Happy New Year and welcome back to this correspondents edition of Off the Record.

The attorney general takes on the House Republicans on a spending plan and dueling news conferences in the race for governor.

Sit in with us as we get the inside out.

Off the Record.

Production of Off the Record is made possible in part by Bellwether Public Relations, a full service strategic communications agency partnering with clients through public relations, digital marketing and issue advocacy.

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And now this edition of Off the Record, with Tim Skubick.

Thank you much.

Welcome to our New Year's edition of Off the Record Studio C. Nice to see all of you.

I assume you all survived the holidays.

before we begin the program, the station management wants me to read the statement to you as to why a guest that we had scheduled, is not on the program, we were going to have Democratic candidate for governor, Chris Swanson, here on the broadcast.

And he reported this week that he had, quote, "a bug."

And so the station basically said to protect the health of the persons in the studio, including you good folks.

the station asked him to reschedule his appearance, and we want to make it clear that he did not repeat, he did not back out of the interview.

And, so he will pick a new date and we'll have him on the program and we'll look forward to that.

So with that, we had a decision this week from the attorney general, Ms.

Roth.

And, here's the set up piece on what she said.

And then let's see what you say, okay?

Mr.

Speaker, in one word, describe the attorney general's decision.

Political.

I'm going to sue on this, and we're going to win very easily.

Dana Nessel loses very frequently in court.

He can go ahead and, try and work this out in the courts.

he doesn't have a very good track record of being successful this year in the courts.

Yet another disagreement between the Republican House speaker, Matt Hall, and the Senate Democratic leader, Winnie Brinks.

This time over the Democratic attorney general's opinion that it was unconstitutional for House Republicans without a vote of the full legislature to shut off $645 million to a variety of groups in the state, ranging from kids with cancer to symphony orchestras.

Mr.

Hall says Dana Nessel got it wrong.

They cooked up, decision here from the attorney general.

That is not, not based on any reasonable interpretation of the law and Constitution.

Senator Winnie Brinks argues the speaker wants to break the legislative institution with his unconventional conduct.

She certainly does not respect the institution or the rules of the game.

It's dismaying for, us to, see him try to break this institution.

The speaker counters.

He's working for citizens.

Somebody has to look out for the taxpayers.

And I'm doing that, with this lawsuit.

Ms.

Brinks counters what he is doing is hurting needy citizens who need state assistance the most.

Meanwhile, the governor's office wasted little time ordering the checks to be sent out to all these groups before the courts could block them.

The ultimate decision will likely rest with the courts on who was right in all this.

So, Miss Roth, what do you make?

So I'm not surprised at all.

I mean, as soon as Speaker Hall announced her, the House Appropriations Committee announced that they were going to be doing was it $645 million in cuts without any, you know, sign off from both chambers without any sign up for that?

I mean, this this is this is these are programs that were that went through the budget process.

And now they're saying, actually, we as a sole committee can just on our own say, no thanks.

I was very surprised.

I think there's probably a lot of people that were surprised that that was something that in any case that they would do, that they could do.

So it's not surprising at all that the attorney general is saying, no, you can't do that.

And that's how these things are worked out, whether or not a law is constitutional or not, that's how it's worked out is in the courts, which is what Speaker Hall says he's going to do.

But of course, Mr.

Hall says what we did was all kosher.

This is this is legal.

We were following the law.

I mean, if you want to look at the actual state law, sure.

You know, there is a provision in state law that does enable one, appropriation chamber, either the House or Senate, to give a final mix on these work projects.

So if we want to take it just at that black and white value.

Sure.

Speaker Hall, the House Republican led House Appropriations Committee did use the law.

Laws can also later be found to be unconstitutional.

So I think that this shouldn't necessarily be surprising that we're in this point in time.

We shouldn't necessarily be surprised that Dana Nessel did issue this opinion that she did.

but, you know, to say that we're out here trying to, protect how taxpayer dollars are being spent, I don't want the irony necessarily to be lost, though, that the House is suing, now, the attorney general and what is going to be likely used to pay for all of these lawsuits, but taxpayer dollars.

And it's one of the storylines that I think we're starting the year here.

What's going to happen over the next 12 months?

You're going to see this.

I think this battle between the House Republicans who are investigating Attorney General Dana Nessel and Nessel continue to play out.

They're trying to subpoena her.

They're calling her in to answer questions.

They're floating the idea of impeaching her.

So I don't think anyone should be surprised that we all suddenly got this very quick decision from Nessel's office.

Hey, this move that you have basically staked, your year on your campaign, you're on cutting all of these funds for nonprofits, charities, all these groups.

Hey, you can't actually do that.

And it's kind of baiting Hall into suing them over this and then continuing this storyline that already some of his members have said, hey, we don't want to do this, right.

We should just restore this funding.

Now.

Hall is going to continue this.

He said he thinks the decision is going to be quick.

That's not generally how the courts work quickly.

And it's not that the courts in Michigan or anywhere else.

And and I thought the, I think we have a president who wrote a book called the Art of the deal, and I think the speaker seems to really admire that author or that person who had a ghost author who's now disowned that book.

But we don't need to get into that.

But when's a deal a deal in Lansing?

When everybody signs off on it, isn't that it?

And now we're going back and we're taking take-backsies?

How does anybody get anything done?

That's the wild thing to another like just mind boggling part of this.

A lot of these groups that the House Republicans are saying, hey, we're cutting off this funding.

You should spend it already.

They gave them more funding in their own budget in the new budget kids.

Yeah.

So so if if you're cutting spending and you think these groups are mishandling this money, why did you then go give them more money and they'll say, hey, the Senate Democrats made us do it.

And that's the point.

The Republicans, the report to the point the Republicans were trying to make was this is money we gave them and they didn't use it.

And so it's a jump ball.

And guess what?

We're going to take the ball and run with it and put it into other programs.

What's wrong with that?

Well, unencumbered funds can be reallocated.

But if that's the case, why are they give more money the next year?

They should give them less money the next year.

Because if we gave you 100 million and you spent 50 million, then next year we give you 50 million.

That's how you address it.

Or you say we're cutting your funding because you got dough left over, so spend what you got and then come back to us.

I think who made a really good point in all of this was actually Republican Senator John Damoose of Harbor Springs, who noted that operating in this way could set potentially, a precedent or a concerning precedent, at least for groups who do get money from the state.

The fear that, okay, do we now have to spend this as quickly as possible?

And if we are spending as quickly as possible, does that not constitute a misuse of resources?

Are we really doing our due diligence and vetting the contracts that go through?

If I'm a nonprofit, if I'm, for instance, like Maggie's wigs for kids or Rx kids or a symphony orchestra or the Hamtramck Fire Department, all of whom saw funding cut, is the argument here, then you should just be spending as fast as possible, because that seems to be what the potential takeaway is here.

Now, I just want to say quickly, I know Republicans are saying that attorney general is Nessel's opinion is is misstated and that she had allegedly said that funds were not misused and they're claiming that they are.

But again, that's all something that's going to have to be.

But that wasn't the basis of her legal decision.

She's not niff gnawing over the language that may or may not have been, she said basically they broke the law.

If the speaker doesn't have veto power over what the government, that's the governor's gig.

I think at the end of the day, this is probably going to look best for Democrats.

I think Speaker Hall continuing this fight forward, is going to end up being a bad look for Republicans because they are giving Democrats, you know, sort of free advertising for saying, look at what Republicans want to cut.

They want to cut, you know, donations to, you know, a grant to a Holocaust museum.

They want to cut Rx kids.

They want to cut, you know, funding for moms.

They want to cut funding for cancer for kids with wigs.

I mean, these are these are programs that when you say them out loud, sound like good things.

Yes.

But Mr.

Hall has a list of stuff that's quite onerous in his mind that plays the other way.

Right.

But that carry some water.

If they had that list and had done the research to figure out what all these cuts are going to be, I think it's objectively clear that they did not know what all they were cutting when they did this.

Their own members have acknowledged that some of the people who voted, I mean, there was one of them who cut a building that was tied to his father and found out afterwards that that had happened.

So you literally had Republicans issuing press releases saying that we should restore this funding.

I mean, House in the House.

Rylee Linting a freshman number was among them.

And that and that's the point that I think is best for the House.

Republicans are saying we're trying to rein in spending.

Now we're going to get, excuse me, waste, fraud and abuse.

Get the language.

Well, I'm not going to use that one.

But right.

That's what they say.

That is what they say.

They're trying to rein in spending.

And now we're going to get a budget fight coming up this year.

Are they going to do more to rein in spending because they didn't rein in that much spending in the last budget and actual their budget vote, they actually spent more money than the previous year.

If you actually look at the numbers, they will.

I'll be getting a call saying I'm wrong on that.

But the facts back up that they spent more money than the last budget did in the fall.

are they actually going to pursue true big cuts and if they do that, what are the political ramifications if I'm wrong?

But hasn't the speaker already sort of telegraphed that that's on the agenda, that we're not going to have as much money?

We need to cut something out of the budget.

That's that's kind of been his his mantra from the job.

I mean, and and again, I kind of just go back to what you said a moment ago when you quoted waste, fraud and abuse.

I think that all of this is completely subjective.

The concept of waste, one man's waste and fraud is another person's grant funding is another person's, again, I hate to go back and keep using the same.

It's another person's fire truck in their city.

It's another person's wig on a child cancer patient.

I hate to keep using the same examples over and over, but it really does have practical use and symphony orchestra.

And one of the things that they said, I mean, let's be clear about what's transpired here.

One of the things you said when they made these cuts is one of the, you know, waste, fraud and abuse items that we've cut is tampons in boys bathrooms.

People looked into that.

There were no tampons being put in boys bathrooms.

There is nothing in this.

You made that up out of whole cloth.

He was talking about a state building expenditure that was about women's bathrooms.

Adult women who work in the state office buildings, and he was saying tampons in boys bathrooms.

I mean, there was nothing.

And as soon it was point, as soon it was pointed out that that's not true, they stop saying it.

Yeah, but that goes back to tampon.

Tim, when Tim Walsh was running for president, these are just talking points that don't necessarily have any foundation in fact.

But the real problem is, at least from the perspective in Detroit, is you guys don't get deals done.

Why don't you get deals done?

Because nobody trusts anybody because a handshake isn't a handshake anymore.

And if you couldn't get the budget done on time, how are you going to get it done next year?

When people think we're good with this and then it gets yanked back?

And I don't think the governor plays the game this way.

But doesn't she have a line item veto?

Couldn't she come back at them and say, I'm stroking all these things out?

I mean, you know, just just make an agreement, vote on it, get it done, and let the people of Michigan say, this is what's coming, and we understand.

And if we don't like it, two years from now, you're all gone.

That's a really, really good point that he's making in that.

What's going to happen in Lansing this year?

Like are they going to be able to get anything done.

They're fighting over these these work projects.

The governor is I'm not ready to play the doom and gloom.

You're not I mean, no, there is information out there that the governor's state of the state address is not going to happen until February 25th.

That's the first two months.

Basically, we're going to be directionless.

That's what they're going to work on.

I mean, what will get done this year?

Not doom and gloom.

They passed 70 some bills into law last year, a record low and the lowest since like the well in a lot of people at home said thank you.

That's true.

Some people are excited about it.

But, you know, there's a lot of problems the state is facing.

And you talk about the bad aspects of what government can do.

There's a reading crisis going on in our schools.

Our population is lagging.

Health care costs are through the roof, energy costs are through the roof, and there are people celebrating here.

The legislature is not solving any of these problems.

That's great.

Welcome to the state of Michigan right now.

Well, the dueling people between the speaker and the Miss Brinks and the attorney general was going on.

We had dueling news conferences in the race for governor with two players named Mike Duggan and Curtis Hertel.

President Donald Trump is not on the 2026 ballot in Michigan, but the state Democratic Party chair is making Trump the issue in the governor's race, accusing independent candidate for governor, Mike Duggan, of trolling for Trump votes by refusing to take controversial stances against some of what Mr.

Trump has said and done.

The economists reported that Duggan refused to criticize Trump or anything on anything during an interview, and doesn't even deny that Trump's bullying of Canada and the resulting cost raising trade war are a problem for Michigan.

Mr.

Duggan begs to differ, saying he has opposed the president's tariff policies, but he refuses to engage on all the infighting coming out of Washington.

I've done a number of interviews where I've criticized the Canadian tariffs.

they have hurt the auto plants in Detroit.

The other stuff that these guys get into, the Republicans and Democrats with their outrage machines and whatever, the latest thing that Trump said, I'm not going to get into that.

No independent candidate for governor in Michigan has ever won the state.

And based on internal polling data, Mr.

Hertel argues Mr.

Duggan will continue that tradition.

they've spent somewhere in the realm of $8 million on billboards and in media, and he haven't moved the needle at all.

He's still running at the say, in third place and a distant third about Mr.

Duggan counters, quote, Mr.

Hertel is obsessed with me and quote, on the issue of raising more money to pay for state services, will Mr.

Duggan take the no tax pledge, promising never to high taxes?

He will not.

I don't know what circumstances there will be.

I don't envision raising taxes, but I wouldn't do an absolute pledge on, on that.

I just say, look at my 12 years as mayor.

I cut taxes on the campaign trail.

Mr.

Duggan reports that voters are fed up with both political parties who are fighting each other rather than solving people's problems.

So when he looks at all the modern day governors in the past in Michigan, he was asked this question and you've watched all the governors who came before you.

Which one are you closest to?

Do you think Milliken you had a governor there?

Who Republican governor who worked with the mayor of Detroit, work with Democrats?

and I think, put the interests of the state ahead of the Republican versus Democratic stuff.

And the conservatives couldn't stand again, people on the far right in the far left don't like to compromise.

Mr.

Duggan says he does like to compromise.

So ML, first of all, welcome to Off the Record.

Nice to have you on board.

Great to be here.

what do you make of that performance?

You know, I guess we take pledges in Michigan now.

That's kind of new to me, but, but Duggan is never going to get put in a box.

He wants to have as much room to move as he possibly can.

I think that, these attacks on him, he loves it.

It gives him an opportunity to respond, and it gives him an opportunity when he's talking to fundraisers and people who think he can't win, to say, if I can't win, why are they coming after me?

They must be afraid.

Me.

And they're only afraid of people can beat them.

But can he unilaterally say, I'm not going to discuss anything out of Mr.

Trump that I don't want to talk about, because some of the stuff Mr.

Trump talks about, not including the terms, do impact on Michigan, don't they?

Absolutely.

But the whole question is, is somebody going to force him?

I mean, do people care enough for him to talk about it?

Mike Duggan has shown that he's very you know, Mike Duggan does a lot of polling.

He knows what people are interested in.

And if he sees some numbers that say, I have to address these are it's going to hurt me.

He will.

But so far I don't think anybody has forced him to do anything he doesn't want to do unless you believe that he's running as an independent.

Because when you looked at the earlier Democratic candidates said they can't win in that primary, and so I'll run as an independent.

I mean, I always am curious what Pete Buttigieg had to do with his decision to run as an independent, but he's going to do what Mike Duggan wants to do.

So why is Mr.

Hertel then appealing to this Trump issue that he thinks, well, obviously I'm traction with independent voters.

Maybe some moderate Republicans and even some Democrats were thinking about going with Mr.

Duggan.

Yes.

So is the question, because this is the thing I guess I didn't really understand from the press conference where Duggan sort of pushed back and said, well, why are you so obsessed with me?

As if he's not running to be governor because he wants to bring him down.

But that's just the thing I don't get is why are you so obsessed with me?

Sounds petulant.

It sounds childish.

Of course they're going to be obsessed with you.

They're running against you.

They're going to throw everything at you that they can to seem and make you be a discredited candidate.

So seeming to complain that they're they're coming against you, that the party that you did once run under is now running against you.

Surprised?

That's politics.

I'm sorry.

I think that I see what you're saying.

I think I do, though think at this stage it's a bad move on Democrats to be focusing so much energy on Duggan as opposed to Republicans.

At the end of the day, as you said, as you pointed out, they're giving Duggan more oxygen if they want to think of him as being a illegitimate candidate, the best thing they can do, for the most part, is to ignore him and wait for him to actually do something or say something that they can actively refute again, which is fair.

But I mean, I feel like personally Democrats have the most to lose from a Duggan candidacy.

Maybe they have a lot to lose.

And also, I think, you know, Curtis Hertel is a pretty smart political operator.

And and you can say, oh, he's just bashing Duggan, but listen to what he's saying.

He's trying to tie Duggan to Trump, which allows him to both bash Trump, who is at the center of everything that will happen in this election, and bash Duggan.

So it's more than just like he's not picking on Duggan, he's also putting stuff out in the media.

He said something during the press conferences, worked into a lot of the quotes that were used that Trump doesn't stand with working class voters.

That was picked up by a lot of people because he was bashing Duggan and also bashing Trump.

So, I mean, I think there's more to it than just like, hey, they're spending time talking about Duggan, which Duggan poses a really major threat to the Democrats.

It's a midterm election, and every Democrat wants the Republicans tied to Trump because they think Trump is going to be a lodestone.

But but the problem that Democrats and Republicans for that matter, have is the way these things work is you define the other guy before he defines himself.

And when you don't have a Democratic nominee or Republican nominee who can define Duggan before Duggan gets out to the whole state, I'm the most effective mayor in the country.

The Democrats have got to try and pull him down.

So Hertel's almost in a no win situation, do you take all the air out of the room and hope the fire goes out?

Would you allow Duggan to tell everybody I'm the greatest?

And by the time we have a nominee eight months from now, everybody thinks I love this.

Duggan.

Yeah.

Who's these other goofballs?

You know, it's it's a tough.

I think it's a danger of ignoring him if you allow him to freelance on his own and has the entire playing field to himself, he'll score touchdowns.

Okay, kneecapped him now.

Yeah.

And you're.

Exactly.

And the question is, is he going to take more votes from Democrats or Republicans by having this feud between Hertel and Duggan?

I think the hope of Michigan Democrats is that they can push him into taking more votes than he otherwise would from whoever the Republican nominee is.

I don't know, I'm skeptical if that's going to work just because of who Mike Duggan is and where he comes from, and where his base of support is the target audience for this anti-Trump stuff, trying to link the two together.

Who's he trying to appeal to, Mr.

Hertel?

I think the independents and some of those Republicans who will never vote for Trump, who are thinking, yeah, but I'd vote for Mike Duggan.

Mike Duggan feels a lot like an old time Republican to me.

In fact, Dugan's the only Democrat in his own family.

And what so what did you make of the Milliken answer?

I wasn't surprised by that answer.

Were you?

I mean, he's trying to describe himself as someone that can get everyone to work together at a time when we're so divided.

Throwing Milliken's name for a lot of people in the state will bring back this idea of a happier time.

When we had Kumbaya, in politics and things could get done, wouldn't it?

This would be a question for you.

And I don't know if you like this or not, but could Milliken, in today's political environment, do the things that he did?

Of course not.

I mean, I mean, that's the issue that I think Dugan's campaign is going to face.

Can you bridge this gap because this gap is so wide.

That's why the conservatives never liked Bill Milliken from the get go.

And that was way before Donald Trump.

Okay.

He was cuddling up to the Democrats and the Republicans, moderate Republicans.

They got stuff done, which is the way it's supposed to be done.

But the question is, yeah, somebody said the other day, are there any Milliken moderates left in the party?

I think they are.

And they don't meet on the phone booth, on the cover in front of the Capitol every week.

I think they are out there.

They're laying low because they got nowhere to go.

I think you're right, but but I mean, but, No, no, no, no, I don't think they build I think a couple of Rusty Hills, a Milliken Democrat, a Republican.

sure.

And he's writing op ed saying we need to do something about this.

The party can't go in this direction, so I think they're out there.

I don't know that they're they may be silent, largely, but I don't know that they're a majority, but they're out there and they're waiting for somebody.

And Republicans love Doug.

And look at the business money.

Look at the CEOs are going to fund him.

Whether he wins or loses, it's not going to be because he doesn't have enough dough.

And consultant John Sellek had a great line.

He said those people are waiting for somebody to call them home.

Yeah, call them home.

And I think that's more or less going to be the tightrope that we're gonna have to watch between Democrats, Duggan and Republicans.

Here is one.

Doug is not necessarily wrong in saying that Democrats do really need to be careful about running into the same thing that they ran into during the Harris/Walz campaign, which was, while at least were not Trump, and that while there were policy platforms put out there, they were not emphasized hard enough to ever overcome that.

Well, at least were not Trump wave.

But the Democrats lost that election by a couple points, and it was based on the a lot of the loss was due to the fact that all of these voters showed up who had not voted before as the Trump strategy and cast the deciding vote for Trump.

And I think the Democrats had to do with with what, like what was going on in the Middle East.

A lot of that out of the racial migration.

There were a lot of Democrats who stayed home who thought that they didn't see themselves reflected in a Harris/Walz campaign, and so they just sat out.

But the Republicans, if you listen to what they're saying right now and and the chairman said this in a story we were in this morning, he said the question of this election for Republicans is, can we get the turnout anywhere close to what we got last time?

And I think Democrats sit there and say, hey, if our people turn out like they have in midterm elections and we get it, we're going to win this because the Republicans aren't going to have the votes that they did.

They're trying to energize their base, trying to get them to show up.

And that's what this could be about.

Okay.

So the question on the table is and we don't cover Washington, but you know what happened this week?

There started to be a split with Republicans from the president.

Is this a one off or is this a beginning of what the Democrats hope is the end?

Yeah, I mean, I think that people should pay attention to that statement that Trump released where he basically said a number of marginal Republican U.S.

senators should not be.

He didn't say, hey, let's replace him with Republicans.

He said they should not be reelected.

And some of these people are facing very real challenges from Democrats that will decide whether or not Republicans or Democrats control the US Senate.

So where is Trump's mind at with this?

I mean, you've it's going to be fascinating to watch.

Does Trump come in and try to save people like Tom Barrett, who is not someone that always fits neatly into kind of the Partizan ideology of what's going on in Washington?

What do you got on that?

I mean, I think there's one party, it's the Trump party.

And if you cross the boss, you pay the cost.

So I don't think he's worried about Republicans being elected, Democrats being does it hurt him with some voters?

Is my question.

Trump can do whatever Trump wants to do, and the people who vote for him will always be there.

There's no logic to it.

It's loyalty.

And I'm not saying they're right or wrong.

I'm just saying you can't shake people off of that train.

Now, the question is, did people who just jumped on in 2024 stay with him?

And where's Jill Green in all this?

I mean, one of the reasons why Trump won Michigan is because people voted for a third party candidate.

So some people who are in the caboose and will fall off.

I mean, I think you can make that argument for any candidate at any point in time, anywhere.

I mean, whether or not that matter is remains to be seen.

You're talking about should do voters care that Trump has saying that there are Republicans who shouldn't be reelected?

I'd argue that there's a large swath of his base who hate politicians, and if it helps to further the ideologies that they support, yeah, sure.

Get him the heck out of Congress.

Yeah, those are the Obama Trump voters.

I'm voting for somebody from the outside, somebody different.

I don't think we see anybody from the outside a different in 2026.

I mean, they all look like insiders to me.

And Duggan is the ultimate insider.

And he's not running as an outsider.

He's running as someone who's not on either one of the polls, who's down the middle and can get things done.

You know, if they if they get that in Imlay City, he's going to be dangerous.

All right.

Let's quickly around the table.

Let's see if Mr.

Mauger is right.

Doom and gloom for the rest of the year.

Yay or nay?

Oh, in the legislature.

Yay!

Same.

Yes.

Gridlock.

oh.

to talk about it.

I know, I do want to talk about it, but I got 20 seconds.

I-I'm still the eternal optimist.

I think the stuff can still be worked out.

Okay.

Call me silly or just call me Timmy, and they'll get a deal.

But will it get undone?

That's the question we have now.

And that's where to make it harder to get a deal.

Thank you all for being here.

we'll see you next week for more Off the Record.

Happy New Year, everybody.

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