By Zachary Gorchow
President of Michigan Operations
Posted: May 31, 2016 4:27 PM

No matter what you believe about the reasons for Melissa Gilbert deciding to stop campaigning for the 8th U.S. House District, that she really has debilitating neck and head problems as she says or that Republicans chased her out of the race with a series of devastating attacks, there’s no question her candidacy was a bust.

Even before Ms. Gilbert declared she was ceasing her campaign last week, her campaign had largely been a mess. It started out having to explain why she had fallen behind on her taxes, was staggered with the revelation she had once defended fugitive convicted child sexual assailant Roman Polanski and fell further with her refusal to attend a local chamber of commerce candidate forum because she didn’t want to take questions from the audience. About the only thing Ms. Gilbert did well was raise money.

The Gilbert situation got me thinking about other examples of a highly touted candidate who fell well short of expectations.

LARRY OWEN FOR GOVERNOR, 1998: Larry Owen had everything going for him in 1998, or so it seemed. Virtually the entire Democratic establishment endorsed him. The United Auto Workers and Michigan AFL-CIO took the unusual step of issuing an endorsement of him almost a year ahead of the primary. He had a respectable run in 1994 for governor that had positioned him as the party favorite in 1998. But when the votes were counted August 4 in the Democratic primary, attorney Geoffrey Fieger had narrowly bested him for the nomination.

JOE HEMBLING, 84TH HOUSE DISTRICT, 2000: It is not often that a candidate sweeps most notable endorsements in a Republican legislative primary and is widely hailed as the overwhelming favorite among Republicans closely watching the situation and then loses in a landslide. But that’s what happened in this Thumb district in 2000 when radio personality Tom Meyer beat Mr. Hembling by more than 20 percentage points in the GOP primary.

LAURIE STUPAK, 108TH HOUSE DISTRICT, 2002: Both parties thought Ms. Stupak, wife of then-U.S. Rep. Bart Stupak and the mayor of Menominee, had this race sewed up long before Election Day. There was simply no way a Stupak was going to lose this seat to an unknown Republican trucker named Tom Casperson, right? Wrong. Mr. Casperson won, and this is a loss that has haunted Democrats ever since. It set Mr. Casperson up to win the 38th Senate District in 2010, and now he could win the 1st U.S. House District this year.

WALT NORTH, 107TH HOUSE DISTRICT, 2004: When Republican popular longtime former Sen. Walt North filed to run for the House seat straddling the Straits of Mackinac, it seemed a classic win on filing day scenario. Yes, the Democrats had someone named Gary McDowell, a Chippewa County commissioner, running, but Mr. North had represented the area for years in the Senate. A few weeks before Election Day, though, word began to spread that Mr. North was not campaigning door to door. Meanwhile, Mr. McDowell was working the doors hard, and in the end he won the race in a rout.

MIKE BOUCHARD, GOVERNOR, 2010: A rising star in Michigan Republican politics for years, from the all-important county of Oakland, it still seems hard to believe Mr. Bouchard finished a distant fourth out of five candidates in the 2010 Republican gubernatorial primary. Even more amazing, not only did he lose Oakland to now-Governor Rick Snyder by 11 percentage points, but Mr. Snyder even won Mr. Bouchard’s hometown of Birmingham.

JOHN CHERRY, GOVERNOR, 2010: Then-Lt. Governor John Cherry Jr. was the overwhelming favorite to be the Democratic nominee for governor. He had paid his dues, with eight years as Governor Jennifer Granholm’s lieutenant governor, and some two decades in the Legislature, including a run as a respected force as Senate minority leader. Smart, affable and politically astute, there was simply no way Mr. Cherry would not carry the Democratic flag in November. But serious trouble hit in 2009. Mr. Cherry’s campaign spent virtually all the money it had raised, and with Democratic donors hurting amid the Great Recession, as well as a malaise in Democratic circles in general, he could not refill his campaign coffers. Shortly after New Year’s Day in 2010, Mr. Cherry stunned Michigan politics in declaring he would no longer be a candidate.

RYAN FISHMAN, 13TH SENATE DISTRICT, 2014: Democrats were ecstatic about landing Ryan Fishman as a candidate. A young, socially liberal and fiscally conservative Republican, Mr. Fishman switched parties to run as a Democrat and seemed a nice fit for this Oakland County seat. He raised a huge haul for his campaign and tapped an array of connections. But Mr. Fishman had an opponent for the Democratic nomination, Cyndi Peltonen. She had virtually no money, but while Mr. Fishman focused on general election voters, Ms. Peltonen focused on Democratic primary voters. Ooops. Ms. Peltonen won the primary and then lost the general election to now-Sen. Marty Knollenberg (R-Troy).