A Local Political Machine Gets Sabotaged From Within — Again

by P.D. Lesko

How many direct hits from within can the Hieftje-Hive-Mind-Collective Cube withstand?

In summer 2009, the Cube took its first hit from within: Ann Arbor residents woke up to a front page piece in the Ann Arbor News that was either hysterically funny or horrifying, depending on one’s political affiliation and, perhaps, one’s mood. Four Democratic members of Ann Arbor City Council were pilloried both in print and via editorial cartoon for trading what the mainstream media took to calling “snarky” comments to each other via email during open Council meetings (alleged Open Meetings Act violations).

Fifth Ward Council member Carsten Honke, Fourth Ward Council member Margie Teall, Third Ward Council member Christopher Taylor and former Third Ward Council member Leigh Greden opened the Sunday paper and found themselves portrayed as babies in a stunning editorial cartoon. Along with the front page news story and cartoon there was an editorial, as well. Like former Second Ward Council member Joan Lowenstein’s recent political self-immolation in the pages of The Ann, Hohnke, Teall, Greden and Taylor revealed themselves to be frankly contemptuous of voters, their Council colleagues whom they didn’t like (Stephen Kunselman, Mike Anglin and Sabra Briere)—two of whom Lowenstein targeted in her essay that was so riddled with factual inaccuracies the editor has started passing it off as a “letter to the editor” on The Ann’s web site.

The Council members’ emails were originally uncovered as the result of a Freedom of Information Act request by a lawyer named Noah Hall, husband of Jennifer Santi Hall, once a Hieftje groupie and member of the Downtown Development Authority. Noah Hall, perhaps aware of what the Ann Arbor News reported as Council’s “vote-rigging” and “scripting of debates” via email during Council meetings, outed members of the Hieftje’s Hive-Mind-Collective as people who thought very, very poorly of the public.

A2Politico suggested that the emails revealed a deeper problem in local government: Ann Arbor’s mayor and politicos held the electorate in utter contempt.

By the end of 2009, after Leigh Greden lost his seat on City Council, however, Ann Arbor residents wanted to move along from the email scandal. Generosity of spirit demanded the embarrassed politicos be given the benefit of the doubt. They’d collectively “made a mistake,” been “snarky,” made “jokes,” behaved childishly,” according to coverage of the scandal by various local media outlets.

Then, in November 2011 the Cube took it’s second major torpedo from the inside. In error, Second Ward Council member Stephen Rapundalo sent a damaging email to AnnArbor.com in which he painted himself as a disingenuous opportunist, writing that he wanted to “look engaged” prior to the election. AnnArbor.com went on to endorse Rapundalo in the City Council race, but the scathing comments by AnnArbor.com readers left no question as to whether people thought Rapundalo’s email was just a silly mistake that should be forgiven. A2Politico.com asked “Will Ann Arbor Voters Press Delete and Dump Another Politico Because of An Email Scandal?” The answer? In a New York minute.

Quickly thereafter, in December 2011, another member of the Hieftje-Hive-Mind-Collective torpedoed the Cube from within. Former Second Ward Council member, and current Downtown Development Authority Board member Joan Lowenstein published a piece in The Ann in which she called Ann Arbor voters “old,” “stingy,” “selfish,” xenophobic, and “Republican” — particularly the Ward 2 Democrats who had voted her friend Council member Stephen Rapundalo out of office. It’s as tempting to see Lowenstein’s letter in The Ann as an ill-conceived tirade written by a woman who is a poor sport, as it was to see the 2009 Council emails as simply “rude” or “snarky.”

It was the reaction from the public to Lowenstein’s piece that was altogether different from that of the public’s reaction to the email scandal in 2009. It was obvious that Lowenstein had stumbled badly, however, and that the Cube had taken yet another hit from inside.

The 174 reader comments in response to an AnnArbor.com post about Lowenstein’s piece in The Ann showed little mercy:

“Mrs. Lowenstein has clearly outlined the problem. She and her buddies on the Council are out of touch.”

“Lowenstein is perhaps coming to understand that she’s become part of the problem, no longer part of any kind of solution. That’s never a pleasant revelation, and it may account for the silliness of her piece.”

“….I also love how she compares the new police department to socialized medicine, then, a few paragraphs later, talks about the need for public funding for concert halls and theaters. That makes it clear that the author can’t tell the difference between a basic necessity that the government should provide and a frivolity that can be built with private funding, if the people choose to have it. The sooner Mrs Lowenstein’s cronies are removed from power, the better.”

“Wow, wow and wow! This woman is WAY off base. How dare she presume how I feel and why I voted the way I did!! I am a female democrat in my 40’s (don’t know – is that considered part of the “aging population”?). I voted for Jane Lumm. I think this is just further proof that Mayor Hieftje has built a city government that can’t see beyond their own thoughts and ideas. It is long past time for a change. I look forward to the mayor and many council members being replaced in the next election…”

“Joan Lowenstein? Yawn . . . She’s just the poster child for the city’s aging streets . . .”

“Better be careful MS Lowenstein you just insulted the “elderly” vote in Ann Arbor. Your college cronies can’t get you everything you want!”

“I wish Joan would run for council, so I could vote against her.”

“What a sulker!”

Joan Lowenstein’s “harsh critique” of the city’s residents, and Second Ward Democratic voters in particular, could quite possibly diminish the chances of her own political friends on City Council winning their 2012 Democratic primaries. Several of them will face opposition, and they will be tainted by Lowenstein’s “off base” tirade in support of their political decisions over the past 16 months. Lowenstein has made herself politically toxic, as did Leigh Greden, who has worked behind the scenes on the campaigns of Hive members and their political pals. AnnArbor.com pointed out that Joan Lowenstein, who demonstrated shocking contempt for the city’s voters—in public and in print—is a “close political ally of John Hieftje.”

Now, Lowenstein is Hieftje’s own personal Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and her ad hominen attacks on the city’s voters will hang around the necks of all of her other close political allies in 2012 as they campaign to protect their shrinking majority on City Council. The Cube, however, is severely damaged, and the Hive will be looking for ways to make sure that Hieftje and Council members Sandi Smith, Tony Derezinski, Christopher Taylor, Margie Teall and Carsten Hohnke don’t lose their seats.

Whether any of them will lose their heads while campaigning and launch another torpedo within the Cube is just part of what will make 2012 local elections a very interesting political show worth following closely.