By By JOHN EBY / Dowagiac Daily News
CASSOPOLIS – Nov. 7's mid-term election "is all about turnout," GOP U.S. Senate candidate Mike Bouchard said here Saturday morning. "If 80 percent of the people who voted for Republicans two years ago go to the polls and vote again, we sweep the ticket. But if they stay on the couch, we lose."
"It's a sprint," he said before driving off to his next stop 183 miles away in the Detroit area.
"The biggest challenge in a non-presidential year is to get people off the couch. It's that simple."
"Michigan is the only state that's lost jobs for three straight years," Bouchard said at Cass County Republican headquarters in the political sign-festooned former Arby's. "(Democrats') whole campaign is 'it's the president and it's China.' Even if the president wanted to select and cull from the herd Michigan, do you think he could? You've got 49 other states that are growing economically. The Dow's at a record high. The American economy has created more jobs than Japan and the European Union combined, and he sought Michigan out to punish us? That just doesn't make intuitive sense, but that's their whole campaign."
Driving to Cassopolis, waiting on hold for an interview on a Detroit radio station, the candidate heard ads touting Gov. Jennifer Granholm and his opponent, U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich.
"Standing up to Bush. Fighting Bush, fighting Bush, fighting Bush," he summarized the commercials' content. "What are you for? Bush isn't on the ballot. Bush is gone in two years. We've got to be for doing something to fix the economy here in Michigan and Debbie's been on the wrong side of every one of those fixes."
Bouchard noted the National Association of Manufacturers gives her a lifetime 18-percent voting record.
NFIB – small businesses – gives her a lifetime F. When she has a chance to do her job as a U.S. senator and help business to grow and be competitive in the process, she's failing us and blaming the president."
The former state senator said, "We need somebody who doesn't just talk about the problems, but solves them. You've heard this in my ads: The only bill she's written renamed a federal building. Everything else she talks about is someone else's bill, somebody else's initiative. And now, in addition to Bush, she's blaming me for everything. I could have stopped the trash. She's been in the Senate six years and I've been the sheriff eight. I guess I could have put police cars at the border, but I thought she was in the position to stop the trash – not me, but I will be soon.
"Jackson National has never outsourced one job, ever," Bouchard said. "They've created 1,300 Michigan jobs. They were quoted in the paper saying, 'Quite frankly, this doesn't make us feel very comfortable about being in Michigan,' so one of our success stories she's attacking. It just doesn't make any sense. We've got to make some changes. Otherwise, my kids and your kids are going to leave this state. Twenty-two thousand have left."
While Bush isn't on the ballot, Bouchard made it clear to Cass County Republicans that he disagrees with the president on some issues," including border security, immigration policy and spending.
"We should be vetoing some of those spending bills," Bouchard said, "but you can't blame him for Michigan's economy when you have two U.S. senators (Stabenow and Carl Levin) who are voting every time against manufacturing and won't take a position on any issue that will help companies."
A second priority for the law enforcer who was at both Ground Zero after 9/11 and in New Orleans is homeland and border security.
Bouchard serves on the FBI joint terrorism task force and knows, "We have some serious threats. Not only does (Stabenow) not understand it, she goes in the wrong direction. She's voted time and time again to cut the intelligence budget, then she complains about what's happening in the war on terror. Anybody who's in a tactical scenario, whether it's police or the military, knows the way you make sound decisions is based on sound information. Who's got what weapons and where they are. If we're going to do a drug raid, before we go in we send in CIs (confidential informants). They come out and say, 'There are three people on the couch, a baby in the back room and a shotgun by the door. Then our tactical team says, 'You, secure the baby. Make sure the baby's safe. You, take care of that shotgun. You, we're going to go to the side because the front door's got a big steel armor guard on it. Having intelligence is how you make decisions. If you're voting to cut the intelligence budget, you can't complain that we went into Iraq not finding weapons of mass destruction because our intelligence was flawed. We need somebody who understands that."
Values also distinguish the candidates, he said. "She voted against the defense of marriage. She voted against English as the national language. She voted against Social Security and illegal immigrants. She's got an F rating from the NRA (National Rifle Association). I've got an A."
Ed Darr of Dowagiac asked Bouchard about gun control, commenting, "If we eliminated guns in our homes, the terrorists have full opportunity to take over."
"Our Constitution's clear," Bouchard replied. "You have a right to own and bear arms and protect yourself and protect your family. We also know that gun control only applies to law-abiding citizens. If you passed a law saying you can't have a gun, the only ones who are going to say OK are the people who live by the law. The bad guys aren't going to put the gun down when they hit you over the head to take your purse. (Gun control) is intuitively a flawed argument. Washington, D.C., has one of the strictest gun controls. You can't own and possess a hunting shotgun in your house. Yet they have one of the highest crime rates in the country. People who follow the law ought to be able to defend themselves against people who don't."
Federal judges are going to be a "huge issue," Bouchard told county Prosecutor Victor Fitz. "It's going to get bigger. (Friday) Levin and Stabenow announced they're going to put a hold on the two judge nominations from West Michigan because one of the other senators asked for a more complete hearing on a third judge that was nominated. Stabenow and Levin said they were a package deal. I think everybody nominated for a judgeship ought to be asked every question anybody wants to ask – but then you hold a vote. We have been the worst state in America for having our judge nominations held up. It's not just affecting Michigan, it's affecting the whole circuit. They've held up judges now for six years, ever since Bush was elected, and they have a court backlog now. One guy pulled his name out. He had been nominated by Bush 41 and never got a vote. Nominated in the first term of Bush 43 and never got a vote. Nominated again by Bush 43 and still hasn't got a vote, so he said, 'Never mind.' Enough! The Constitution says 'advice and consent.' It doesn't say 'throw sand in the gears and I get my way or it's no way.' They keep misdirecting their constitutional authority."
"I have a much different philosophy," Bouchard said. "I think our judges need to interpret the laws as written – not legislate from the bench. If you want to legislate, run for the Legislature or Congress. You don't go on the bench to make laws. We could potentially have two Supreme Court justices come up in the next few years, which could very much change the direction of our country as the judges make critical decisions."
"We've lost about 1,300 police officers in the last four years," Fitz said.
Bouchard said legislators are "well-intentioned," but naive "about how the real world plays out, frankly."
"They've been moving a ton of money over to homeland security, which isn't necessarily a bad idea, but we still have traditional crime," Bouchard said. "We have meth labs, drug houses and students to keep safe in schools. I run the narcotics program for my county of 1.3 million people and we've seen cuts in my budget. They're wasting money hand over fist as homeland security spending has become pork-barrel spending. They've bought dog kennels for police departments, work-out equipment for fire departments. One city actually air-conditioned their garbage trucks with homeland security funds. If you pull all that back and spend homeland security money on risk-based assessment, where there's a likelihood of attack, we harden the target and they get the money. Other money would go back into traditional law enforcement support, because if you're supporting a local law enforcement agency, it's ready to respond to anything, whether it's man-made, like New York City, or natural, like Katrina. I worked at both of those. It's not a lack of money, it's a lack of understanding and a lack of willpower."
Democrats complain that GOP tax cuts from Reagan to Bush have hurt people, Bouchard said, "But they ignore the fact that Kennedy also pushed tax cuts because he, like the other presidents, agree that less taxes taken out of your pocket means more money in the economy to grow the jobs. If you look at the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, it didn't create a deficit. It actually brought $300 billion more into the treasury. The problem is, they were spending it faster than they could get it."
Bouchard also addressed reforming earmarking as "critical."
"Earmarks have become so expensive is that they get attached to a bill without having any name on it and no one has to vote for it," he said. "If you put transparency in the system, you put accountability in the system because people would know who put the amendment, what it was for and then how people voted. Right now it's slipped on in the back room by 'unanimous consent,' where no one has to vote," creating a climate ripe for finger-pointing later. "And some good bills get bad earmarks, dragging them through" to passage. "Like necessary funding for the troops, with someone putting on Elvisland in Idaho. Who's going to vote against body armor? They need to separate that stuff out."
In his own sheriff's office, Bouchard said he reduced his budget by $4 million while starting an aviation unit with four pilots and two helicopters, adding 14 dogs and 30 motorcycles.
"One thing we did was competitively bid out the feeding of inmates. That one line item saved us $1.6 million every day. The dogs, our mobile command center, our armored tactical units and new weapons for the whole department, tasers, they were all bought through drug dealer money," Bouchard said. "If somebody's got a drug house, we raid it, seize the house and sell it, then put (the proceeds) right back into enforcement."
Acknowledging Cass County's state Sen. Ron Jelinek, R-Three Oaks, Bouchard said, "We need Ron and a state House and a state Senate that continues to push through policies that will help employers here on the state level."