Two main goals emerged from the Democratic Party of Michigan’s spring 2022 State Endorsement Convention held in Detroit last weekend—saving democracy and making abortion a state constitutional right.
The April 9 proceedings featured speeches by Michigan’s three highest state-level elected officials, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Attorney General Dana Nessel, and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, all Democrats.
The three incumbents were all elected for the first time in November 2018.
Because of concerns over COVID-19, many of the delegates participated remotely from home. All voting was done at the convention by cellphone app.
In Benson’s acceptance speech, she told delegates that she viewed her first election as the dawn of “a new day for democracy.”
She said she stands steadfastly against those forces “seeking to replace people of integrity with people willing to interfere with [election] results.”
Benson took credit for implementing or expanding automatic voter registration, election day registration, sending absentee ballot applications in the 2020 election to every voter on the rolls at taxpayer expense, and “partnering with dozens of non-partisan organizations” to ensure voters had all the information they needed and a convenient opportunity to vote.
Benson said her work is particularly important in light of the effort of former president Donald Trump “to confuse and obfuscate the voting process.”
She said Michiganders are facing a “coordinated strategy to deceive and discourage voters from participating in the future.”
She vowed to oppose those who want to “diminish” and “block” the voice of the people from being heard.
“Democracy is on the ballot this fall,” she said.
She urged Democrats to work together to stop the efforts to dismantle our democracy by “conspiracy theorists and election deniers.”
Benson called the November 2020 election the “safest, most secure, highest turnout, election in Michigan history … We need to celebrate our success and repeat it again in 2022,” she said.
“When I was elected in 2018, I didn’t expect a global pandemic. I didn’t expect the continued polarization and radicalization of our society and the rise of domestic terrorism,” said Nessel as she accepted her party’s endorsement for the office of attorney general.
Nessel said she never expected to be “so close to having the results of a legitimate election overturned.”
And she talked about the near “mutiny in our national and state capitals.”
“We saved democracy,” she said.
“We sued Donald Trump a whole lot. Dozens of cases. We saved the Affordable Care Act.”
Nessel said she was also proud of suing then U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos over the allocation of COVID-19 funding between private and public schools and suing to shut down a major petroleum pipeline traversing the state.
Though Whitmer will not be formally nominated until the August 2 primary and is unopposed for the nomination, she told the convention, “It feels like there is so much divisiveness and hate in the world.”
Whitmer said, “Tough times call for tough people.”
She called herself “the last line of defense” against those who are “restricting the right to choose” and “weakening our democracy.”
Having vetoed a dozen election security bills passed by the GOP-controlled state legislature, Whitmer pledged to continue to use her veto pen.
Making abortion a constitutional right in Michigan, regardless of what the U.S Supreme Court may decide about Roe v. Wade, is one of Whitmer’s top priorities.
“I proactively sought to defend the right to an abortion in Michigan by filing suit to protect it,” Whitmer said.
In hopes of “pulling everyone over the finish line,” Whitmer said the Michigan Democratic Party was building “the biggest coordinated campaign for a midterm election in history.”
The Michigan Republican Party will hold its Spring Endorsement Convention on April 23 in Grand Rapids.
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