By Zachary Gorchow
Executive Editor and Publisher
Posted: September 5, 2017 5:04 PM

In less than three weeks, perhaps as many as 2,000 Michigan Republican activists will gather on Mackinac Island for the biennial fire up the troops meeting the fall before the election year, and with next year’s election featuring an open seat governor’s race, it figures to be quite the scene.

One would think.

Now that September has arrived, the question is when will Lt. Governor Brian Calley and Attorney General Bill Schuette make official what has been expected for more than six years: they are running for governor in 2018? If they both announce prior to the conference and join Sen. Patrick Colbeck and Dr. Jim Hines, the two Republicans already in the race, the island figures to be jammed with activists ferried in by the candidates in hopes of getting a little bit of a jolt from the straw poll that will take place.

Remember eight years ago when then-candidate and now-Governor Rick Snyder brought along an army of young people – including former Michigan State University Quarterback Jeff Smoker – wearing neon green “Rick Michigan” T-shirts to vote for him in the straw poll? It worked. Mr. Snyder, an unknown at that point, won the straw poll and got some publicity. And at that point, all five candidates who would appear on the 2010 ballot were in the race.

The straw poll, which Gongwer News Service co-sponsored in 2013, doesn’t have the greatest success in predicting what will happen, however. U.S. Sen. Rand Paul won it in 2013 and 2015 when activists were asked to select their presidential choice for 2016, and Mr. Paul quickly flamed out in the 2016 primaries and caucuses.

If they do not declare prior to the conference, it’s going to take some of the juice out of the event. Sure, the two of them will make the rounds and work the activists, but there’s a big difference between being a candidate in waiting and an actual candidate. In 2009, then-Attorney General Mike Cox used the meeting to offer a large policy platform in the days leading up to it.

Sure, Mr. Calley and Mr. Schuette could keep doing what they have been doing, raising money and padding their campaign war chests, funds that can be transferred to a gubernatorial campaign committee if and when they form one. But it is hard to figure what advantage would exist in passing on the opportunity to start making their case, face-to-face, with 2,000 of the most loyal, active Republicans in the state as to why they should carry the party’s flag for governor next year.

Staying on the sidelines would allow them to continue going about their current jobs without everything they do being explicitly viewed in the context of 2018, though it has felt for some time like they already are judged in that manner anyway.

The party’s biennial meeting has long been seen as its launching pad for the upcoming election. We’ll find out soon if two long-presumed candidates for governor still think that is so.