Welcome back to OTR.

Our lead stories this week.

Benson for Governor, House passes the Minimum wage tip bill, the president's inaugural address impact in Michigan and the House Oversight committees go to work on the governor's administration.

Is there waste in same.

On this edition of Off the Record Correspondents Edition, Kyle Melinn, Beth LeBlanc, Jordan Herman and Simon Schuster are on board sit in with us as we get the inside out.

Off the record production of Off the Record is made possible in par by Bellwether public relations, a full servic strategic communications agency partnering with clients through public relations, digital marketing and issue advocacy.

Learn more at bellwetherpr.com And now this edition of Off the Record with Tim Skubick.

Thank you very much.

Welcome back to Studio C as we do another week of off the record a busy one.

Was anybody surprised that Miss Benson is running for governor, yay or nay?

No, no, no, absolutely not.

She's been running in her hea for governor for how many years?

would you guess?

Six.

Whoa!

I was going two.

I like six is a lot better.

Well let's see what she had to say on the day that she said she doe want to be governor of Michigan.

She has run in 34 marathons over the years.

And now she launches the most challenging political run of her life.

47 year old Democrat Jocelyn Benson wants this.

Today, I announced also that I'll be running for governor of Michigan.

In her head, Jocelyn Benson has been running for governor for years and now she i the first Democrat in the hunt.

First, she wants the government to be more efficient and transparent and she wants to try thi for citizens if they elect her.

Trying to figure ou how to save our residents time, save them money and make all of our state agencies work efficiently and effectively.

One way to help consumers is to give them a ta cut from the state government.

And while many Republican traditionally sign the so-called no tax pledge, if elected, I'll not raise your taxes.

Secretary Benson was not ready to sign it or not sign it.

I'll consider it and we'll look into it and I'll let you know our answer as we get move forward into the campaign.

Again, taking pledges at this moment may not be the right way to go in that direction.

After the scrum, she did add that the no tax pledge quote appeared gimmicky and she just wanted to b the best governor she could be.

On another front, Ms.. Benson is concerned about the rhetoric coming out of the White House and the new president, and she is concerned about deportations.

But if the president wants the Michigan State Police to help to deport illegals, would she agree?

And for me is that if someone tries to come to take away the right and freedoms of our residents, I'll be there to stand in the way.

So we asked for the state police who would say no.

Well, we'll have to You know, I don't want to go into too many hypotheticals on tha because.

it's not a hypothetical It depends on, you know, again, the where and the why and the what and all of those specifics.

Republicans unilaterally denounced her candidacy, claiming that she was an inefficient secretary of state.

She just laughed that off and now as she begin that marathon run for governor.

It will end in 652 days.

That's a long run.

That's a long run.

So why did you smile during the tax cut thing?

Oh, just because of your persistence in asking the questions, that's all.

I just appreciate the.

You find that funny?

No, I just appreciate your doggedness.

This is serious stuff.

Very serious stuff.

You know, her announcing, though, as early as she did.

I think there are some advantages and disadvantages to this.

I mean, I think on the plus side, she has the opportunity to clear the field, which is something she did when she ran for secretary of state three times.

Is she gonna try to scare people out?

She did it when she ran for secretary of state.

Nobody ran against her all three times.

She sought the Democratic nomination.

She didn't have a single opponent any time work for Slotkin, worked for Whitmer.

You know, the downside of doing this, though, is that she's goin to have an operation to run for, would you say, 652 days o whatever that was in your piece?

That means she's got to pa for an operation for that long.

Now, Slotkin could pull it of because she had a national pool to draw from.

And Whitmer, I think, pulled i off because she had this energy from this anti-Trump energ that she was operating off of.

But this is going to be something to watch with Benso as we move along these months.

Can she continue to keep this operation or does she kind of fall into the trap that John Cherry fell into in 2009?

I think yeah.

I think another difficulty that she has, too, is the fact that Mike Duggan's entered the race as an independent, although she doesn't have t worry so much about the primary, if she can consolidate that support, she's still going to be, in effect, virtually running against him because he's going to have to carve out a middle path that involves a significant chunk of the Democratic base that might have a decision to make as we move in towards the general election.

She doesn't want to talk about that.

Absolutely not.

Well, and then the one thing, Duggan also kind of has going for him here against Benson is why is he running as an independent to spotligh that Democrats don't necessarily have their stuff together and are able to do what the people want.

What happened with Benson the night of her announcement or quasi announcement, it was announced journalism journalists found it online.

It was quickly deleted.

We went to her website.

The donations were open.

Those were quickly rescinded.

You know, the day of she went an she filed in a public location that, you know, people are now questioning, should she have been allowed to hold that press conferenc in the the lobby of the building that she di because it was a state building.

I mean, there's been a couple of gaffes that, you know, granted, we are so early in this campaign that if this is the worst, you know, then great for her.

But for Duggan, I mean, it's really helping him out here.

Beth you were there.

Yeah, No hats, no horns.

No.

I mean, it was pretty low key, right, With with reporters and everything.

I think one thing in terms of her in the Duggan dynamic is I think we're already seeing the maybe the advantages or disadvantages of having to run in a primary, whereas Duggan can can define his message.

Right now, Benson has to have a message that will get her through the primary.

And if you look at a lot of the lawmakers who have endorsed her so far, they're definitely on the more progressive side.

They're they're more left leaning.

And that's great for her tha she has support out of the gate.

But also she she has to spend time kind of cultivating that branch of the Democratic Party while also eventually finding a centrist message to for the general election.

So I think it's it's going to be a long haul.

And Duggan definitely complicates the formula here Her team must be sitting at home right now going, goodness gracious, nobody brought up Duggan except the reporters.

Okay.

But this is this is something that she does have to face.

It is a problem, but she's not going to that's not her top issue right now.

No winning the primaries the is the top issue right now.

We presume Garland Gilchrist will get in at some point.

We know Chris Swanson will get in at some point.

The Genesee County sheriff, I don't know how big of a factor he will be if he's able to raise the funds in order to kind of match her go for go here.

What does Mallory McMorrow do the state senator, does she make a run for governor?

And then of course, Mayor Pet I think that's the big question.

Does Mayor Pete Buttigieg get into this race?

Because I think he opens up a completely different interest level among the electorate and I think he could give her a pretty serious run.

I think one of the difficulties that Democrats are going to have throughout this primary into the general election is when you look at the 2018 election, when Benson first became secretary of state, that election was so defined by resistance to President Trump.

You know, remember Whitmer when she was unveiling her speech, she spoke to a crowd of 8000 people in front of the capital, the Women's March.

We're not seeing any sort of that kind of mobilization.

There's not this clearly defined message that's coming right out of the gate that someone can run on all the way through the election.

And I think this is something where Democrats are goin to have to do a lot of thinking.

Another delicate dance that she has to perform here is she cannot be too critical of Governor Whitmer.

The question in the news conference was what about the efficiency of government?

And then she got into a monologue about the Department of Health and That's the biggest one.

And she wanted to say there's a boatload of waste going on over there.

By God, I' going to go in and get it.

Okay.

So she had to be very temperate.

There.

Yeah.

You know, there were some direct question because she said she was going to be the governor of of of efficiency.

So the question wa which agencies are inefficient?

And she pointed to the Department of Health and Human Services right off the bat.

She pointed toward unemployment, toward child care, toward the Department of Education and the education system in Michigan.

And that's going to be a delicate balance, right because she has worked in tandem with with Whitme throughout her administration.

And now she's going to have to draw some some differences between them.

She was quick to take the edge off, even though she said the people over there, the leaders, are doing the best job they can.

But basically we can always do better.

But it's a delicate thing tha she's got to be careful about.

She doesn't want to be on the record of beating u on the sitting governor, right?

No, not at all.

I mean, the the endorsement power of Whitmer is going to be huge.

She's not going to endorse.

Right.

Well, now is what she's saying.

You know, there is there's a lot of race left.

You know, we can talk about all of this from now until the cows come home.

But, you know, Whitmer' endorsement will mean something.

I know she says she's not going to endorse.

I think she will at the very end of the day.

But in the primary.

No.

Well, Maybe I guess, you know.

No, no.

She's going to look at she said with very she said, I've got a lot of friends running for governor.

And the best thing for me to d is to stay out of these things.

Right.

But then I think about the fact of, you know, we go back to the Republican side, the Republican gubernatorial race, that, you know, we had Tudor Dixon and what a mess that was.

We had so many different people running, vying.

And then you ended up with a candidate that maybe didn't have the most amount of people support people power in Tudor Dixon or in, you know, a Matt DePerno or a Kristina Karamo.

You know, the endorsement will help sift through all of these people.

You know, do we want to end up in a position again?

Do Democrats want to end up in a position that Republicans were in in the last gubernatorial rac where it was a bunch of people fighting and fighting until the end, and then you ended up with a candidate where it's like, okay, well, last second I guess we have to rally around and get this message all together as a party.

I think Jordyn makes a really salient point here because I think the pressure that we're going to see from within the Democratic Party is going to be immense.

The knives are out right now for Mike Duggan, and he's right now attempting to carve his own path, as I said before, building a coalition that's going to have to involve some Democrats and they're going to look to close ranks very early.

And so I think the pressure to sort of have a noncompetitive primary and move people away from entering the race who, you know, folks like Genesee County Sheriff Chris Swanson who obviously really want to run to keep the out of he's running to maybe not six years ago was all over Michigan touting his record.

But that's exactly the thing is, you know, Duggan complicates things by running as an independent.

If Whitmer has the ability to throw in her endorsement again, I know she says she's not going to in the primary, but you know, you're going to end up with a situation where you effectively have two Democrats running until the very end against a singular Republica candidate, whoever that may be.

I mean, right now we only have a Senate minority leader, Eric Nesbitt, in the race.

But like, if you can't run that risk as a Democrat, if you've already gotten walloped, you know, in the state House you got walloped the presidency.

If you want a win, if you want to show something for your voters, you're going to have to get behind somebody.

What's exciting Democrats right now?

I guess that's what I'm asking myself.

As Simon said, you know, back in 2017, we knew what excited them it was.

Donald Trump.

And they got all riled up about that.

And then when when Whitmer ran again, it was because Roe versus Wade got overturned.

They had something to rally around.

I do appreciate that Benson seems to have a pretty wide network of national support.

I mean, she got the actor from Star Trek to endorse her even though he thinks it wa Minnesota, you know that close?

It was close, actually, yeah, sure.

We both got cold.

But anyway, I mean, she's got a broad base of support and I give her that.

But she's got to excite people, people got to be excited right now.

And I just don't know what excites folks to get behind a Democrat at this point and not to say there won't be something.

I think they are still in mourning.

I think they are too.

I mean, government efficiency i and transparency in government isn't going to get people riled up.

That's not going to get people excited.

At some point there may be something that that she can grab on to, but there just isn't anything right now.

When you look at a former another runner who sought the gubernatorial office, Brian Calley, you know, when he was served as lieutenant governor for eight years and the came out, he had sort of a hook.

I think that a fundamental change of state government, which was the part tim legislature and that initiative.

And so he was able to differentiate himself by doing that.

And so Lilly Guiney from Gongwer asked him if there was going to be sort of a hook for her thing, and she sort of suggested maybe, you know, housing for all could be a peg for her.

But she I don't kno if we're going to see something.

I think secretly she is hoping she's the only female in the race, which is a hook.

Well, it is.

And at the same time, as we saw, you know, when when Democrats start trying to stick to the you know, sticking it to Trump here is this is the most important race on abortion.

Again, if they're going to continue to recycle these messages, I mean, people are somewhat moving past this concept of identity politics.

I'm not saying it's as a woman, I'm not sayin it's not important to emphasize what you bring to the role.

At the same time, peopl don't necessarily care anymore.

And I think Democrats are waking up to that fact where the concept of, you know, you're the first female, the first black, the first ga or the first whatever you are.

I mean, you're a politician.

In addition to all of that and your ability to politic and get things done is wha people want to see in the role, you know?

And so being the first female, anything, it's great and I am all for it.

But at the same time, you hav to bring some level of policy.

You can't just stick on that.

All right.

Let's take a look at what the House did on the tip legislation, which has stirred up a lot of controversy.

It's been a ver contentious debate, as many wage servers are telling stat lawmakers to leave the current tip system alone, because if there are changes, those workers claim they would actually take home smaller checks And the smaller businesses claim if the system is not changed they can't afford to pay for it.

And we're going to lose.

We're going have to reduce staff, raise prices, and which at some point is going to also make people stop going ou because the prices are so high and it'll be roughly 150 to $200000 a year increase in just payroll that they now have to pay.

And that margin is just not there.

A michigan House committee two weeks ago approved a Republican package on a bipartisan vote, maintaining the current tip system, but they removed the mandatory sick time provision for small businesses with 50 employees or less.

Opponents claim that will mean 1.5 million workers in Michigan will go without sick time.

Meanwhile, during floor debate this doctor told his colleagues workers need paid sick time.

And in a recent survey, they confessed while they were sick they did this.

88% of them reported they did not earn sick leave and 63% of them admitted that they cooked or served food while sick.

Workers don't need to be don't need to keep being forced to clock in when sick.

They need protections that do no harm.

Enable them to take time off when they are ill. Earned sick leave should be encouraged, not frowned upon.

For a healthier and stronger Michigan.

The president of the state AFL-CIO, Ron Beaver, warned Democrats not to vote for any of these changes, but the other side claims the unions don't actually represent any of these workers.

The final vot total 63-41 on the first bill.

Republicans passing it with some Democratic support and then 67-38 on the other.

The measures now go to the state Senate where Democrats have control, but it is unclear what they will do with the House plan.

Meanwhile, the governor is watching all this and she has not staked ou a position one way or the other.

Meanwhile, there is a February 21st deadline for getting all of this done one way or the other.

As many servers wait to see what lawmakers do to them or for them.

So what about those Democrats who told the union leaders to take a hike?

I mean, they are some of the more centrist Democrats to begin with.

I mean, you saw like Angela Witwer was one of the individuals who voted to approve.

She was also on the select committee that moved this legislation through to the House.

Wlll Snyder was another one, unsurprisingly.

Karen Whitsett So, you know, the Democrats who did vote for this weren't necessarily surprised.

Democrats.

Just, you know, what I think was the bigger, more surprising thing yesterday was afterwards the House minority leader Ranjeev Puri, came over, spoke to reporter about this whole bill package.

And he outright told us, he said, I think that we're bein a little reactionary right now.

And he doesn't believe that the February 21st implementation deadline is actually all that big of a deal.

Now, I know that that's somethin that other Democrats, especially the more progressive ones, are arguing as well.

I'm thinking like Dylan Wegela a Democrat from Garden City.

So arguing, hey, let's let this go into effect before we need to figure out if it needs to be changed.

Because a lot of this is people saying that, you know, from the restaurant industry, this is going to be mass layoffs, this is going to happen across the board.

And then you have other folks saying, well, in other states that have implemented this tipping has continued to increase.

You know, it's a lot of what ifs, we think, how bouts?

So they're arguing let it go in place.

And it seems like that's sort of the the backing of the Democrats here who are especially supported by the unions.

Yeah.

I mean, so I talked to Kevin Hertel yesterday who has a separate package in the Senate, and he's a Democrat.

Yes.

Macomb County.

Yes.

And he he seemed optimistic that they'd be able to find some common ground on this.

And as far as the February 21st deadline goes, he said that, yes, that was pressing for paid sick leave because that goes completely into effect on February 21st.

But the tipped wage is a gradual increase and it's not going to make or break a restaurant with this first increase.

So I think there's some wiggle room there.

One thing that Senate Majority Leader Brinks said, though, was that she wasn't going to play ball if it meant that a million and a half workers were exempt from this paid sick leave.

So I think that's wher there might be some contention between the Senate and House is on that exemption for for businesses with fewer than 50 employees.

Well, I mean, they have to.

Right.

I mean, the Democrats control the Senate.

This package out of the House is basically the starting point of negotiation, saying this is as low as we're willing to go talk us up.

And so you will see this being argued.

I mean, we talk about the tipped wage thing in the House package.

They want to keep status quo in the Senate package.

They want to slowly raise tipped wages, which at this point I believe is 38% of the minimum wage.

They want to raise it up to 60% by sometime in the middle of next decade, I believe like 2035.

So we are going to see that more than likely shift.

We are going to probably see this likely more than likely shift from where the conversation is currently because it just simply has to.

Why is this such a cause celeb issue?

I think because it addresses an issue that was the underlying issue in the last campaign, which was what's happening for the working class.

Are we helping the everyday worker and everyday workers who are servers are looking at these changes and saying, Oh my gosh, we don't want this because we fear that this is going to end serving.

It's going to shut down our restaurant.

And so they're telling Democrats this Now, Democrats have already been accused of not being responsive to the working class at the last election.

And even though the unions are coming out and saying, wait a minute, if you approve this, you're actually lowering their wages.

That message just never connected at all.

And it was not believable for the people who actually make a living doing this.

So when the unions have come out and tried to do their counter message, they don't bring in states servers, their press conference, they don't have dozens of people crowding into the room at the Capitol, like the people who want the tip wage have been able to do.

And so the Democrats are like, well, gosh, I guess we got to do something here because all these people are coming to us and saying, we want this.

And if we don't, are we not now responsive to the very population we're trying to connect with?

I think on that point, the unions, House Democrats in particular, carried wate for the unions for for two years pretty pretty diligently, pretty loyally, and they still lost the majority.

And now the unions are coming in and trying to block this legislation.

And I just don't know, especially for those centrist Dems who voted for this, I don't know that it has the same swaying power at the end of the day for for these folks who are now in the minority.

I definitely think that it's a major political failure on the part of organized labor.

I mean, we have the Service Employees Union, the SEIU.

It's literally in their name that they're supposed to be representing this body of workers, and they haven't been a major player in this debate significantly at all.

And so while.

How come?

Were they told to be quiet?

Well, I think that in part it's you know, what we saw in the in the 2024 election that we had union leadership, people like Shawn Fain coming out very strongly for Democrats.

But clearly, the rank and file members of union workers in this country are not following along with what their leadership tells them.

It's been a trend that we've seen progressing over the past eight years, and that hasn't changed.

But at the same time, I think that there's been enoug messaging from the other side, the folks that say we take away the tipped wage, the amount your take home pay is going to go down.

There's conflicting economic data on both sides of that.

There's a robust debate that can be made.

Lots of natural experiments in different jurisdictions have shown how these things have changed over time.

And the unions, unions, organized labor.

And I think folks representing restaurant workers have failed to communicate effectivel a convincing message for workers that says, you know, this is leaving this unchanged is a good idea.

And then being able to go to Democrats and put pressure on them and say, we're your primar financial backers in the House and this is something we don't want to see change.

They have actually one thing that Republicans have been abl to effectively message on this and by extension those in the service industries are you know, we look at the bill package, the bill package right off the bat out of the House would increase minimum wage to $12 an hour.

Now, under the court case, that would have or I'm sorry, just sort of be under the one fair wage ballot initiative that would have gone to $12.48 an hour.

So Republicans are able to message on, well, we're still giving you a minimum wage increase, which is tactically correct.

Like there's nothing wrong with them saying that.

However, they are still technically getting a decrease by not letting this this you know what one fair wage trying to put into effect overall, it's still a decrease fro what should have gone into law if this petition took it to the law as it was written.

You know, I think there is also a self-serving goal here by organized labor in that if you make these employees, these servers minimum wage and you make them full tim employees, now all of a sudden there is an ability to unionize them.

And so now you're looking at, okay, are the unions supporting this because they really want these people to make minimum wage when they're making way more right now?

Or is it because you want to put them in a situation where you can unionize them just like Starbucks employees or people at, you know, other other restaurants where there isn't servers?

And I think that that may play a small role in this as well.

All right.

Simon let's look quickly at the Oversight committee.

Subcommittees have now been created in the House, and they're going in.

That's the wrong word.

They're going to be looking into the possibility of waste in the governor's office, although some Democrats say it's a witch hunt.

Which is it?

Well, I think when you loo at the impacts of term limits, since, you know, over the past 30 plus years, the extent to which institutional memory and knowledg of how the state administration functions.

Zippo.

And so as a result, the one of the fundamental dynamics is a reduction in the ability of the legislatur to provide effective oversight.

Now, we've now, you know, House members can serve six terms.

And so this is an opportunity for the House speaker to say, look, we can do this now.

We can provide effective oversight while at the same time you look at this issue, the tipped minimum wage, paid sick leave, which is such a test balloon for the ability of this divided government to work well together.

You can sort of have it both ways.

You can be on the attack while showing he can be a productive negotiator.

What do you make of the oversight stuff?

It should be very interesting.

I mean, I think we saw Speake Hall win when he ran oversight and when he ran the Joint Select Committee on the COVID 19 pandemic.

I think we likely got a preview of what we're going to see from the oversight.

Yeah, it was you know, there were people subpoenaed to testify and there were it wa it was a production every time.

And it was, you know, making news every time in terms of going after these these department heads and asking tough questions of them.

And it was it was definitely something to behold.

So I think we're probably going to see that again.

Now.

I think the question, though, when when Hall ran the the oversight committees, COVID 19, the COVID 19 Joint Select Committee, there was a lot of focus on on employment on and different decisions that were mad by the Whitmer administration.

But I think the question was, was there actual meaningful change in in the wake of that which Hall says he wants to accomplish with these oversight committees?

And I don't know that there was meaningful change after those those oversight committees in 2019, 2020.

It was it was more a show at the end of the day.

So I think it should be interesting to see if they take a different tact this time around, whether they actually seek to find solutions to some of these issues that have been plaguing the state.

All right.

Let me go back to the governors thing very quickl to end the show on this point.

I'm going to give you the name.

You tell me whether they run or not.

Buttigieg, does he run for governor?

Oh, no, no, no, no.

Yes.

Okay.

Garlin Gilchrist.

Yes, yes.

Yeah, Yeah.

Well, I'll make a unanimous.

Okay.

The sheriff in Genesee County.

Yes.

Oh, yes.

No.

Whoa.

No kidding?

I'll lean no right now.

Whoa, whoa.

Okay, well, we'll keep the tape can it decided to tak because both of you are wrong.

All right.

Next week, more of off the record.

Please come back, won't you?

See you then.

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