By Zachary Gorchow
Executive Editor and Publisher
Posted: February 23, 2017 1:17 PM

House Speaker Tom Leonard (R-DeWitt), just six weeks since accepting the gavel as the new speaker on the Rostrum of the House chamber, faces a crisis like no other speaker I have seen.

It is one he could have, should have, avoided, and one surrounding his decision to make cutting the income tax his top priority for the term.

That a tax cut was a House Republican priority is not the reason he lacks a functional majority today. The problem was how he and his team sought to pass it.

He lent his support to legislation that would have cut the income tax rate from 4.25 percent to 3.9 percent and then repealed the entire tax over the next 40 years, wiping out $9.75 billion, nearly the entire General Fund. This was a bill that had no chance of making it past Governor Rick Snyder to become law and turned into a food fight with the governor that included Mr. Leonard sending an email to supporters that Mr. Snyder’s team interpreted as a shot at the governor.

And as it would turn out, it also was a bill that had no chance of even getting out of the House. A big chunk of the House Republican Caucus and virtually all Democrats saw the bill as extreme.

The resistance should have been a sign to apply the brakes and determine what it would take to get to 55 votes. Or perhaps the speaker should have sacrificed the message of putting tax relief first to instead go for an issue that would be more unifying for the caucus to get a quick early win, maybe repealing the Common Core State Standards.

Instead, Mr. Leonard had the House take up the bill Tuesday and drop the repeal provision, phasing the tax down over four years to 3.9 percent. That there was not the support Tuesday to immediately pass the bill should have again been a signal to slow down and regroup.

But Mr. Leonard continued to press ahead. For 12 hours starting at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, the House was “in session.” I put that in quotes because not a damn thing was taking place, not one vote on another matter until midnight neared. There were several long caucus meetings, one-on-one meetings, milling around, the more than 40 new members no doubt taking in the drama, maybe the subject of the NBA trading deadline on Thursday came up, who knows.

The longer Mr. Leonard kept the House in session, the more pressure for the House to pass it and the more attention was paid to exactly how short of votes he was.

The word spread that Mr. Leonard was well short of the 55 votes needed. Perhaps 10-15, maybe as few as five. At any point, Mr. Leonard could have pulled back and called it a day to keep working behind the scenes for those votes. Live to fight another day, as the saying goes.

Finally, at 1:45 a.m., the speeches concluded, a new amendment adopted, the House was set to vote on HB 4001. It would be a Pyrrhic victory to be sure, Mr. Leonard having had to drag his caucus over the finish line in a way that would hardly leave Mr. Snyder or Senate Majority Leader Arlan Meekhof (R-West Olive) shaking in their boots. But it would at least be a win.

Except when the votes went up on the board, there was a little more red for no votes than green for yes votes. Our House reporter squinted at the voting board and thought, “That looks short.”

Now usually in the House when this happens the majority party moves to clear the voting board so the defeat is not recorded. That would have been bad enough on this night, a humiliating surrender. Instead, the House did in fact record the vote, 52 yes and 55 no, with a motion to reconsider made and the bill shelved for another day, maybe. Instead of raising the white flag for the day, Mr. Leonard sent his caucus on a Kamikaze mission.

Mr. Leonard said his caucus wanted the vote recorded. But this also had the feel of payback, putting all those Republicans who resisted the legislation – most of whom backed Mr. Leonard’s opponent last year to lead the House Republican Caucus and thus become the speaker – on the record against a big tax cut. Have fun defending that in a Republican primary, seemed to be the message.

There were many points in the past week where Mr. Leonard could have showed more patience and played a longer game. Instead, he decided to go for the quick strike, failed to lay the necessary groundwork and now finds himself with 22 months left in his speakership, a caucus bitterly divided, a governor and Senate majority leader very unhappy with his early moves, his signature issue in flames and the path to fixing those problems unclear.