(Source: MIRS.news, Published 05/13/23) If political consultant Jeff Timmer and his political allies are successful in rounding up 45,000 signatures to create his envisioned "Common Sense Party," don't expect to see a traditional convention nominate its own slate of general election candidates.
That's not the direction the founding fathers of this fledgling party are headed.
Instead, Timmer, former U.S. Rep. Dave Trott, former U.S. Rep. Joe Schwarz, Bob LaBrant and others are looking to turn the clock back to the 1880s when the "Fusionist Party" concept was so popular it elected Michigan's 19th governor, Josiah Begole.
Under this concept, the Common Sense Party would endorse other candidates already on the ballot. They may decide to back a Democrat for Congress, but a Republican for the U.S. Senate, for example.
Their endorsee, Trott told MIRS Monday, would be a more moderate, "common sense" candidate. If the party can attract 5% of the voting population to this way of thinking, it would have an impact on close elections.
However, state law is not on their side. After Begole's success in the election of 1882 and Democrat gubernatorial candidate Edwin WINANS' win in 1890 as part of a similar, coalition-style arrangement, Republican legislators vowed to stop it.
In 1895, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin and Oregon passed laws to prevent cooperation between Democrats and third parties, according to the Idaho Law Review.
"One Michigan legislator publicly acknowledged that the Republicans were not interested in allowing, 'the Democrats to make allies of the Populists, Prohibitionists, or any other party, and get up combination tickets against us'" according to an article from Lynn Adelman.
That's why, if the Common Sense Party is successful in getting their language through the Board of State Canvassers process and collecting the needed 45,000 signatures, the next step will be to immediately go to the Court of Claims or some other court to overturn the state law that prevents fusionist style voting.
"Third parties get 1, 2% of the vote," Trott told MIRS Monday. "Oftentimes, people who vote for the Green Party or the Libertarian Party feel like it's a wasted vote. It's a protest vote that doesn't really accomplish anything outside of a few exceptions … But for the most part, third parties are irrelevant."
Bringing back fusion candidates would force political candidates in tight races to come to the middle and advance "common sense, bi-partisan solutions," he said.
The Glengariff Group pollster Richard Czuba reported the fusion party movement has worked in other states like New York, but he warned, "We need to be very careful about that. We have a lot of these kinds of efforts happening. Are they real is the question?" and it's a question he believes cannot be answered right now.
"I think that's interesting. I think it is fascinating because for those who don't want to support one party or the other, they might like a candidate (if) the candidate was under multiple labels," he believes. But since it has not been tried in recent history, no one knows on the question of whether it will make a difference in the outcome of our elections.
"Anything that toys with the margin of victory can have a huge impact in a state like Michigan," he explained, and by that he means if this movement takes votes away from the D's or the R's, it reduces their margin of victory.
Or put another way, the more candidate options the voters have, the better the chances that the majority parties lose votes. "It is real," he says, if this turns out to be the real deal.
Bill Ballenger of The Ballenger Report noted that, historically, Michigan has been open to credible alternatives for large offices. Michigan voted for Bull Moose Party nominee Teddy Roosevelt in 1912, for example.
The question will be if the Common Sense Party has access to enough money to advance its message and help its chosen nominees in any meaningful way, he said.
"There is a hunger by much of the voting population for some centrist, independent, moderate approaches to governing as opposed to the polarized, hard-left, hard-right politics we've been seeing," Ballenger said. "This could have some success."
