ACHTUNG: This is not a “fair and balanced” story. It is an editorial by the editor.

The Tuesday, March 8, presidential primary and special election to fill the 80th District State Rep. seat are approaching fast. Consider this an editorial on the latter race.

Republican Mary Whiteford is a genuinely nice and caring person who is running with a really bad crowd. Because of what I’ve seen over the last five years from Lansing, I cannot support her candidacy.

She has given me no indication that she would swim against the deadly current of Gov. Rick Snyder, Attorney General Bill Schuette and the incompetent State Legislature, leading us to ruin with their hollow promises to “reinvent Michigan.” This state has become a one-party fiefdom bordering on totalitarianism, smacking of oligarchy.

This is not a matter of personality. It is a matter of what matters most — the issues.

Here are extensive crimes committed by the legislators and the governor since 2011 that I don’t believe Whiteford would oppose because she won’t ruffle their feathers:

• The Emergency Manager Law, which short-circuits democracy, ignores the will of voters (twice) and gets results like the Flint water disaster and has done nothing but worsened the woeful conditions of troubled public school districts.
• An obnoxious fireworks law that disturbs the public peace, frightens dogs and veterans to promote sales and boorish, childish noisy behavior.
• The failure of a longtime GOP majority to come up with a viable roads funding package for years, yet ramming through both chambers a Right to Work law in just 24 hours.
• Motorcycle helmet law — How can children take us seriously about use of seat belts when we let bikers avoid wearing helmets for safety?
• Medical marijuana implementation — The law was passed in 2008 by 63% of voters statewide, but the Leggie insisted each municipality pay for attorneys to craft their own ordinances.
• Eliminating straight party voting, though twice voters statewide rejected the proposal, making voting at polls more cumbersome and time consuming. It’s an attempt to discourage the unwashed masses, the riff-raff, working people, from voting and consolidate the power of the GOP.
• The coverup of the scandal involving Tea Party lawmakers Todd Courser and Cindy Gamrat while permitting the two unfairly to fire whistleblowing staff members.
• Finally passing an ineffective law to fund roads, but it will rob other departments in the general fund and won’t do anything for roads until past 2017.
• The Aramark scandal, allowing prisons to serve tainted food to inmates.
• Gov. Rick Snyder and the incompetent State Legislature have remade a once proud Michigan into a quasi-totalitarian state, rated the worst among the 50 states in transparency and open government.

Whiteford, Ken Yonker, Bob Genetski and virtually all the GOP legislators who have represented Allegan County since the retirement of Paul Hillegonds, have been nice people who have done what they were told by their party bosses and corporate types like the DeVoses, VanAndels and Secchias. I’m sick and tired of standing by helplessly and watching the train wreck that is Michigan politics unfold.

The problem actually is us because (with apologies to Tom Paxton) “we elect ’em again and again.”

So yes, that means I endorse David Gernant, a Democrat. I recall that election night in 2008 when Donald Trump, asked by Fox News what he thought about prospects of Obama as president, replied, “He can’t do any worse than George W. Bush.”

The 80th District includes Hopkins, Watson and Martin townships and most of Allegan County.

PHOTOS: Mary Whiteford   David Gernant