Family Rights -- The Time Has Come

This past Monday evening, August 21, I traveled to Pontiac and spoke to The Family Rights Coalition at the Oakland County Commissioners' Auditorium. I found an incredibly receptive and enthusiastic audience for my message that our Attorney General should be family-friendly, not hurt families. Unfortunately, more than a million Michigan families are currently the subject of child support orders under the jurisdiction of an oppressive and incompetent Friend of Court bureaucracy. That's more than 1,500,000 Michigan children. The state reports about half of these child support obligations are delinquent, and 87% of the delinquent amounts are owed by parents who earn less than $10,000 per year. Yet Attorney General Mike Cox is exploiting these families and children for political gain, by threatening these unemployed parents with prison if they don't pay up. As I told my audience -- "Your life, your savings, your income and your children should be your own -- and you should not have to turn them over to the state just because you are going through a divorce."

What Makes Me Qualified to Be Attorney General?

I have a number of significant qualifications to be Attorney General that you cannot find in any of my opponents. I graduated at the top of my class from one of the finest national law schools, the Northwestern University School of Law. After law school I joined Warner Norcross & Judd, one of Michigan's largest private law firms, with an impeccable reputation for its top-flight legal practice. For the past 25 years I have trained and grown in the practice of law at Warner Norcross, concentrating in commercial real estate transactions and election law. I have been recognized in many publications for my real estate expertise, including The Best Lawyers in America. Most importantly, I served more than 10 years as the Chairperson of the firm's Real Estate Services Group. That position gave me day-to-day experience in managing, motivating and building consensus among a sometimes-fractious group of approximately 40 attorneys and paralegals, not to mention many legal secretaries and staff. This is exactly the sort of legal management experience one needs to oversee the State of Michigan's in-house law firm known as the Attorney General's office.

Attorney General: Enemy of Small Business?

Does Mike Cox think his mission as Michigan Attorney General is to persecute every small business he can find? Earlier this week he charged a 75-year-old construction contractor in the UP with a crime. Seems the guy had a construction business that was doing pretty good. He owned some land where he had his office, but needed more space to park his equipment. Luckily, there was room for a parking lot, so the contractor added some gravel, and he was all set. Attorney General Mike Cox had a fit. He claims the land was a swamp (excuse me, "wetland"), and the contractor illegally filled it. Attorney General Cox wants to fine this particular small businessman and make him "restore" the site. If he doesn't do that, then maybe they'll send him to jail for a couple of years (maybe for the rest of his life!). Apparently, Mike Cox doesn't believe in private property, and thinks mosquitoes are more important than jobs. If I were Attorney General, I would: (1) respect this small businessman's private property; (2) not publicly disparage him as a criminal, just to advance my own re-election campaign; and (3) leave him alone to do the hard work of creating more jobs.