It’s Whitmer almost by default for Dems’ governor

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

This may be a little deja vu from my editorial about the Republican primary for governor, in which I bemoaned the apparent unfair fate of Brian Calley for taking a moral stand two years ago against Donald Trump.

Now comes Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, a brilliant young man, a Rhodes Scholar who earned a doctorate from Oxford and a medical degree from Columbia University and his undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan. He’s made a positive difference in health care in the Detroit area.

But he’s got one huge problem — his name. I hate to admit this, but I just can’t see how a man named Abdul El-Sayed, whose parents were born in Egypt, can win an election statewide in Michigan in these troubling times in the kingdom. Providing historical evidence was the sad story of Republican William Lucas, the GOP nominee for governor in 1986, who had the huge disadvantage of being black. He was the only Republican since 1932 to fail to carry Allegan County in the general election.

El-Sayed’s politics certainly don’t scare me away. He’s a progressive who thinks things through and knows what we need to do with health care — a single-payer Medicare for all program that will save money.

So it is with a heavy heart that I cannot endorse Mr. El-Sayed in the primary because I don’t think he can win in November.

The same is true of rival Shri Thanedar, who came here from India and made big bucks as a businessman. But he speaks like a telemarketer we can’t understand. And I’m not sure I trust him after some respected people I know have indicated they think he’s not sincere in his beliefs and promises.

That leaves Gretchen Whitmer, whom I hereby endorse almost by default. Even though Republicans are already trying to make her look like Jennifer Granholm 2.0, polling shows her defeating GOP front-runner Bill Schuette in the Nov. 6 general election.

It’s not as though I don’t like Gretchen. I think she’s smart and savvy. She served three two-year terms in the Michigan House and two four-year terms in the State Senate with leadership roles, so she knows her way around Lansing pretty well. She also was a prosecuting attorney.

In a nutshell, folks, we could do a lot worse.

Republicans want to link her to Granholm, but Schuette will carry the albatross of President Trump, a huge mistake he made very early in his campaign by hitching his wagon to a man whose approval ratings continue to plummet in Michigan and they’re not likely to improve.

So about all Whitmer has to do is keep showing clips of Trump’s support for Schuette and continue to do her poor attempt at hypermasculinity with her stern command of “fix the damn roads.”