By Zachary Gorchow
President of Michigan Operations
Posted: January 15, 2019 3:56 PM

There's something in the air in Lansing so far this year, something so unusual, it has startled longtime followers of the goings-on at the Capitol: a bipartisan tone.

Governor Gretchen Whitmer's inaugural address was full of bipartisan themes and outreach. House Speaker Lee Chatfield (R-Levering) invited all the living former speakers, Democrat and Republican, to the House's Opening Day session, and it was quite a sight seeing eight of the 11 on the rostrum to sign a tribute for the first day of the 100th Legislature. Mr. Chatfield held a news conference with Democratic Attorney General Dana Nessel on the House floor after the session in a move that surprised everyone.

The Michigan Supreme Court, which has a 4-3 majority of justices nominated by the Republican Party, elected a Democrat as chief justice with now-Chief Justice Bridget McCormack taking the reins of the high court. Even though the court has operated with a philosophical majority of two Democrats and two Republicans of late, this was still an eye-popping development.

And the Michigan Senate – well, some things don't change. The honey badger of Michigan politics, former Senate Majority Leader Arlan Meekhof, may be gone as a result of term limits, but the Senate is still very much a Republican bastion after 35 years of GOP control. Even though the GOP majority shrunk from 27-11 to 22-16 – the biggest shift in seats in 40 years – Republicans have still kept lopsided margins on committees with only a slight increase in Democratic representation.

All that said, Mr. Meekhof's successor, Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey, isn't quite the partisan animal Mr. Meekhof is and is expected to take a more conciliatory approach.

This is all pretty easy at the moment. The Legislature's just getting organized. It will be a couple weeks, at least, before legislative committees begin work. Ms. Whitmer is still three weeks from delivering her State of the State message and about six weeks from unveiling her first budget recommendation.

In short, there's really nothing for Democrats and Republicans to go to battle on yet as Ms. Whitmer and the bipartisan legislative leadership prepare for their first Quadrant meeting Wednesday.

There will be some telling early decisions, however, that will signal just how long these two weeks of kumbaya will last.

Ms. Whitmer and Ms. Nessel have a decision to make about whether they think the law enacted late last year authorizing the creation of a tunnel beneath the Straits of Mackinac meets constitutional muster. Mr. Chatfield already pushed back at their even raising the possibility it doesn't, and Republicans strongly favor the tunnel.

Do Republicans start a conga line of bills across Capitol Avenue to the Romney Building designed to put Ms. Whitmer in a jam and force a veto? That's what happened in 2003, the last time a newly elected Democratic governor and Republican Legislature took office. Majority Republicans in a matter of weeks sent then-Governor Jennifer Granholm a bill to regionalize control of the Detroit water system. She opposed the bill. Republicans knew that, but wanted to put her in a bad spot with the suburban Detroit voters who elected her and sent her the bill anyway. She vetoed it.

In that 2003-04 term, Ms. Granholm vetoed 66 bills, 11 in the first year.

In December, Ms. Whitmer warned she saw the huge supplemental appropriations bill as fiscally irresponsible and noted the Constitution says an appropriation is not a mandate to spend. Will her administration hold back on the appropriation of any of those funds, something that surely would antagonize Republicans (and maybe some Democrats too) in the Legislature?

Do the Senate Republicans haul in Whitmer appointees for rough-and-tumble advice and consent hearings or are those hearings as genteel as they were in the second term of Governor Rick Snyder's tenure (they didn't exist at all in Mr. Snyder's first term).

And over at the court, which could now fairly be termed the McCormack Court, does the ruling majority essentially remain Ms. McCormack, Justice Richard Bernstein, Justice Elizabeth Clement and Justice David Viviano with newly sworn-in Justice Megan Cavanagh joining them? Based on the way the court has acted in the past year-plus, the betting money is yes.

On auto insurance, do legislative Republicans and the Whitmer administration work extensively on a compromise right up front, or does it turn into the usual posturing where the Legislature puts together a bill and then talks start on a compromise that gets passed in the middle of the night?

Springtime in Lansing usually features a few days where the aroma of farms to the south wafts northward. By then, we should know whether these early niceties were born of the same thing that generates that springtime scent over the Capitol region.