waiting crowd impatiently sighing for Obama.

Biden took the stage first and almost immediately lit into McCain.

“We saw a man [during the first presidential debate] who was a little out of touch with the American people,” Biden said. “We need more than a soldier, we need a wise leader…Nothing is more important than judgment in the next president. But what John McCain has demonstrated is that he lacks the judgment.”

In addition to employing his favorite word – “literally” – at least a half-dozen times, Biden rolled out a fresh zinger aimed at McCain: “John McCain has said he would follow Osama bin Laden to the gates of hell. Barack Obama will follow him to where he lives and then send him to hell. Because he lives in Pakistan, in Afghanistan. He doesn’t live in Iraq.”

For his part, Obama didn’t shy away from tackling his opponent.

“John McCain says he’ll take on corporate lobbyists, but he doesn’t mention that he put seven of the biggest lobbyists in Washington on his campaign,” he said. “If you think they’re working to get him elected to put themselves out of business, well, I’ve got a bridge to sell you in Alaska.”

Democratic veep nominee swings hard at McCain

Barack Obama may be just learning to throw verbal punches at his opponents, but his running mate energetically wielded a hammer during a visit to a Macomb County high school Monday morning.

Joe Biden vivaciously lived up to his reputation for pugnacity during the rally at South Lake High School in St. Clair Shores, rolling out oratorical zingers designed to make starkly clear the choice between Obama and John McCain to the hundreds of attendees.

“Eight years [after the campaign of President George Bush] we have another Republican nominee who’s telling us the exact same thing — that this time things will be different,” Biden said. “This time he’ll put country before party. Folks, we’ve seen this movie before. And we know the sequel is always worse than the original.”

With grim news from Wall Street as a backdrop for his speech, Biden focused largely on economic themes, referring to Washington as “a culture where the very few wealthy and powerful have a seat at the table and the rest of us are on the menu.” He repeatedly slammed McCain for being out of touch with regular Americans and for the Arizona senator’s reliance on campaign tactics “perfected by Karl Rove.”

After a soft start, with condolences offered to Democratic U.S. Rep Sander Levin, whose wife just died, Biden rapidly ignited the fire in his belly.

“John is profoundly out of touch,” he said of McCain. “If all you do is walk the halls of power, all you’ll hear is the wants of the powerful.

“John McCain could say as recently as this morning that the fundamentals of the economy are strong,” he continued. “Ladies and gentlemen, I could walk from here to Lansing and not run into a single person who thought our economy was doing well, unless I ran into John McCain. He just doesn’t understand what average middle-class people are going through. He doesn’t think we have any responsibility to help the people who are hurting.”

The somewhat less-than-capacity crowd tilted a bit older and less racially diverse than a typical Obama gathering, likely reflecting both the demographics of Macomb County and Biden’s appeal to white, working-class voters.

Indeed, the president of UAW local 235 introduced Biden, and several members of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades were in the audience. Biden began his remarks by saying he “wouldn’t be a senator if it weren’t for the UAW.”

He also decried the report, first broken by Michigan Messenger’s Eartha Jane Melzer, that Macomb County Republican Party officials planned to use foreclosure listings to challenge voters at the polls.

Biden spoke throughout his 35-minute speech of the “dignity” of work, of the respect that comes from earning a paycheck and of the uncertainty facing Americans who are struggling to make ends meet.

“[This campaign] is about what we value as a people,” Biden said. “It’s not just about jobs. It’s about dignity … It’s not just about a paycheck. It’s about respect. That’s why we’re in this race, to restore a sense of dignity and pride.”

Vice presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin speaks at a McCain-Palin campaign event held at Freedom Hill Amphitheatre, Sterling Heights, Mich., with John and Cindy McCain and Rep. Candice Miller (photo: Minehaha Forman)

To really get a clear look at the America each of the presidential contenders is appealing to, it helps to attend back-to-back rallies — such submersion makes the comparisons fresher and potentially more striking.

Fortunately, Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama provided such an opportunity recently, with McCain holding a rally in Sterling Heights on Friday and Obama hosting a town hall in Farmington Hills on Monday. Both events were open to the public, allowing an observer a chance to see who is attracted to each candidate, not just whom the candidates want to attract (as is the case with invitation-only events, like the “town halls” McCain holds).

It would be challenging to consciously choreograph two events more distinct from one another. My coverage of the two events contrasted the speeches of the candidates. But the events themselves — the crowd, the atmosphere, the signs and chants — deserve their own look.

First, the McCain rally. At Freedom Hill Ampitheatre, a crowd of just under 7,000 listened rapturously and cheered boisterously as McCain’s personal story of captivity during the Vietnam War was told, over and over again, by a long string of speakers. The McCain strategy of plucking the few people of color from the audience and seating them behind the candidate in view of the cameras seemed to have been abandoned: The hundred or so people on the stage were almost all white.

As the two-hour warm-up for the 30-minute candidate appearance progressed, the growing crowd became much more interesting than any speaker onstage (well, except the lone African-American speaker, a woman who derided welfare queens and said she’d been voting Democratic her whole life because during a mock election in the fourth grade her father told her to vote for Democrats. Huh?) The audience was a veritable visual feast: The band of young nuns in full habits, carrying hand-painted posters that said things like “Sarah Palin rocks.” The woman near the “Women for McCain” table smoking and wearing a T-shirt that read in large block letters, “OPRAH SUCKS.” The Abe and Mary Todd Lincoln impersonators. The high school cheerleaders leading a cheer from the base of the stage.

But that was just the fun stuff. The surreal abounded as well: A band warming up the crowd with Aretha Franklin’s “Chain of Fools,” a song that Obama had sung earlier that week during his visit to Hart Plaza in Detroit (you know, the actual Motown), tweaking the words to sing “Change, change, change.” A crowd with nearly no nonwhite faces dancing (or doing something that was meant to be dancing) to an 8-year-old belting out the theme song from the “The Jeffersons.” And, as at the Republican National Convention, an audience that repeatedly and inexplicably burst into chants of “U.S.A.,” as though the opponent were either foreign or hated the United States. Which, come to think of it, is exactly what Republican operatives would like the public to think about Obama.

Then there was the Obama town hall. Held in a high school gym, the event drew a capacity crowd that looked, as my colleague Minehaha Forman said, “like ‘Sesame Street.’” It truly was a rainbow coalition, with audience members of all hues squeezing into the packed room. No music warmed up the crowd, and just one speaker and a couple of campaign volunteers preceded Obama and local resident John Ashcraft, an unemployed auto-industry worker, to the floor. Chants were sparse and ran along the lines of “Yes, we can.” Yet, despite the lack of rousing music or nationalist chanting, the crowd was beside itself with excitement. The Obama campaign has rightly derided McCain’s attempt to portray him as a vacuous celebrity. But there’s also no question that Obama is a rock star. He’d barely entered the room before a woman grabbed him forcefully and pulled his head down to kiss his cheek. (Obama’s Secret Service detail no doubt earns its wages.) Audience members spoke of seeing him multiple times, traveling to his speeches around the state as though they were following the Grateful Dead. Obama talked of his plans for the country and criticized McCain’s, but at no point did the tone turn snide. As he spoke, the air of thrill and excitement hung over the room, and it was easy to look around and think: This is the country I want to live in. The one where people of all backgrounds happily come together, led by a man who appeals to our higher selves.

Much has been made in the last few days of McCain’s bump in the polls and Obama’s less-than-gangbusters fund raising. But campaigns, in the end, are won on the ground. They’re won by a well-organized army of volunteers who know their neighbors and make sure they’re registered to vote, who talk to their friends and family about the candidate they support and who show up on election day to drive people to the polls. At every Obama event, anyone who takes the microphone, including Obama, makes a clear and specific plea for volunteer support. Monday’s town hall was no different. Just before Obama spoke, two of his campaign’s young female volunteers — both from Oakland County — announced their recent successes in registering voters locally and told the audience about a volunteer opportunity this weekend. They asked the audience to take out its cell phones and text the campaign in order to receive updates by phone. They mentioned the sign-up tables in the hall. In short, they provided several means of capturing and channeling all the enthusiasm in the room.

At Freedom Hill, none of the many speakers made one mention of how the audience could get involved in McCain’s campaign.

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama appears in Farmington Hills, Mich. on Monday evening. (Photo: Minehaha Forman)

Barack Obama brought his message of change — and a newfound willingness to take some hard swipes at his opponent — to a town-hall meeting in Farmington Hills, in the state that has become ground zero for the nation’s economic woes.

In a wide-ranging talk Obama told the capacity crowd at North Farmington High School that he, not John McCain, was the candidate who would jump-start the economy, make health care more affordable, invest in the auto industry and lower taxes for most Americans.

The event’s tone and content were part of a renewed focus by Obama on wresting back the mantle of change candidate from McCain, who has launched an aggressive advertising campaign showcasing his reputation for being a maverick.

“McCain doesn’t seem to know what ordinary families are going through,” Obama said. “He seems to be out of touch. When he says the economy has made great progress under George Bush, he must not be talking to people here in Michigan. When he says the fundamentals of the economy are sound, he must not be talking to people here in Michigan.

“When he brags about voting with George Bush 90 percent of the time, what kind of judgment does that show?” he continued. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to take a 10 percent chance on change.”

Challenging McCain’s and Palin’s lies

Obama, who has been criticized for being too laid-back as the Republicans have bared their fangs, seemed to find his inner fire when he addressed contentions by the McCain campaign that he would raise taxes.

“[McCain] wants to leave 100 million people not getting a dime in tax relief,” Obama said. “Then he’s got the nerve to run commercials here in Michigan saying I want to raise taxes. Let me tell you something, I plan to cut taxes for 95 percent of the American people…What McCain is offering isn’t change, it’s the same old stale, trickle-down economics. We have tried this for eight years and it hasn’t worked.”

Earlier Monday, Pennsylvania Gov. Edward Rendell accused the McCain campaign of “lying” about Obama’s tax plan in a conference call with reporters, the New York Times reported.

“I call on Sen. McCain to stop misleading, stop lying, about Sen. Obama’s tax plan,” he said.

Obama also homed in on Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, McCain’s vice presidential nominee. Palin has repeatedly touted her opposition to her state’s notorious “bridge to nowhere,” but Obama drew attention to her early support of the project that became the last word in government pork.

“I’ve got to admit these folks are shameless,” he said. “The record is indisputable. [Palin] hired a lobbyist as mayor, and got millions in pork. As governor she supported the bridge to nowhere … She’s out there acting like she’s been fighting this thing the whole time. I’m not going to describe in an ad that I did something that’s the opposite of what I did.”

Contrasting styles, audience

Obama spoke for more than an hour with voters in Farmington Hills, the largest city in Michigan’s second-largest county, taking several questions from the audience after delivering his stump speech. Question topics ranged from Obama’s stance on Israel to civil liberties, the composition of the Supreme Court and federal support for the auto industry.

In many ways the campaign event was study in contrasts with McCain’s visit to Freedom Hill Amphitheatre in Sterling Heights on Friday. Obama was preceded by just one speaker, state House candidate Vicki Barnett, before coming to the floor with local resident John Ashcraft, an auto industry worker who lost his job and who introduced Obama.

Obama spoke for more than an hour including the question-and-answer portion — about four times as long as McCain, who took no questions. Obama’s town hall was open to the public; McCain’s previous town halls have been by invitation only, heavily curtailing the chances he would get a wild-card question.

Obama also directly addressed Michigan concerns — the housing foreclosure crisis, the struggling auto industry, unemployment. Finally, his richly diverse audience contrasted sharply with that of McCain’s — probably less than 1 percent of the roughly 7,000 attendees there to see McCain and Palin at Freedom Hill last week were not white.

Vice presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin speaks at a McCain-Palin campaign event held at Freedom Hill Amphitheatre, Sterling Heights, Mich., with John and Cindy McCain and Rep. Candice Miller (photo: Minehaha Forman)

John McCain has finally held an old-fashioned campaign rally in Michigan — the kind the public gets to attend.

After months of carefully scripted, invitation-only campaign events (some closed to the public and the media entirely), McCain and Sarah Palin rolled out of St. Paul, Minn., after the Republican National Convention for their first full day of joint public appearances as the ticket’s presidential and vice presidential nominees. They stopped first in Cedarburg, Wis., and then arrived in Sterling Heights for Friday afternoon’s rally at the Freedom Hill Amphitheatre.

“Here’s a little warning for the big-spending, do-nothing, me-first, country-second Washington crowd: Change is coming,” McCain told a cheering audience of about 7,000 in a speech that sounded the theme of change that both campaigns are scrambling to claim.

If that line sounds familiar, it’s because it was part of McCain’s convention acceptance speech Thursday night. In fact, nearly all of his and Palin’s speeches were near-verbatim abbreviated repeats of their convention addresses, down to the punch lines.

But the crowd didn’t seem to mind that they had waited three hours to hear platitude-rich speeches repeated live. They cheerily persevered through nearly a dozen speakers before McCain and Palin arrived, about an hour after the rally was scheduled to begin, and roared at both candidates’ applause lines on the war in Iraq, reforming a corrupt Washington and the value of McCain’s military service.

Palin, especially, seemed to be sticking to a script, mentioning Michigan by name only when describing her son’s attendance of a Michigan high school.

“I owe Michigan a great big thank you,” Palin said, further warming up the crowd that had brought to its feet by the song “Eye of the Tiger” as she and McCain came onstage, along with McCain’s wife, Cindy, and their daughter. “My son spent a couple of years here near Kalamazoo and played hockey. Michigan, you took care of my boy when he was doing what he loved to do. And now that boy is a man, serving in the U.S. Army.”

McCain paid slightly more attention to where he was, telling the audience: “These are tough times for many of you. In the state of Michigan, times are tough. You’re worrying about keeping your job or finding a new one. You’re worried about keeping food on your table or even keeping your home…I intend to stand on your side.”

Neither Palin nor McCain mentioned today’s Labor Department report that the nationwide unemployment rate hit 6.1 percent in August, the highest in five years, with 605,000 jobs disappearing since the beginning of the year.

Palin made no mention of jobs, the economy, health care, energy, the foreclosure crisis, problems facing the auto industry — all significant issues in Michigan. Instead, she revisited her own record of reform in Alaska, describing her willingness to fight corruption and trim wasteful spending.

McCain homed in on some issues, like taxes and health care, though gave few specific details to support statements like: “I’ll keep taxes low and cut them where I can. My opponent will raise them. My tax cuts will create jobs. His tax increases will eliminate them…I’ve worked with both parties to fix these problems. Sen. Obama never has.”

A few kinks still need to be worked out as the McCain campaign makes the transition to an all-out national campaign: McCain’s late arrival came after nearly three hours of performances by high school bands and a cheerleading squad, and a string of of speakers that often sucked the air out of the room.

Even a former POW who was jailed with McCain for two years in Vietnam spoke for so long (20 minutes, five minutes longer than McCain himself) and so ramblingly that he managed to make the most compelling part of McCain’s biography difficult to focus on. And it was all managed by master of ceremonies U.S. Rep. Candice Miller, who seemed unaware that the microphone could project her voice without her needing to shout.

Still, McCain at least put himself before the public, if not before the media — he took no questions from the press or the audience.

Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick pled guilty Thursday morning to two felony counts of obstruction of justice stemming from his perjured testimony in a police whistleblower trial last fall. As part of a plea agreement he will serve 120 days in jail, resign today from his job as mayor of Detroit, pay $1 million in restitution, surrender his law license and serve five years’ probation, during which time he will be ineligible to run for office.

Appearing in court before Judge David Groner, Kilpatrick read a short statement admitting guilt in a case that has roiled the city for nearly a year.

“I lied under oath…with intent to mislead the court and the jury, to impede and obstruct the disposition of justice,” he said.

Kilpatrick also pled no contest in a separate case involving an assault on an officer of the court. His plea agreement in that case was similar and would be served concurrently with the sentence in the obstruction of justice case: 120 days in jail, five years’ probation and immediate resignation, to take effect no later than Sept. 18.

Kilpatrick appeared calm and collected in court as he answered Groner’s questions. His wife, Carlita, was in court with him.

So was Christine Beatty, Kilpatrick’s former chief of staff with whom he had an affair. It was the Beatty’s and Kilpatrick’s lies about the affair during the civil trial last fall that earned them both multiple felony counts of perjury, conspiracy and obstruction of justice.

Beatty has refused a plea agreement and will appear in court Sept. 11 for a pre-trial hearing. She refused to answer nearly all questions during a deposition Wednesday, citing the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

Kilpatrick will be sentenced Oct. 28. He will serve his jail time in the Wayne County Jail. A moving truck was spotted earlier this week outside the mayoral Manoogian mansion.