Dem on Ann Arbor City Council Who Supported Snyder in 2010 Rakes In Donations From Dem Pols Who Look The Other Way

A2P Notes: All of the information about the donors and amounts comes from the Washtenaw County campaign finance web site. To search the database, and examine the candidate campaign finance disclosures yourself, visit this link:http://www.ewashtenaw.org/government/clerk_register/elections/cf_info.html

By now, it’s clear that Governor Rick Snyder is no RINO. He’s a Republican ideologue. Not only that, many of his legislative initiatives have come directly out of the playbook of a shadowy neo-conservative group called the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). In July, the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) went live with a web site containing leaked copies of all ALEC’s model legislation, almost 1,000 model bills. If you haven’t heard of ALEC, here’s the definition of the group’s work from the CMD’s web site:

ALEC is not a lobby; it is not a front group. It is much more powerful than that. Through ALEC, behind closed doors, corporations hand state legislators the changes to the law they desire that directly benefit their bottom line. Along with legislators, corporations have full membership standing in ALEC. Corporations sit on all nine ALEC task forces and vote with legislators to approve “model” bills. They have their own corporate governing board, which has a second, final vote on all legislation. They fund almost all of ALEC’s operations. Participating legislators, overwhelmingly conservative Republicans, then bring those proposals home and introduce them in statehouses across the land as their own brilliant ideas and important public policy innovations—without disclosing that corporations crafted and voted on the bills. ALEC boasts that it has over 1,000 of these bills introduced by legislative members every year, with one in every five of them enacted into law. ALEC describes itself as a “unique,” “unparalleled” and “unmatched” organization. We agree.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Virg Bernero took the Democratic stronghold that is Ann Arbor by just 3 percent of the vote in November of 2010. He didn’t get a single contribution from any of Ann Arbor’s state-level representatives, Rebekah Warren, Liz Brater, Pam Byrnes, or Jeff Irwin. Bernero got a single contribution from one of Ann Arbor’s 11 Democratic City Council members (Steve Kunselman). Bernero didn’t get a penny from any of Washtenaw County’s Democratic county commissioners, or elected county officials, such as county clerk Larry Kestenbaum, who has a long record of involvement in the campaigns of local and state officials. Local long-time Dem supporters Rene and Matt Greff, owners of Arbor Brewing Company in Ann Arbor, didn’t support Bernero, according to Rene, because he wasn’t going to win.

The Greff’s political and financial support of Republican Rick Snyder (they were the single largest donors to Snyder in Ypsilanti, giving the Republican’s campaign almost $5,000) has come back to bite them in their pint glasses. Customers angered by the Greff’s seemingly fickle loyalty to the Democratic candidate and the Democratic party in the gubernatorial contest have said they are boycotting the Greff’s businesses.

In a May 2011 poll A2Politico asked readers whether they would boycott a local business if the owner contributed to candidates, causes or PACs they didn’t like. Surprisingly, 56 percent said they would boycott a local business, and 33.8 percent said they might. Only 6.4 percent of respondents said they would not boycott a local business if the owner contributed to candidates, causes or PACs they didn’t like. (If you’d like to vote in the poll, visit this link.)

It’s now July, and Rick Snyder’s approval ratings stand at just 33 percent, making him one of the most unpopular governors in the country. Snyder has attacked unions, public employees, tried to gut teacher tenure, and expanded Emergency Manager laws to the point that national media have called the legislation “financial martial law.” He paid for a $1.7 billion dollar tax break for small business by shifting the tax burden onto the working poor and the retired. He slashed education funding, and has not created a single new job that can be traced to his policy shifts, or so say Democratic representatives in the State Capitol. Snyder is now threatened with recall by a group that has the backing of the Michigan Education Association and Daily Kos.

In Ann Arbor, tens of thousands of Democrats and Independents voted for Rick Snyder. Among Snyder’s Ann Arbor supporters was Ward 2 incumbent City Council member Stephen Rapundalo. Rapundalo gave Snyder a generous donation. He gave his fellow Democrat Virg Bernero nothing. Rapundalo is running for re-election as a Democrat to represent Ward 2 on the Ann Arbor City Council. He enjoys many benefits, both personal and professional, thanks to his seat on City Council, and he enjoys a seat on Council because he ran as a Democrat. The last time he ran as a Republican, he ran for mayor and lost.

The local news site AnnArbor.com posted a story about local business leaders who had supported Snyder financially, but did not mention the fact that Rapundalo, the head of MichBio, a non-profit life sciences association, supported Snyder, as well. It should be noted that Stephen Rapundalo chairs the LDFA a financing authority which secures then funnels millions in tax money to Ann Arbor SPARK. The Executive VP of the AnnArbor.com, Laurel Champion, sits on the Board of Ann Arbor SPARK. When Rapundalo gave his donation to Snyder, Champion was the Treasurer of the SPARK board.

Like Snyder, Rapundalo is highly critical of the pay of public employees, frequently bashing the city’s police and firefighters unions over pay and benefits. An important part of that story local press have overlooked is that as the Chair of the Council’s Labor Committee, for the past several years, Rapundalo approved the very same pay and benefits for the city’s unionized employees that he is now calling over the top. Like Snyder, Rapundalo supports cuts to education to finance business. Rapundalo’s LDFA skims millions from the local school district and gives the money over to Ann Arbor SPARK, where the CEO is paid a quarter of a million dollars, and gets a $10,000 car allowance for leading an organization that has produced no job creation data that has ever been verified.

Democratic City Council member Stephen Rapundalo supported a Republican candidate for governor who is anti-gay, anti-union, who has attacked teachers, cut education funding and, some national political analysts argue, is possibly a puppet of ALEC and that group’s agenda. Yet, Stephen Rapundalo’s campaign finance forms filed on July 21, 2011 show he has raked in donations from local Dem pols who obviously don’t have a problem with a Democratic Council member openly snubbing the Democratic gubernatorial candidate in order to support a Republican ideologue.

Here are some of the local politicos who gave money to Stephen Rapundalo’s campaign for re-election:

Ray Detter, Chair of the Downtown Citizen’s Advisory Board

Janis Bobrin, Washtenaw County Drain Commissioner

John Splitt, owner Gold Bond Cleaners, member of the Downtown Development Authority Board

Thomas Heywood, President of the State Street Area Association

Roger Hewitt, owner Red Hawk Grill, member of the Downtown Development Authority Board

Leah Gunn (largest single donor), Washtenaw County Commissioner

Joan Lowenstein, former member of the Ann Arbor City Council as a Democrat, Downtown Development Authority Board

In other cities and states, Democratic leaders take the kind of disloyalty shown by Rapundalo very seriously and hand out equally serious punishments. This past March in Brockton, Mass., a member of the City Council, Jass Stewart, faced forced resignation from the city’s Democratic Committee for his support of a Republican candidate in November 2010. The call for the Council member’s resignation from the city’s Democratic Committee came from the state’s Democratic Party. In Ann Arbor, the local Ann Arbor Democratic Party leadership has, to date, done nothing in response to Rapundalo’s support of Republican Rick Snyder in 2010.