Voters, all-powerful GOP will have to remove renegade Gamrat

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

I watched and heard State Rep. Cindy Gamrat (R-Plainwell) apologize Friday afternoon for her personal conduct in having an extra-marital affair with fellow State Rep. Todd Courser.

Gamrat, who represents Hopkins, Martin and Watson townships in the 80^th District, gave no indication she will resign in the wake of scandal and insisted she will be cleared of any criminal wrongdoing in the State House investigation. She and Courser both seem to vow they will not be run off by Republican colleagues’ calls for them to step down.

Gamrat does not appear to have as active a role as Courser in this salacious story. There is no evidence she wrote any e-mails telling bizarre phony tales about Courser having a homosexual encounter in Lansing to throw the media and the public off the scent of their moral transgressions. Courser likely is to be more liable for deceiving the people to cover up an embarrassing problem.

Courser is today’s poster boy for Santayana’s admonition that those who don’t learn from history are condemned to repeat it. Richard Nixon’s saga of a third-rate burglary that turned into a resignation in 1974 because of a coverup should have been a lesson.

Gamrat did not take part in the coverup directly, but there is evidence she indirectly had a role in deceiving the people, not only in the coverup, but also because of her hypocrisy in connection with pronouncement of her Christian fundamentalism piety.

Gamrat ran afoul of the Republican Party, which she used to get elected. Had this Tea Partier run in the 2014 August primary as anything other than a Republican, she would not be in Lansing today.

She and Courser took advantage of an awful system in which they didn’t need a majority to win the primary. Gamrat earned 41% of the vote among four candidates and Courser polled 39%. Once they won their primaries, they were shoo-ins in the general election because of our peculiar one-party system that rejects Democrats out of hand.

Yes, that “R” means an awful lot in these parts. Winning the primary is the ticket to Lansing for six years for an $80,000 annual salary and terrific benefits.

But Gamrat already had been biting the hand that feeds her, by violating committee rules and getting barred by the Speaker of the House from those meetings. What we have here now are two legislators who are unpopular in their own party and will have a difficult, if not impossible task in getting anything meaningful done in their next year in the State Legislature.

Gamrat has introduced a lot of legislation in her first seven months, some interesting and worthy of discussion, but some bat-poop crazy with no chance of getting out of committee. All of it now will die on the vine because it’s got her name and Courser’s on it.

Meanwhile, Gamrat has been AWOL from local events and meetings. She hasn’t darkened the doors at Martin, Watson or Hopkins townships even to introduce herself. She’s been too busy trying to be a big hooh-ha in Lansing. Which makes me suspect that she’s selfish and cares not about whom she uses to advance her career.

If she and Courser decide to stay on for the next year, it will be up to the Republican Party in their districts to be disciplined and put up one and only one opponent in the 2016 August primary against both. Not two, not three.

It is only then that the GOP will be able to remove this albatross around its neck.