Checking in on Big Stories and Big Races in Lansing

0:00So we're about four or five months away from the primaries where our parties in our state decides who will be on the ballot for November and the person that wins November takes office and a lot of these office holders have these office holder accounts and these campaign accounts. And there's been a lot of spending and a lot of news coming out of Lansing because of the investigations that the Detroit news have been doing on our elected officials. So we thought we'd reach in or reach out to none other than Craig Mogger, the, uh, he covers state government and politics in Michigan for the Detroit news and Craig has been kind of reporting on this story quite a bit. Craig, you're on with Rocky on focus. Hey, thanks for having me. How are you? My pleasure. Great. So Craig, can you kind of tell us a little bit about some of the most egregious stories that you've uncovered? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, this started as something where we were looking into kind of a single representatives, state representatives, Karen Whitsett, who's from Detroit and basically

1:03she had stopped coming to session in August the last year. For the last four months of the year, she did not show up to vote on anything. And we're kind of wondering, well, what was she doing with her campaign money? You know, she raises money. Apparently, people were still giving her money. There are some big interest groups that still gave her checks. And what did she do with that money when she was not showing up to vote? Well, she was spending it on some things in her district. There were a bunch of mysterious expenses that we noticed in her report. So then we said, what if we look at every lawmakers expense reports to see what they're spending their donor money on? And we have done, I think, three stories now. We've spent a lot of interesting stuff. People spending money, campaign money on rent, on electric bills, on Netflix. We found one lawmaker who reported expenditures on Netflix. We found another lawmaker who had been paying her son as a campaign consultant. So there's a lot going on here. Well, so kind of unwrap this a little bit for us.

2:04Spending on Netflix, was there a reason that this candidate spent their money on Netflix? Or is that even allowed? This pretty much candidate had made two expenditures that were listed as expenditure, not candidate, I should say, a lawmaker from Macomb County. She had made two expenditures for Netflix, subscription payments for Netflix. And she said that when we brought it to her attention, she said, oh, that was a mistake. That shouldn't have happened and I'll reimburse the money. The little bit unclear how that mistake could happen. Because one, not only would you have had to kind of mistakenly use your campaign accounts to do that, but then you would have to report it to the Secretary of State. And you'd think you would notice it when you were filing the report. So there's still a little bit of a question of surrounding that one. Well, you also covered the fact that there's a lot of people that are no longer running for re-election. And these are not people that are barred by term limits, correct? Yeah, I mean, this is a new trend.

3:05These are people, I mean, keep in mind, they just extended the term limits basically for people serving an individual chamber. And now all of a sudden, we've got a trend. I think it's, once you get two or three, I think it becomes a bit of a trend of lawmakers saying, hey, I'm choosing not to run next year. And it comes at the same time that last year in 2025, the legislature passed a record low number of new laws. And there's a debate over whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. Some people think it's good. Some people think it's bad. But there are legislators who seem to be a bit frustrated with this process and are choosing to give up their seat and not run again. It used to be unheard of. I mean, you could probably speak to this. I mean, you would serve out your maximum term if you were given the chance and weren't running for another hire off. So it's a little bit unusual. Yeah, nice job of turning the questionnaire into the interviewee into the questionnaire. But you're right, when I served, but I served under term limits.

4:07I was one of the supporters of term limits and brought term limits to the state of Michigan with Patrick Anderson and Dick Hadley back then. That was quite a long time ago when I just turned 18. And I had a chance to serve in the House of Representatives. Was honored to serve when I was in my early 20s and became the leader. And when we served, we served a maximum of three terms, which is six years. And you got back into the public, the public eye, instead of being in the public, excuse me, the private, instead of being in the public. And I guess out of all these members that are retiring, how many are in these targeted districts, these districts, which really would be majority-making districts that both parties are really focusing on to win back. And also, how many are Republicans compared to Democrats? Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, as of right now, I'm not seeing a lot of people in those targeted seats. Keep in mind, we have a couple more months before the deadline. I mean, we had an example this week that was a big one that people were kind of waiting for.

5:08Sam's saying he is the majority floor leader for the Senate Democrats. He's a person who, you know, people at home, maybe a Metro Detroit, don't know who he is, but people in government, around government, he's a big player here. He gets a lot of major pieces of legislation done. I would consider him a deal-maker. He's kind of a fixture of state government, and he decided not to seek a third and final term in the state Senate under the new term limits that we have. And that's a big deal. And then there've been a couple others you had, Karen Whitsett, who I referenced earlier, who said she's not going to run again. And then Regina Weas, who is from Metro Detroit, a former teacher, a Democrat, big on education policy, she's not running again. So those three that have come out this week, those are all Democrats. I suspect maybe we'll hear a few more in the coming months. I have no insight information on that, but it's just a guess that these three won't be the only one. No, I would probably concur with you. And I agree with you that Sam's saying, you know, I'm more conservative,

6:11but Sam Singh was at least respected by everyone that served with him. I guess any other breaking news, you've got 30 seconds, any other breaking news, or anything that you're covering now. Don't go and story up at DetroitNews.com. Really the first negative campaign ad of this gubernatorial election cycle from a candidate, Perry Johnson's committee is putting out an ad where they're going after John James, the former, I mean, the current U.S. Republican who's running for governor. So if it's a change in tone in this race for governor, and we'll see what it takes over the next few months. Thank you, Craig Mager, for bringing us up to speed on the stories out of Lansing and politics in our state. You're listening to focus on W.J.R. This is Rocky Rochkowski sitting in for the legendary Paul W Smith.