The Whitmer-Shirkey relationship: The gulf remains deep

We would say “bullshit.” Michigan’s Senate majority leader is a bit more refined.

Mike Shirkey would prefer to say, “Bovine secretion.” That’s what he calls the Gov. Gretchen Whitmer administration’s latest economic shutdowns on restaurants and eating at entertainment venues.

The governor’s calculation here is pretty plain.

A bunch of people indoors + eating without a mask on = COVID spread.

“I think it’s clear that the pause is working,” Whitmer said at her year’s end press conference. “We should all take credit for that.”

The Senate majority leader doesn’t share this opinion and is using the administration’s own data to prove it. If the shutdown is working, why were new COVID case numbers already going down?

If the shutdown was working, why are Wisconsin’s COVID case numbers mirroring Michigan’s when they didn’t have a restaurant shutdown?

Whitmer argues Ohio didn’t have a shutdown and their numbers are still all over the place.

Where does the back-and-forth end? It’s not, and that’s really the point.

The statewide political division of 2020 should be decelerating after the election. Instead, it’s motoring right through into 2021. The philosophical divide between the governor’s economic shutdowns designed to stop coronavirus and the Legislature’s more voluntary compliance approach has put them a functional island.

Lawmakers sail over a few bills to Whitmer now and again to keep government running. They’re sign off on more money for the unemployed and businesses. Their input on Michigan’s coronavirus containment strategy?

It’s worth about as much as this column or your letter to the editor.

The gulf is deep. Whitmer and Shirkey rarely talk, if they do at all. They negotiate through their respective staffs and individual members like Senate Appropriations Chairman Jim Stamas.

Chatfield has tried to mediate. Even-tempered and good-natured Senate Minority Leader Jim Ananich has tried to play marriage counselor to these two strong Type A personalities.

Nothing has worked.

Even former Gov. Jennifer Granholm and former Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop would tolerate being in the same room together. Not these two.

I’ve touched on it in prior columns, but here’s the recap.

It all goes back to Whitmer’s 45-cent gas tax increase proposal back in 2019. Whitmer played ball with Shirkey and Chatfield on an auto insurance reform designed to roll back rates.

This was Republicans’ big issue, not Whitmer’s, but she gave in (to the objection of her trial attorney allies). If she helped them with their issue, they’d help her with a gas tax increase to fix the damn roads, right?

Well, their best counteroffer was 20 cents spread over four years. That wasn’t good enough for the governor. She let them know. They didn’t budge. She didn’t budget. They played a game of chicken with the budget. Neither veered off the road. The head-on collision was spectacular if like watching car wrecks.

That’s the Cliff Notes version.

It’s all spilled over into how the state is responding to the country’s worst pandemic in 100 years and there’s no end in sight.

Today, it’s Michigan’s COVID response plan.

Tomorrow, it’s how the state is distributing vaccines. (Are enough going to rural areas where medical options are slim?)

The next day maybe it’s a new strain of the virus that the vaccine doesn’t work as well against.

The rough facts are staying the same. The governor believes it’s the government’s obligation to slow the virus’ spread through mandated orders to slow people’s movement. The majority leader believes if people are given the information on how to slow the virus, they will do the right thing.

“Trusting people. Stopping with the fear forecasting and instead inform, inspire and encourage our citizens is a proven and robust action,” he says.

“I’m not going to debate someone’s philosophy or opinions. I’m going to follow the science and listen to the experts. When we do that, it works,” she says.

That’s where we are.

(Kyle Melinn of the Capitol news service MIRS is at melinnky@gmail.com.)